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AMD Radeon RX 550 Mobile

AMD Radeon RX 550 Mobile: Budget GPU for Undemanding Tasks

April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon RX 550 Mobile is a solution for those looking for a balance between price, energy efficiency, and basic performance. Although by 2025 this GPU can no longer be considered a newcomer, it remains relevant in budget laptops and compact systems. In this article, we'll explore who this model is suitable for, how it handles gaming and work tasks, and whether it deserves attention in the era of ray tracing technologies and neural network upscaling.

Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture: A Proven Foundation

The RX 550 Mobile is built on the Polaris architecture (GCN 4.0), which debuted back in 2016. Despite its age, AMD continues to utilize it in budget mobile solutions due to its low power consumption and affordable production costs. The manufacturing process is 14 nm FinFET from GlobalFoundries.

Unique Features

- AMD FidelityFX: A toolkit for enhancing graphics, including Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS).

- FreeSync: Support for frame rate synchronization with monitors, minimizing image tearing.

- No Ray Tracing: Hardware RTX-like functionality is not implemented due to architectural limitations.

Memory: Modest, Yet Adequate for Its Tasks

Type and Size

The RX 550 Mobile is equipped with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 64-bit bus. The bandwidth is 112 GB/s. This is sufficient for office applications and light games, but in modern projects with high-resolution textures, frame drops may occur.

Impact on Performance

The limited memory size (2 GB) becomes a bottleneck in games requiring more than 3–4 GB of VRAM, such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Hogwarts Legacy. However, for projects like CS:GO or League of Legends, the resources are adequate.

Gaming Performance: Realistic Expectations

1080p - Comfortable Maximum

- CS:GO: 80–100 FPS on low settings.

- Fortnite: 45–55 FPS (Medium, no shadows).

- Valorant: 90–110 FPS (Medium).

- The Witcher 3: 25–30 FPS (Low).

1440p and 4K - Not for This Card

Even lowering settings to a minimum won't provide smooth gameplay at resolutions higher than Full HD.

Ray Tracing - Absent

Hardware support for RT cores is not available. Software methods (e.g., via DirectX Raytracing) result in FPS dropping below 10 frames.

Professional Tasks: Only the Basics

Video Editing

In applications like DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, the card can handle rendering projects in 1080p, but optimized settings and patience are required for 4K.

3D Modeling

Blender and AutoCAD run at a basic level. OpenCL acceleration is supported, but complex scenes will be processed slowly.

Scientific Calculations

The lack of specialized cores (like CUDA in NVIDIA) limits its use in machine learning or simulations.

Power Consumption and Heat Output

TDP: 50W - Easy for Laptops

The low power consumption allows the RX 550 Mobile to be used even in thin ultrabooks.

Cooling Recommendations

- Laptops with passive or hybrid cooling systems handle the GPU under moderate loads.

- For prolonged gaming sessions, it's better to choose models with additional heat pipes and fans.

Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA GeForce MX550

- Pros of MX550: supports DLSS (albeit limited), better optimization for creative tasks.

- Cons: 20-30% higher price (MX550 - $250–300 compared to $180–220 for RX 550 Mobile).

Intel Arc A350M

- More modern architecture with ray tracing support.

- Higher performance in DirectX 12, but drivers are still unstable.

Practical Tips

Power Supply

For laptops with the RX 550 Mobile, a standard 65–90W adapter is sufficient.

Compatibility

- It’s best paired with AMD Ryzen 5 or Intel Core i5 processors for performance balance.

- Check PCIe version (requires PCIe 3.0 x8).

Drivers

Regularly update software through AMD Adrenalin. Avoid "raw" beta versions as they may cause artifacts in games.

Pros and Cons

Pros

- Low price ($180–220 for new devices).

- Energy efficiency.

- Quiet operation in office scenarios.

Cons

- Weak performance in modern games.

- Only 2 GB of video memory.

- No ray tracing support.

Final Conclusion: Who is RX 550 Mobile for?

This graphics card is suitable for:

1. Students who need a laptop for studying and occasional gaming.

2. Office users working with browsers, office suites, and light editors.

3. Travelers who value a long battery life.

If you don't plan to run AAA titles from recent years and are willing to compromise on graphics, the RX 550 Mobile will be a reliable companion. However, for professional creative work or gaming in 2025, it's worth considering more modern solutions, such as the AMD Radeon RX 7600M or NVIDIA RTX 4050 Mobile.

Price range valid as of April 2025.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

July 2017

Model Name

Radeon RX 550 Mobile

Generation

Mobility Radeon

Base Clock

1100MHz

Boost Clock

1287MHz

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.

128bit

Memory Clock

1500MHz

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.

96.00 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.

20.59 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.

51.48 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.

1.647 TFLOPS

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.

103.0 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.

1.614 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.

640

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

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.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.614 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GRID M3 3020

1.705 +5.6%

Radeon RX 455 OEM

1.645 +1.9%

Radeon RX 550 Mobile

1.614

Radeon HD 6850 X2

1.567 -2.9%

Radeon R9 M270X

1.505 -6.8%