Xfx - Amd Radeon Rx 550 2gb Graphics Card Review
Our Verdict
If yous're coming from Intel's Hard disk Graphics 530, whatever detached graphics carte du jour is going to exist heady. Indeed, Radeon RX 550 looks similar a great upgrade for folks limping along with CPU-based graphics. But AMD's own Radeon RX 460 2GB is quite a bit quicker than the RX 550 in demanding games, and it only costs about $10 more. If yous can live with the 460's slight price premium and higher power consumption, that'due south the card we'd purchase for $90.
For
- Depression power, low oestrus
- Compact form factor
- Serviceable 1080p performance
- No auxiliary power connector
Against
- Notably slower than slightly more expensive Radeon RX 460
Tom'due south Hardware Verdict
If you're coming from Intel's HD Graphics 530, whatever detached graphics card is going to be exciting. Indeed, Radeon RX 550 looks like a swell upgrade for folks limping forth with CPU-based graphics. But AMD's ain Radeon RX 460 2GB is quite a bit quicker than the RX 550 in demanding games, and it only costs near $10 more. If you can live with the 460's slight cost premium and higher power consumption, that's the card we'd buy for $90.
Pros
- +
Low power, low heat
- +
Compact grade factor
- +
Serviceable 1080p functioning
- +
No auxiliary power connector
Cons
- -
Notably slower than slightly more expensive Radeon RX 460
AMD Radeon RX 550 2GB
Radeon RX 550 is AMD's starting time graphics card based on new silicon since its Polaris eleven-based Radeon RX 460. The company says RX 550 is 1080p-capable in a number of popular e-sports games, calculation that the product's compact dimensions and low power besides endear it to abode-theater PCs.
Fittingly, the RX 550 slides in behind AMD's just-announced Radeon RX 560 and starts at $lxxx. That'southward an incredibly important price indicate. In fact, as recently every bit terminal twelvemonth, our Best Graphics recommendations included the $xc Radeon R7 360. Its disappearance forced the states upwardly the stack to Radeon RX 460, which started life at $110 concluding August.
Can Radeon RX 550 carve out a spot on the list of Tom's Hardware-approved upgrades by serving up viable performance for less coin than some of our past picks?
Encounter Polaris 12
AMD's older Radeon RX 460 wields 896 Stream processors. The just-announced Radeon RX 560 bumps that to 1024 Stream processors operating at even higher clock rates. When information technology arrives next month, we expect the RX 560 to be even faster than its predecessor for right around $100.
This leaves room for a lower-cease function like the Radeon RX 550. AMD certainly could have built it using Polaris 11 with more than disabled compute units. But the visitor'due south mobile aspirations evidently necessitated a smaller GPU with fewer transistors and a more conservative power profile.
Polaris 12, code-named Lexa and based on a fourth-gen GCN architecture, is that processor. Composed of 2.ii billion transistors and measuring 101 square millimeters, it's bluntly not much smaller than Polaris 11. Still, AMD plans to utilise it in configurations that wouldn't have fabricated sense from a larger chip.
In its entirety, Polaris 12 exposes ten Compute Units organized into two Shader Engines capable of two triangles/clock, similar to Polaris eleven but with fewer CUs per Shader Engine. Radeon RX 550, specifically, uses an implementation with eight of those 10 Compute Units enabled, adding up to 512 Stream processors and 32 texture units.
The chip's back-end is proportioned more generously, maintaining Polaris 11'due south 16 ROPs, aggregate 128-bit retention bus, and 7 Gb/s GDDR5 able to movement upwardly to 112 GB/due south. Whereas Polaris 11 comes with 1MB of L2 enshroud, nonetheless, Polaris 12 is down to 512KB.
| Radeon RX 550 | Radeon R7 260X | Radeon RX 460 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shader Units | 512 | 896 | 896 |
| ROPs | sixteen | 16 | xvi |
| GPU | Polaris 12 | Bonaire | Polaris xi |
| Transistors | 2.2 Billion | ii.08 Billion | 3 Billion |
| Retentiveness Size | 2GB | 2GB | 2/4GB |
| Interface | 128-fleck | 128-flake | 128-scrap |
| GPU Clock Rate (MHz) | 1100+ | 1100 | 1090 |
| Retentiveness Clock Rate (MHz) | 1750 | 1625 | 1750 |
AMD's official specification for Radeon RX 550 calls for a 1100 MHz base clock rate and 1183 MHz heave frequency, though some partners will undoubtedly configure their boards differently. A 50W ceiling exempts the RX 550 from needing an auxiliary power connector, and even at overclocked frequencies y'all shouldn't accept any issue staying under the motherboard slot's specified current limit.
Nosotros are told that AMD has no plans to put whatsoever other configuration of Polaris 12 on a desktop graphics bill of fare, allowing the visitor to pursue mobile marketplace share with other variants of this GPU.
Peculiarly relevant to Polaris 12 are some of the media and connectivity features specific to AMD's fourth-gen GCN GPUs. For more information on the architecture'southward brandish control and fixed-role accelerators, check out this page of our Radeon RX 480 8GB review.
The die markings made us exercise a double-have. "Made in Taiwan" doesn't bespeak that Polaris 12 came from GlobalFoundries, later all. Farther, the codes and font also seemed familiar from Nvidia's various processors. Simply it turns out that this is due to the packaging step, where the die is installed onto the GPU bundle. A company called ASE, which is one of the world's largest IC assemblers, handles the process, and it has offices in Taiwan. Mystery solved.
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Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-550-2gb,5034.html
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