NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 vs AMD Radeon RX 550

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4 GB vs AMD Radeon RX 550 4 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 265.00
$ 225.00
$ 40.00 slightly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

1419 points
128% significantly better overall score
621 points

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

29 FPS
14 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate
15 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

22 FPS
8 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate
14 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

20 FPS
3 FPS slightly higher City frame rate
16 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

17 FPS
8 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate
10 FPS

Free GPU Benchmark

Want to compare your graphics card against the GeForce GTX 960 and the Radeon RX 550? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

2293 points
92% significantly higher 3DMark Graphics score
1190 points
Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

8773 points
18838 points
114% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Metal) score
Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

21072 points
50% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score
14002 points
Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

22380 points
40% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score
15900 points
Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

8773 points
19855 points
126% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Metal) score
Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

19796 points
60% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score
12342 points
Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

20845 points
28% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score
16237 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1127 MHz
2% slightly higher core clock speed
1100 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1178 MHz
1183 MHz
0.42% slightly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB
Identical
4 GiB

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

128 Bit
Identical
128 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

112.2 GB/s
0.18% slightly higher memory bandwidth
112 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

120 W
50 W
139% significantly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

37.7 Gigapixels/s
99% significantly higher pixel rate
18.93 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

75.39 Gigatexels/s
99% significantly higher texture rate
37.86 Gigatexels/s

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1024
100% significantly more shading units
512

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

64
100% significantly more texture mapping units
32

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

32
100% significantly more render output processors
16

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

239th of 586
305th of 586

Family

The product line

-
Radeon RX 500 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2015 January
2017 April

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5
GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0
12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5
4.5

GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon RX 550 comparison

For gaming, the GeForce GTX 960 graphics card is better than the Radeon RX 550 in our tests.

The GeForce GTX 960 has a slightly higher core clock speed. The core clock speed (or base speed) is the frequency at which the GPU core runs. This metric makes sense when comparing GPUs of a similar architecture or generation. Despite this, the Radeon RX 550 has a slightly higher boost clock speed. This is a frequency that can be reached if the GPU is cooled sufficiently and has enough power.

Furthermore, the spec sheet for both these GPUs show that they both have the same amount of memory at 4 GiB. If you're planning at playing games at high resolutions with high-quality textures, you will need a lot of memory.

In addition, the Radeon RX 550 has a significantly lower TDP at 50 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 960 at 120 W. Heat output doesn't match power consumption directly but, it's a good estimate.

In conclusion, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the GeForce GTX 960 over the Radeon RX 550.

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