AMD Radeon R9 280X vs AMD Radeon RX 550

Compare AMD Radeon R9 280X 3 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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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

1687 points

171% significantly better overall score

621 points

Flux Core frame rate

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

40 FPS

25 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

15 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

25 FPS

11 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

14 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

35 FPS

19 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

16 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

14 FPS

4 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

10 FPS

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

2350 points

97% significantly higher 3DMark Graphics score

1190 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

850 MHz

1100 MHz

29% slightly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1000 MHz

1183 MHz

18% slightly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

3 GiB

4 GiB

33% slightly more memory

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

384 Bit

200% significantly larger memory bus width

128 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

288 GB/s

157% significantly higher memory bandwidth

112 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

250 W

50 W

400% significantly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

32 Gigapixels/s

69% significantly higher pixel rate

18.93 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

128 Gigatexels/s

238% 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

100% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

226th of 586

307th of 586

Family

The product line

Radeon R9 200 Series

Radeon RX 500 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

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

Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon RX 550 specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Radeon R9 280X beats the Radeon RX 550 in gaming performance.

In our comparison, the Radeon RX 550 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. In addition, the Radeon RX 550 also has a slightly higher boost clock speed. The boost clock speed is the frequency that the GPU core can reach if the temperature is low enough. The allows for higher performance in certain scenarios.

Next up, in terms of GPU memory, the Radeon RX 550 has slightly more memory with 4 GiB of memory compared to 3 GiB. Memory size doesn't directly affect performance, but too little memory will certainly degrade gaming performance.

In addition, the Radeon RX 550 has a significantly lower TDP at 50 W when compared to the Radeon R9 280X at 250 W. TDP (Thermal Design Power) measures total heat output from the chip.

In terms of raw gaming performance in our GPU benchmark, the Radeon R9 280X is better than the Radeon RX 550.