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AMD Radeon 550

AMD Radeon 550: A Budget Graphics Card for Undemanding Tasks

April 2025

Introduction

In a world where high-end graphics cards cost as much as a whole computer, the AMD Radeon 550 remains a lifeline for those seeking an affordable solution for basic tasks and light gaming. This model, introduced in 2025, combines modern technologies with a reasonable price (around $130–150). Let's explore who this card is suited for and what it is capable of.

Architecture and Key Features

The Radeon 550 is based on the updated RDNA 2 Lite architecture—a simplified version of RDNA 2, tailored for the budget segment. The manufacturing process is 6 nm, ensuring a balance between energy efficiency and performance.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3.0: An upscaling technology that increases FPS in games with minimal loss of quality. Supports “Quality” and “Performance” modes.

- Radeon Image Sharpening: Enhances image clarity in games and applications.

- Hybrid Ray Tracing: A simplified software implementation of ray tracing, but without hardware RT core support.

The card does not support hardware ray tracing like NVIDIA's RTX, so enabling RT effects requires significantly lowering settings.

Memory: Type, Size, and Speed

- Memory Type: GDDR6 (previous budget models used GDDR5).

- Size: 4 GB. This is sufficient for medium settings at 1080p gaming, but may become a bottleneck in modern projects with HD textures.

- Bus: 64-bit.

- Bandwidth: 112 GB/s (compared to 224 GB/s for cards with a 128-bit bus).

GDDR6 memory reduces latency, but the narrow bus limits potential in resource-intensive scenarios.

Gaming Performance: FPS and Resolutions

The Radeon 550 is positioned as a solution for 1080p/30–60 FPS on medium or low settings. Examples (FSR 3.0 in “Performance” mode):

- Cyberpunk 2077: 35–40 FPS (Low, FSR).

- Fortnite: 60–70 FPS (Medium, FSR).

- EA Sports FC 2025: 75–90 FPS (High).

- Hogwarts Legacy 2: 25–30 FPS (Low, without RT).

Ray Tracing is virtually unavailable: in games with RT, enabling effects reduces FPS to 15–20.

For 1440p and 4K, the card is not recommended—even with FSR, performance will be uncomfortable.

Professional Tasks

The Radeon 550 handles basic professional tasks thanks to support for OpenCL and Vulkan API:

- Video Editing: Working in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro on 1080p timelines without complex effects. Rendering in 4K will require patience.

- 3D Modeling: Blender and AutoCAD—only for simple projects.

- Scientific Calculations: Support for ROCm (the equivalent of CUDA) is limited due to the small number of compute cores (768 streams).

For serious work, it’s better to choose cards with 8+ GB of memory and hardware Ray Tracing support.

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 65 W. The card draws power through the PCIe slot, with no additional connectors.

- Cooling: Passive or a compact cooler. Even under load, the temperature does not exceed 70–75°C.

- Chassis Recommendations: A case with 1–2 intake fans is sufficient.

An ideal choice for compact builds in Mini-ITX cases.

Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (2025 Refresh): 4 GB GDDR6, 75 W, price $160–180. Better optimization for games but more expensive.

- Intel Arc A310: 6 GB GDDR6, supports XeSS, price $140. Higher performance in DX12 but has driver issues.

- AMD Radeon RX 6400: 4 GB GDDR6, PCIe 4.0, $150. Similar performance but requires PCIe 4.0 for full speed.

The Radeon 550 wins on price and power efficiency but falls short in “heavy” tasks.

Practical Tips

1. Power Supply: A 350–400 W PSU is sufficient (for example, Corsair CX450).

2. Compatibility:

- Motherboards with PCIe 3.0/4.0 x16.

- Processors: Ryzen 3/5 or Intel Core i3/i5 (2020+ generations).

3. Drivers: Use Adrenalin Edition 2025 with optimizations for FSR 3.0. Avoid beta versions.

4. Monitors: Connect via HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 1.4 (supports 1080p@144 Hz).

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($130–150).

- Energy efficiency (65 W).

- Support for FSR 3.0.

- Quiet operation.

Cons:

- 4 GB of memory is low for 2025.

- Weak gaming performance without FSR.

- No hardware Ray Tracing.

Final Verdict: Who is the Radeon 550 For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget gamers looking to play at medium settings on 1080p.

2. Office PCs with occasional multimedia tasks.

3. Compact builds with limited cooling.

If you aren't chasing ultra-settings and want to save money, the Radeon 550 will be a reliable option. However, for games with ray tracing or 3D rendering, it's better to add $50–100 to your budget.

Prices are accurate as of April 2025. Check for current offers in your region before purchasing.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

April 2017

Model Name

Radeon 550

Generation

Polaris

Base Clock

1100MHz

Boost Clock

1183MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x8

Transistors

2,200 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

64bit

Memory Clock

1750MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

56.00 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

18.93 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

37.86 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

1211 GFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

75.71 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.235 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

512

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

50W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.235 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon HD 6970M Mac Edition

1.28 +3.6%

Radeon HD 6970M Rebrand

1.254 +1.5%

Radeon 550

1.235

Radeon Pro WX 3100

1.223 -1%

GeForce GTX 850M

1.178 -4.6%