Asus Radeon RX 550 4G Review
The market for video cards has been enmeshed in chaos of late, due to the ongoing Ethereum/Bitcoin-mining craze. Although this current wave seemed to be cresting at the time of this late-August 2017 writing, would-be miners were still snatching up most midrange cards on the market, causing card prices to rise and reducing availability to essentially zero on certain classes of card for some stretches of time. However, both the high-end and the low-end market have remained mostly unaffected, because they aren’t optimal mining cards; either too pricey for their calculation output, or too underpowered. The Asus Radeon RX 550 ($110), which is the focus of this review, is at the low end, which makes it a crypto-dodger of sorts. So if you’re looking for the perfect card for coin mining, you’ve come to the wrong place. This is a budget desktop graphics card that’s meant as an affordable upgrade over integrated graphics, or to replace an older budget card.
In general, cards based on AMD’s Radeon RX 550 chip, with 4GB of memory, were priced at or around $110 at this writing, with 2GB versions hovering around $90. Radeon RX 550 cards are definitely aimed at budget gamers: perhaps cash-strapped, first-time PC builders, or more experienced builders who wish to upgrade from an aging budget card. In this market, the main competition is made up of cards based on AMD’s slightly older Radeon RX 460 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) or on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 ($155.43 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) . We have had the chance to test several GTX 1050-based cards, as well as a Radeon RX 460 one for the sake of comparison.
We noticed during previous testing that the Radeon RX 570 was mostly able to hold its own when compared with the previous-generation Radeon RX 480 ($410.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , getting close to the older card’s numbers on most of our benchmark tests. In theory, that might mean the Radeon RX 550 could be not too far behind the RX 460, although how it might stack up against the GTX 1050…well, we’ll have to wait until we get to our benchmark testing to answer both of those questions.
We’ll see how the Asus Radeon RX 550 performs against these and other cards we’ve tested in a bit. But first, let’s take a look at the physical features of this GPU.
Mục Lục
Design and Features
Of all the graphics chips in AMD’s Radeon RX 500 series, the RX 550 is the most trimmed-down version we’ve seen so far. Due to this, Asus only needed to include a single fan for cooling on this card. Here, it’s a fairly compact spinner, surrounded by a small red-and-black shroud that covers only about half the card’s PCB.
The single-fan design helps keep this card small. At 7.2 inches long by 4.4 inches wide by 1.7 inches deep, this RX 550 should fit in all but the smallest PC cases. It’s still a full-height, dual-width card, though, so keep that in mind if you’re considering a small chassis or have a compact tower you’re looking to upgrade.
In terms of power requirements, this Asus card has no secondary PCI Express connectors, instead drawing its power straight from the motherboard. The card comes with three video connectors: one DVI, one HDMI 2.0, and one regular DisplayPort.
A trio of ports is pretty standard for a budget graphics card like the RX 550, and the three here should provide a connection option for most monitors, old and new.
The AMD Radeon RX 550 comes in two memory flavors: 4GB and 2GB versions. Our Asus Radeon RX 550 is of the 4GB variety, with memory clocked at an effective 7,000MHz. As mentioned previously, right now the price difference between 4GB and 2GB Radeon RX 550s is about $20. Doubling the amount of memory should lead to noticeable performance gains, particularly at higher resolutions.
We haven’t yet had the opportunity to test a 2GB Radeon RX 550, so how much of a difference there is between the two we can’t say for sure. More memory is, again, primarily a benefit for those gaming at high resolutions. But given this card’s mainstream bent and modest abilities, it’s really only suited for gaming at 1080p or lower resolutions.
Software
This card, and many others from Asus, are compatible with the company’s GPU Tweak II software. The software can be grabbed for free from the company’s Web site(Opens in a new window). It allows for one-click overclocking. Running the software will display the Home menu, with a focus on three preset modes: OC mode, Gaming mode, and Silent mode.
In Gaming mode, the card runs at a base clock speed of 1,183MHz. Putting the card in Silent mode drops the clock by 20MHz, while OC Mode raises it by 20MHz. We were able to confirm this in the Info tab, which displays the current GPU clock speed, the default clock speed, and other details about the card.
The relatively small speed increase from one mode to the next should result in very small performance differences, which is what we got stepping up from Silent to Gaming. However, the switch from Gaming to OC actually resulted in performance decreases in our testing, instead of the expected increases. This obviously isn’t what we’d expect, but can probably be mostly chalked up to the budget nature of the chip and its compact cooling apparatus. Power draw may be an issue as well, given that the card has no secondary power connectors from which to draw extra juice. The moral of the story: This is a $110 card that really isn’t meant to be overclocked.
There is a Professional mode, which you can fine-tune aspects such as memory speed, voltage, and temperature/power targets.
It’s possible that fiddling with these settings will result in some better overclocking outcomes. But really, if you’re looking for better performance than this card’s out-of-the-box settings can get you, you should step up to a higher-powered card. Even if it were carefully overclocked, we can’t see this card and its modest cooling getting you to the next level.
Also available from Asus in connection with this card is XSplit Gamecaster software(Opens in a new window), which allows for streaming and recording game play. It enables an overlay that shows live info about your graphics card, such as clock speed and temperature. The software also integrates GPU Tweak II controls into the overlay interface. Users who purchase this Radeon RX 550 or certain other qualifying cards from Asus can get a 14-day free trial. Other (generally higher-end) cards come with a free one-year Gamecaster license after a redemption process. If this interests you, we recommend checking the details on Asus’ Web site(Opens in a new window), as the offer could change between when we wrote this and when you might be reading it.
Just as we did while using this software with the Asus GeForce GTX 1060 OC Edition (9Gbps GDDR5), we found GPU Tweak II to be intuitive and easy to use. However, given the lower performance we experienced when switching to OC mode, and the fact that the card is at stock settings (thus reducing the need to switch it to Silent Mode), most users can probably skip the GPU Tweak II software altogether.
About Our Tests
As we’ve mentioned in other recent video-card reviews, things are in flux these days when it comes to testing graphics cards, because two key technologies—despite being available in some form for over a year now—are proving difficult to test definitively.
The first of these is DirectX 12 (DX12). DX12 is just now starting to become common in AAA titles, though there are still relatively few real-world benchmarks for it. Still, DX12 will likely be the standard graphics API in the future, and this card was designed to last for, at the very least, a few years. So it’s important to know if a card can handle DX12 well before buying. We tested the Asus Radeon RX 550 with the newest DX12-capable games we had on hand, including Hitman (the 2016 edition), Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Tom Clancy’s The Division, as well as Futuremark’s DX12 benchmark, 3DMark Time Spy. We tested a bunch of games using DirectX 11, too, because that API will still be in wide use for at least another year, and probably much longer.
The second technology that’s a little tricky to test, at present, is support for virtual reality. At this writing, there are two major competing VR headsets, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, with more coming to market soon, and it’s difficult to establish a lone test that is applicable to all VR scenarios. At the moment, we’re using Futuremark’s new VRMark test to measure VR capability. It consists of an “Orange Room” test designed to measure a card’s ability to handle today’s games, and a “Blue Room” test for theoretical extremely demanding future titles. The Blue Room test is so tough, no card we’ve tested to date gets a passing grade in it. So, for the moment, we’ll only report Orange Room results.
The key thing to know about VR, though: It’s just a non-starter here. At the moment, baseline VR support for the Rift and Vive headsets starts with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 ($3,008.36 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , and on the AMD side of things, the AMD Radeon RX 480 ($410.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , or that card’s successors, the Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 570. That means this Asus RX 550 is not intended for VR use. If being VR-ready is a must, you’ll need to purchase a more powerful card.
Performance Testing
Speaking of more powerful cards, you’ll see that most of the cards featured in our charts below outpace the Radeon RX 550 by big margins. Due to this, we will primarily focus on how the Asus Radeon RX 550 stacks up against the PowerColor Red Dragon RX 460 (2GB) and the Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini. These two cards are the closest competition for the RX 550 we have tested, in terms of price and performance.
We started off our testing with Futuremark’s 2013 version of 3DMark, specifically the suite’s Fire Strike Ultra subtest. Fire Strike is a synthetic test designed to measure overall gaming performance. Ultra is meant to simulate the stresses of game graphics rendering at 4K.
Overall, our first benchmark was not a strong showing for the Asus Radeon RX 550, as it finished behind every card except the PowerColor Red Dragon RX 460, edging it out by a healthy 13 percent. The Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini outpaced the RX 550 by a significant 27 percent, while everything else in this lot performed at least twice as well. The latter is expected, given that the more powerful cards here are also much more expensive.
We also tested the cards with the lesser 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme subtest, which tests a card at a less-demanding 2,560×1,440 resolution.
On this lower-resolution test, the RX 550 finished dead last, with the RX 460 scoring 28 percent higher and the 1050 Mini scoring 76 percent higher than the RX 550. The main point of interest here is the RX 460 leapfrogging the RX 550 at the lower resolution, which can be attributed to the former’s higher clock speed. The reason for the RX 460’s lower performance at 4K has to do with the amount of memory in both cards. Since the RX 460 only has 2GB of memory, compared to the RX 550’s 4GB, the former is bottlenecked by the massive amount of data that needs to be processed to run games at 4K. But as we’ll soon see, none of the trio of lower-end cards is capable of real 4K game play.
Tomb Raider (2013)
Let’s start our game testing with some older games. Here, we fired up the 2013 reboot of the classic title Tomb Raider, testing at the highest detail preset (“Ultimate”) and three resolutions.
The RX 550 struggled in this test, falling just below the 30fps mark for playable frame rates at 1080p. On the other hand, the RX 460 managed over 40fps at 1080p, which is well within the realm of playability. The Zotac GTX 1050 Mini outscored both, at 1080p nailing exactly 60fps, which is often considered the magic number for super-smooth game play.
Sleeping Dogs
Next, we rolled out the very demanding real-world gaming benchmark test built into the older title Sleeping Dogs.
The demanding nature of this title is evident from the lower scores across the board. The RX 550 landed just above 20fps at 1080p, while the RX 460 also failed to hit 30fps. The Zotac was the strongest of the three budget-priced cards, with a score of 46fps. Gigabyte’s more powerful GeForce GTX 1050 Ti G1 Gaming also fell just shy of 60fps on this test.
Bioshock Infinite
The popular title Bioshock Infinite isn’t overly demanding, but it’s a popular one with stellar good looks. In its built-in benchmark program, we set the graphics level to the highest preset (Ultra+DDOF)…
Bioshock was much kinder to these lower-end cards, with the RX 550 hitting just shy of 50fps at 1080p and even managing 29.9fps at 1440p. It wasn’t far behind the RX 460 either, falling only 4fps behind that card at the lowest test resolution. In our group of three lower-end cards, the Zotac GTX 1050 Mini once again came out on top, scoring higher than 70fps at 1080p, and above 40fps at 1440p.
Hitman: Absolution
Next up was Hitman: Absolution, which is an aging game but still very hard on anything but high-end cards, especially at our test settings.
The Ultra detail preset and the 8x MSAA setting really did a number on all of our test cards in this group. Only the higher-end Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 Founders Edition cards were able to top 60fps at 1080p. It’s no surprise, then, that the Radeon RX 550, Radeon RX 460, and GeForce GTX 1050 Mini all struggled mightily on this test. The Radeon RX 550 and RX 460 were within 3fps of each other at 1080p, but both landed below 20fps. The GTX 1050 Mini came away the winner of the trio at 1080p, managing a playable 35fps. The RX 550 won the battle at 4K—if scoring 5fps versus 1fps can really be called “winning” anything. Once again, this is a byproduct of the RX 550 having twice the amount of memory as the other two mainstream cards tested here.
Far Cry Primal
Next, we moved to a more recent game, released in 2016. Ubisoft’s open-world first-person hunting game is one of the most demanding titles we use, thanks to its lush foliage, detailed shadows, and otherwise incredible environments. We’ll start by taking a look at the Normal Preset test…
On this test, the Radeon RX 550 managed a few frames above 30fps at 1080p, which should allow for mostly smooth game play. However, it still lagged well behind the other cards, with the Radeon RX 460 outscoring it at 1080p by 12fps and the GTX 1050 Mini managing 22fps more. All three fell shy of the magic 60fps at 1080p, however.
Let’s move up to Primal’s Ultra preset for the next round of tests…
The results were much closer here, with 16fps separating the Asus Radeon RX 550 and Zotac GTX 1050 Mini at 1080p. The Radeon RX 460 fell in the middle, scoring only 6fps higher than the Radeon RX 550. The difference shrinks as resolutions get higher, with the Asus trailing the Zotac card by only 3fps at 4K. But other than being anecdotally interesting, these results have no practical value. None of these three cards is meant to run games at 4K, or even 1440p.
Tom Clancy’s The Division
Our latest DirectX 12-capable benchmark is Ubisoft’s third-person open-world RPG shooter. The Division is set in a near-future New York in the midst of a pandemic. We use the Medium and Ultra presets at each test resolution. Let’s start with the Medium tests…
At Medium and 1080p, the Asus Radeon RX 550 managed 33fps, putting it playable territory, although it still lagged behind the PowerColor Red Dragon RX 460 and Zotac’s GeForce GTX 1050 Mini. The former scored 46fps at 1080p, while the Zotac GTX 1050 Mini attained 50fps. At 1440p, the Zotac GTX 1050 Mini topped the 30fps mark (32fps), while the PowerColor card fell just shy. The RX 550, in contrast, reached only 20fps.
Now, let’s look at the results of the Ultra Preset testing.
At Ultra, the Asus Radeon RX 550 actually managed to beat the PowerColor Red Dragon RX 460 at all three test resolutions, while sticking close to the Zotac GTX 1050 Mini. Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 1050 Ti still almost doubled the RX 550’s results, but this test was a good one for the Radeon RX 550 relative to the other cards. All that being said, the Asus card still didn’t deliver playable frame rates at any resolution here, so you’ll want to stick to Medium settings with this title.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Lara Croft rises once again in the early 2016 iteration of Square Enix’s long-running action franchise. As our hero works to unfold an ancient mystery (and reveal the secret to immortality) ahead of the ancient and deadly Order of Trinity, she traipses through a slew of complex atmospheric environments, from arid tombs to the frigid Siberian wilderness. A dynamic weather system, and the complexities of Lara’s wind-tousled hair, add to the game’s visual complexity. Once again we’ll start off with the lower-end settings, Medium in this case…
If we sound like a broken LP by this point, we apologize. But once again, the Radeon RX 550 was outpaced at 1080p by everything else here. In this benchmark, the Asus card managed to hit 37fps, and thus should provide playable frame rates at these settings. However, once again, the Radeon RX 460 and GeForce GTX 1050 Mini were both much better at 1080p (9fps and 17fps faster, respectively).
Moving on to the Very High Preset…
The Radeon RX 550 predictably limped across the finish line below 30fps at 1080p here. More interestingly, the Radeon RX 460 basically tied with the GeForce GTX 1050 Mini on this test, both barely topping 30fps at 1080p.
Hitman (2016)
The newest game in the Hitman franchise finds Agent 47 turning over a new leaf, and embarking on a journey of self-discovery as a teacher at a school for underprivileged children. Just kidding, of course; he kills loads of people in this one, just like the rest. It does offer gorgeous graphics in both DX11 and DX12 varieties, though.
Even though DX11 and DX12 look effectively the same in this benchmark, we decided to use the DX12 setting only here, because even if you’re looking to buy a budget card, you’ll want to know how well your card will perform on the latest settings.
This test was effectively a tie between the Asus Radeon RX 550 and the PowerColor Red Dragon RX 460 at 1080p, with both cards finishing a few frames under 30fps. As you may have noticed in the above chart, the Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini would not run this test at any resolution. However, the next highest competitor, Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, delivered a healthy 48fps at 1080p.
Futuremark 3DMark (Time Spy, DX12)
This is the first 3DMark test using DirectX 12, so it should theoretically show how cards stack up using this API. According to the developers, “With its pure DirectX 12 engine, built from the ground up to support new features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, Time Spy is an ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.”
Moving back to synthetic benchmarks, the Radeon RX 550 found itself once again in last place, falling 25 percent behind the GeForce GTX 1050 Mini and 36 percent behind the Radeon RX 460. The most interesting aspect of this test was the RX 460 edging out the GTX 1050 Mini.
Futuremark VRMark
From the maker of 3DMark comes its first VR benchmark. No headset is required to run the trial, if you’d like to test your own rig before jumping into a VR-headset investment. VR has extremely high hardware requirements, so this test is designed to show overall capability for VR. As we mentioned earlier, we ran the Orange Room subtest.
Our final test, once again, follows a similar pattern: the Radeon RX 550 finished last, with the RX 460 being the runner-up, and the GTX 1050 Mini taking first in our three-card subset. This time, the PowerColor Red Dragon RX 460 finished about 34 percent higher than the Asus Radeon RX 550, while the Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Mini held a 45 percent advantage over the weaker card. But again, with the GeForce GTX 1060 and AMD Radeon RX 470 set as the current baseline for PC-based VR gameplay, you’ll need to step up to a more powerful class of cards than the budget options we’re focusing on here, if you want to step into virtual reality.
A Decent Budget Graphics Card
The 4GB Asus Radeon RX 550 is a budget graphics card in every sense of the word. Its $110 price at the time of this review (or a few dollars less, at some online outlets) could be perfect for buyers with a tight budget looking to upgrade from an older graphics chip, or those looking to build a new budget PC capable of gaming.
However, when we wrote this review in late August 2017, Radeon RX 460- and GeForce GTX 1050-based cards with 2GB of onboard memory were available on Newegg.com for about the same price, or as little as $10 more. And both of those cards performed better in our testing. The Nvidia-based GeForce GTX 1050, in particular, delivered noticeably higher frame rates at 1080p. So, unless something changes with the pricing or availability of these cards, it’s hard to recommend this Radeon RX 550 over its close-priced competitors.
That being said, this card could still be a substantial upgrade over an older budget card, and it will definitely be a major upgrade from your CPU’s integrated graphics, if you’ve never had a desktop with dedicated graphics before. For some anecdotal evidence, we ran several extra tests with the Asus Radeon RX 550 to compare it to the integrated graphics in the Intel Core i7-7700K , one of Intel’s “Kaby Lake” desktop chips with integrated HD Graphics 620. The differences are pretty drastic.
In Tomb Raider (2013), at 1080p on the Ultra setting (the second highest preset, behind the Ultimate preset we used in our charts above), the Radeon RX 550 got 45fps, compared to 17fps from the Intel chip’s integrated graphics. And where the Intel HD Graphics solution just barely reached playable frame rates at Medium settings, the Radeon RX 550 got a whopping 81fps, taking it well above the 60fps ideal threshold. Testing Sleeping Dogs at Medium settings and 1080p yielded similar results, with the Asus Radeon RX 550 hitting 115fps, while the integrated graphics got only 36fps.
What do these results tell us? Even though the Radeon RX 550 is a budget graphics card that gets outshined by most of its peers above $100, it will still be a major improvement for someone who’s upgrading from integrated graphics. If the prices on 4GB-equipped Radeon RX 550 cards fall below $100, it would be a much better value.
That being said, 2GB versions of the RX 550 already sell for around $89. Given that the GPU at work in these cards isn’t really capable of game play above 1080p, one of those lesser models would likely be a much smarter option if money is tight. In the price range of the 4GB RX 550 model we tested, cards based on the GeForce GTX 1050 are much better performers—and therefore better choices.
Asus Radeon RX 550 4G
3.0
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at Amazon
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MSRP $110.00
Pros
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The Bottom Line
This Asus take on AMD’s Radeon RX 550 is a decent budget-minded upgrade over integrated graphics or an older low-end card. But a much-better-performing GTX 1050 will be just a few dollars more.
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