NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 vs AMD Radeon RX 550

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 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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AMD Radeon RX 550

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 879.85

$ 225.00

$ 654.85 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2494 points

301% significantly better overall score

621 points

Flux Core frame rate

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

52 FPS

37 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

15 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

41 FPS

27 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

14 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

36 FPS

19 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

16 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

33 FPS

23 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

10 FPS

Free GPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

4376 points

267% significantly higher 3DMark Graphics score

1190 points

Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

15163 points

18838 points

24% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

33463 points

138% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

14002 points

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

41306 points

159% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

15900 points

Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

15163 points

19855 points

30% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

34611 points

180% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

12342 points

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

38178 points

135% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

16237 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1126 MHz

2% slightly higher core clock speed

1100 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1216 MHz

2% slightly higher boost clock speed

1183 MHz

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

165 W

50 W

230% significantly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

77.82 Gigapixels/s

311% significantly higher pixel rate

18.93 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

155.6 Gigatexels/s

310% significantly higher texture rate

37.86 Gigatexels/s

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

2048

300% significantly more shading units

512

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

128

300% significantly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

300% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

177th of 586

305th of 586

Family

The product line

Radeon RX 500 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

2017 April

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

GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon RX 550 comparison

In our benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 980 beats the Radeon RX 550 in gaming performance.

Our database shows that the GeForce GTX 980 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 GeForce GTX 980 also has a slightly higher boost clock speed: the maximum frequency the chip can reach if power delivery and thermals allow.

Next up, in terms of GPU memory, 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 980 at 165 W. Heat output doesn't match power consumption directly but, it's a good estimate.

In terms of raw gaming performance in our GPU benchmark, the GeForce GTX 980 is better than the Radeon RX 550.