AMD Radeon RX 560X Mobile

AMD Radeon RX 560X Mobile

AMD Radeon RX 560X Mobile: Overview and Analysis of a Mobile GPU for Budget Systems

April 2025


1. Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture: A Time-Tested Foundation

The AMD Radeon RX 560X Mobile is based on the Polaris (GCN 4.0) architecture, which debuted back in 2016. Despite its age, this platform continues to be used in budget mobile solutions due to its energy efficiency and low production costs. The manufacturing process is 14-nm FinFET by GlobalFoundries, which explains its moderate thermal output.

Unique Features: FidelityFX and Lack of RT Acceleration

The RX 560X Mobile supports the AMD FidelityFX technology suite, including Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) and FSR 1.0 for upscaling optimization. However, hardware ray tracing and the more advanced FSR 3.0 are absent—these are reserved for GPUs in the RDNA 2/3 series.


2. Memory: Modest, But Sufficient for Basic Tasks

GDDR5 and 128-bit Bus

The graphics card is equipped with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus. The bandwidth is 112 GB/s, which is half of what modern GDDR6 solutions offer. For gaming at 1080p on low to medium settings, this is adequate, but high-resolution textures and complex effects may cause FPS drops due to the limited bandwidth.

Tip: For comfortable operation in professional applications (e.g., Adobe Premiere), it is recommended to increase the laptop's RAM to 16 GB to reduce VRAM load.


3. Gaming Performance: 1080p as the Limit

Average FPS in Popular Titles (2025)

- CS2 (Counter-Strike 2): 90–110 FPS on medium settings.

- Fortnite: 45–55 FPS (medium settings + FSR 1.0).

- Cyberpunk 2077: 25–30 FPS (low settings + FSR 1.0).

- EA Sports FC 2025: 60–70 FPS (high settings).

Resolutions Above 1080p are Not for RX 560X Mobile

Attempts to run games at 1440p or 4K result in FPS dropping below 20 frames even on minimum settings. Technologies like ray tracing are not supported in hardware, and their software emulation (via FSR) is impractical due to low performance.


4. Professional Tasks: Basic Level

Video Editing and 3D Modeling

The GPU handles rendering in DaVinci Resolve or Blender on simple projects thanks to OpenCL support. However, it lacks sufficient power for complex scenes or 4K timelines. Compared to NVIDIA cards (which have CUDA and RTX acceleration), the RX 560X Mobile falls short in processing speed.

Scientific Calculations

For tasks in MATLAB or Python (NumPy), the graphics card is of little use—CPU performance and RAM capacity are critical here.


5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP 65 W: Balance Between Power and Battery Life

The RX 560X Mobile is suitable for thin gaming laptops and versatile models. Cooling systems typically include one fan and a compact heatsink. In gaming scenarios, the GPU temperature reaches 75–85°C, but throttling is avoided due to frequency capping.

Recommendations:

- Regularly clean the vents of dust.

- Use cooling pads during long gaming sessions.


6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile: Main Competitor

- NVIDIA Pros: DLSS 1.0 support, higher performance in DX12 games (~15–20% advantage).

- AMD Pros: Better optimization for Vulkan (Doom Eternal – 70 FPS vs 60 FPS on GTX 1650), often lower price.

Intel Arc A350M: A New Player

- Intel Advantages: Support for XeSS and hardware ray tracing.

- Disadvantages: Drivers are still less stable than AMD's.


7. Practical Tips

Power Supply and Compatibility

- Laptops with RX 560X Mobile generally come with a power supply rated at 120–150 W.

- Check compatibility with external monitors via HDMI 2.0 (max resolution – 4K@60 Hz).

Drivers: Stability Above All

AMD continues to release updates for Polaris, but current features (e.g., FSR 3.0) are unavailable. For gaming, it is recommended to use driver version Adrenalin 24.4.1 (April 2025), optimized for Windows 11 23H2.


8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price: Laptops with this graphics card cost $550–$700.

- Good energy efficiency.

- FSR support for improved FPS in games.

Cons:

- No hardware ray tracing.

- Only 4 GB VRAM—insufficient for modern AAA games.

- Outdated architecture.


9. Final Conclusion: Who is RX 560X Mobile Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for those looking for a budget laptop for studying, office tasks, and undemanding gaming. It can handle CS2, Dota 2, or FIFA on medium settings, but for demanding projects like Starfield or Alan Wake 2, an upgrade is necessary.

Why is it still relevant in 2025?

Despite the emergence of more modern GPUs, the RX 560X Mobile remains relevant in the under $700 device niche, where balancing price and basic performance is essential. If you are not chasing ultra settings and want to save money—this could be your option.


Basic

Label Name
AMD
Platform
Mobile
Launch Date
January 2019
Model Name
Radeon RX 560X Mobile
Generation
Mobility Radeon
Bus Interface
PCIe 3.0 x16
Transistors
3,000 million
Compute Units
14
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.
56
Foundry
GlobalFoundries
Process Size
14 nm
Architecture
GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size
4GB
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
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.
112.0 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.
19.57 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.
68.49 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.
2.192 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.
137.0 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.
2.236 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.
896
L1 Cache
16 KB (per CU)
L2 Cache
1024KB
TDP
65W
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.
16

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)
Score
2.236 TFLOPS
3DMark Time Spy
Score
1864

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
2.335 +4.4%
2.272 +1.6%
2.164 -3.2%
2.107 -5.8%
3DMark Time Spy
5182 +178%
3906 +109.5%
2755 +47.8%