Home / NVIDIA / NVIDIA GeForce MX550: Performance and Specs

NVIDIA GeForce MX550

NVIDIA GeForce MX550: Budget GPU for Everyday Tasks and Light Gaming

Analysis of the graphics card for those seeking a balance between price and basic performance

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The NVIDIA GeForce MX550 is built on a hybrid architecture called Ampere Lite, adapted for the budget segment. It is a simplified version of the "larger" Ampere used in the RTX 3000/4000 series, with a reduced number of CUDA cores (1024) and lacking hardware support for ray tracing and DLSS 3.0.

Manufacturing Technology: The chip is produced using Samsung's 8nm process, which provides low power consumption but limits frequency potential.

Unique Features:

- Adaptive Sync: Support for synchronization with monitors to eliminate screen tearing.

- NVENC Encoder: Hardware encoding of video in H.264 and H.265 formats for streaming and editing.

- Optimus: Technology for automatic switching between integrated and discrete graphics on laptops.

What’s Missing: RT cores, tensor cores, support for DLSS, and FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR).

Memory: Modest Resources for Basic Tasks

- Memory Type: GDDR6 with a 64-bit bus.

- Capacity: 4 GB—enough for work at 1080p, but in games with high-resolution textures (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077), there may be drops due to insufficient VRAM.

- Bandwidth: 96 GB/s (memory frequency — 12 GHz). For comparison: the RTX 3050 (128-bit bus) has 224 GB/s.

- Impact on Performance: In games with high graphical settings, the frame buffer fills up quickly, leading to textures being loaded "on the fly" and micro stuttering.

Gaming Performance: Only 1080p at Low Settings

The MX550 is positioned as a solution for esports titles and older games. Examples of FPS (medium settings, 1080p):

- CS2 — 90–110 FPS.

- Fortnite (without RT) — 45–55 FPS.

- Apex Legends — 60–70 FPS.

- The Witcher 3 (without HD mods) — 35–45 FPS.

Ray Tracing: Not available due to the absence of RT cores. Even with software emulation via DirectX 12 Ultimate, FPS drops to unplayable levels (below 20 frames).

1440p and 4K: Not recommended. At 1440p, even in Rocket League, average FPS does not exceed 40.

Professional Tasks: Minimum for Beginners

- Video Editing: In DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, rendering 1080p videos is accelerated with CUDA, but 4K projects are processed slowly (2–3 times longer than on RTX 3060).

- 3D Modeling: In Blender, a scene with 1 million polygons is rendered in 12–15 minutes (Cycles, CUDA). For comparison: RTX 4060 manages it in 2–3 minutes.

- Scientific Calculations: Support for OpenCL and CUDA allows for basic machine learning using the MX550, but the limited number of cores makes it less useful for serious tasks.

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 30W — the GPU is suitable for compact PCs and laptops without a powerful cooling system.

- Cooling Recommendations:

- For desktop builds: radiator with a copper base + 80mm fan.

- In laptops: regular dust cleaning and use of a cooling pad during extended loads.

- Cases: Compatible with mini-ITX and SFF (Small Form Factor) systems.

Comparison with Competitors

1. AMD Radeon RX 6400:

- Pros: Supports FSR 2.0, 128-bit bus.

- Cons: Higher price ($150 vs. $130 for MX550), driver issues on older platforms.

2. Intel Arc A380:

- Pros: Supports AV1, 6 GB VRAM.

- Cons: Requires PCIe 4.0 for full performance, less stable drivers.

Conclusion: The MX550 excels in energy efficiency and price but lags in upscaling capabilities (FSR/DLSS) and performance with professional applications.

Practical Tips

- Power Supply: A 350W PSU is sufficient (e.g., EVGA 350 BR). For safety, opt for 400W.

- Compatibility:

- Motherboards with PCIe 3.0 x4 (uses reduced bandwidth, but FPS loss is no more than 5–7%).

- Not recommended for systems with processors older than 2020 (risk of CPU bottlenecking in CPU-intensive games).

- Drivers: Use Studio Drivers for working in professional applications.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Price: $130–150 for desktop models.

- Low power consumption.

- Support for modern codecs (HEVC, VP9).

Cons:

- Only 4 GB VRAM.

- No hardware Ray Tracing or DLSS.

- Limited future-proofing.

Final Conclusion: Who Is the MX550 Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Office PCs with occasional gaming in older titles.

2. Budget laptops where battery life is important.

3. Beginner editors working with short 1080p videos.

Alternatives: If your budget allows for an additional $50–70, consider the Intel Arc A580 (8 GB) or AMD RX 6500 XT — they will provide better performance in gaming and professional tasks.

Summary: The GeForce MX550 is a compromise for those who don’t need ultra settings or 4K but value quiet operation and low electricity bills. However, it is only worth purchasing under strict budget constraints.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2022

Model Name

GeForce MX550

Generation

GeForce MX

Base Clock

1065MHz

Boost Clock

1320MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x8

Transistors

4,700 million

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

TSMC

Process Size

12 nm

Architecture

Turing

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

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

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.

21.12 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.

42.24 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.

2.703 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.

42.24 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.

2.757 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

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.

1024

L1 Cache

128 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

25W

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.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

CUDA

7.5

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.6

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.