NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 vs AMD Radeon RX 550X

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB vs AMD Radeon RX 550X 4 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
Comments (0)
Popular Comparisons

GPU Comparison

Quickly search and compare graphics cards

AMD Radeon RX 550X

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 369.00

$ 254.31

$ 114.69 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2262 points

387% significantly better overall score

464 points

Flux Core frame rate

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

47 FPS

36 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

11 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

35 FPS

27 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

8 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

31 FPS

20 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

12 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

28 FPS

24 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

4 FPS

Free GPU Benchmark

Want to compare your graphics card against the GeForce GTX 970 and the Radeon RX 550X? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Download GPU Benchmark

Other Benchmarks

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29153 points

135% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

12373 points

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

34107 points

160% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

13079 points

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29277 points

160% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

11245 points

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

32348 points

159% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

12485 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1050 MHz

1100 MHz

4% slightly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1178 MHz

1287 MHz

9% 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

256 Bit

100% significantly larger memory bus width

128 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

224.4 GB/s

100% significantly higher memory bandwidth

112 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

145 W

50 W

190% significantly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

65.97 Gigapixels/s

220% significantly higher pixel rate

20.6 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

122.5 Gigatexels/s

137% significantly higher texture rate

51.48 Gigatexels/s

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1664

224% significantly more shading units

512

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

104

160% significantly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

250% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

193rd of 586

338th of 586

Family

The product line

Radeon RX 500X Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

2018 March

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

4.6

GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 550X comparison

In our benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 970 beats the Radeon RX 550X in gaming performance.

In our comparison, the Radeon RX 550X has a slightly higher core clock speed. This is the frequency at which the graphics core is running at. While not necessarily an indicator of overall performance, this metric can be useful when comparing two GPUs based on the same architecture. In addition, the Radeon RX 550X also 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.

As stated by the manufacturer, they both have the same amount of memory at 4 GiB. Memory size doesn't directly affect performance, but too little memory will certainly degrade gaming performance.

In addition, the Radeon RX 550X has a significantly lower TDP at 50 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 970 at 145 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 970 over the Radeon RX 550X.