AMD Radeon 550X vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost Comparison

The Verdict

The data presents a clear hierarchy between these two end-of-life graphics cards. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost wins both recorded head-to-head benchmark comparisons, making it the stronger performer in the database measurements. In Geekbench OpenCL, the GTX 650 Ti Boost scores 9302 against the Radeon 550X's 8866, a 4.7% advantage. The gap widens in Geekbench Vulkan, where the NVIDIA card reaches 10041 versus 8970, a 10.7% lead. The average benchmark scores tell a more complicated story, however, because the GTX 650 Ti Boost's average of 8067 is dragged down by its Metal score of 4858, which has no comparable result for the AMD card. The Radeon 550X's average of 8918 sits well above that figure.

For who should pick which, the answer depends on the workload. The GTX 650 Ti Boost is the choice for raw compute performance in OpenCL and Vulkan tasks, particularly where the newer API is in play. It also offers higher pixel fill rate and texture throughput. The Radeon 550X, despite losing the compute tests, has a substantially lower power draw and a more modern feature set, including broader API support. It is the sensible pick for systems with limited power delivery, as it requires no auxiliary power connectors and needs only a 250 W suggested power supply versus the 300 W of the NVIDIA card. The AMD card is also dramatically smaller at 145 mm length compared to 241 mm, making it the only realistic option for compact chassis. For pure performance in the measured workloads, the GTX 650 Ti Boost wins.

Where Each One Wins

The head-to-head data shows NVIDIA winning in every recorded discipline. In Geekbench OpenCL, a test that measures general-purpose compute, the GTX 650 Ti Boost leads by 436 points. In Geekbench Vulkan, which exercises the modern graphics API, the NVIDIA card leads by 1071 points. The Vulkan result is particularly notable because it represents the largest performance gap in the comparison, and Vulkan is the more relevant API for contemporary game engines and compute applications.

The Radeon 550X does not win any benchmark in the database, but it wins in other measurable dimensions. Its 50 W TDP is less than half the 134 W TDP of the GTX 650 Ti Boost, making it far more efficient for low-power builds. It also supports Vulkan 1.3, a newer API version than the 1.2.175 of the NVIDIA card. The AMD card's DirectX support is listed as 12 (12_0), while the GTX 650 Ti Boost is listed as 12 (11_0), indicating a feature-level difference. In terms of physical footprint, the Radeon card is 145 mm long versus 241 mm for the NVIDIA card, and it requires no power connector, while the GTX 650 Ti Boost needs a single 6-pin connector.

The texture rate is a significant NVIDIA advantage: 66.05 GTexel/s versus 38.98 GTexel/s. The pixel rate goes the other way, with the Radeon at 19.49 GPixel/s versus 16.51 GPixel/s, a 18% advantage in pixel throughput. This suggests the AMD card could be competitive in fill-rate-bound scenarios, even though the compute benchmarks favor NVIDIA.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from different manufacturing generations and architectural philosophies. The AMD Radeon 550X uses the Lexa chip built on GCN 4.0 architecture, part of the Polaris (RX 500X) generation. It is fabricated on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries, with 2,200 million transistors packed into a 103 mm² die. The transistor density is 21.4 million per square millimeter, a reflection of the mature 14 nm node. The card has 512 shading units, 32 texture mapping units, and 16 render output units.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost uses the GK106 chip with Kepler architecture, from the GeForce 600 generation. It is built on TSMC's 28 nm process, with 2,540 million transistors on a 221 mm² die. The transistor density is 11.5 million per square millimeter, substantially lower than the AMD card due to the older process node. The NVIDIA card has 768 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 24 ROPs. The higher number of shading units and TMUs explains its strong texture throughput, while the Radeon's higher pixel rate comes from its clock speed advantage and ROP efficiency.

Clock speeds differ meaningfully. The Radeon 550X runs at a base clock of 1082 MHz with a boost of 1218 MHz. The GTX 650 Ti Boost runs at 980 MHz base and 1032 MHz boost. The AMD card is clocked higher, but the NVIDIA card has more execution resources. The memory subsystems also differ: both use 2 GB of GDDR5, but the Radeon has a 128-bit bus with 112.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the GTX 650 Ti Boost has a 192-bit bus with 144.2 GB/s bandwidth. The NVIDIA card's wider bus provides 28.8% more memory bandwidth, which helps in bandwidth-sensitive workloads.

The floating-point performance tells a clear story. The GTX 650 Ti Boost delivers 1.585 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, while the Radeon 550X delivers 1,247.2 GFLOPS. The NVIDIA card is roughly 27% ahead in raw FP32 throughput. The Radeon also lists FP16 performance at 1,247.2 GFLOPS with a 1:1 ratio, meaning no FP16 acceleration advantage. The NVIDIA card's FP16 performance is not listed in the database. API support favors AMD: the Radeon supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3, while the NVIDIA card supports DirectX 12 (11_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.175. Both cards are end-of-life products, with the Radeon released on March 26, 2019, and the GTX 650 Ti Boost released on March 25, 2013, six years earlier.

FAQ

Q: Which card performs better in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost scores 9302 in Geekbench OpenCL, outperforming the AMD Radeon 550X's 8866. This is a 4.7% advantage for the NVIDIA card.

Q: Which card has the higher memory bandwidth?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost has 144.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth from its 192-bit bus, while the AMD Radeon 550X has 112.0 GB/s from a 128-bit bus.

Q: What is the power consumption difference?

A: The AMD Radeon 550X has a TDP of 50 W and requires no power connectors, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost has a TDP of 134 W and requires a single 6-pin power connector. The suggested power supply is 250 W for the AMD card and 300 W for the NVIDIA card.

Q: Which card supports newer API versions?

A: The AMD Radeon 550X supports DirectX 12 (12_0) and Vulkan 1.3, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost supports DirectX 12 (11_0) and Vulkan 1.2.175. The AMD card has the newer API feature levels.

Q: How do the average benchmark scores compare?

A: The AMD Radeon 550X has an average benchmark score of 8918, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost has an average of 8067. However, the NVIDIA card's average includes a Geekbench Metal score of 4858, which has no counterpart in the AMD card's results.

Q: Which card is physically smaller?

A: The AMD Radeon 550X is 145 mm (5.7 inches) long, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost is 241 mm (9.5 inches) long. Both are dual-slot cards.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database records two direct comparisons between these cards, and NVIDIA wins both. The first is Geekbench OpenCL, where the GTX 650 Ti Boost scores 9302 against the Radeon 550X's 8866. The 436-point difference translates to a 4.7% lead. This is a moderate margin, suggesting that the NVIDIA card's higher shading unit count (768 versus 512) and greater memory bandwidth (144.2 GB/s versus 112.0 GB/s) provide a tangible compute advantage, though not an overwhelming one.

The second comparison is Geekbench Vulkan, and here the margin is much larger. The GTX 650 Ti Boost scores 10041, while the Radeon 550X scores 8970. The 1071-point gap represents a 10.7% lead for NVIDIA. This is the single biggest performance difference in the head-to-head data. Vulkan is a lower-level API that can expose hardware efficiency differences more directly, and the Kepler architecture's 768 shading units and 64 TMUs appear to scale well in this workload. The Radeon's higher base clock of 1082 MHz versus 980 MHz does not compensate for the resource disparity.

Contextualizing these results against the nearest rivals in the database helps clarify where each card sits. The Radeon 550X has an average score of 8918, placing it just 0.6% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 (8863) and 0.8% ahead of the AMD Radeon R9 M265X (8851). It trails the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (9022) by 1.2% and the NVIDIA TITAN V CEO Edition (9037) by 1.3%. This clustering around the 8900 to 9000 mark shows the Radeon 550X is competitive with a broad range of mid-range cards from its era, despite its low power draw.

The GTX 650 Ti Boost has an average score of 8067, which sits 0.2% below the NVIDIA GRID K2 (8080) and 0.2% above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti (8053). It also stands 0.3% above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M (8040) and the NVIDIA Quadro P5000 (8039). The tight margins among these rivals indicate the GTX 650 Ti Boost is firmly in the middle of its performance class. The discrepancy between its average score and its head-to-head results stems from the Metal benchmark: the 4858 score in that test pulls the average down significantly, even though its OpenCL and Vulkan scores are strong.

The percentile rankings add another layer. The Radeon 550X sits at the 45th percentile among all GPUs in the database, while the GTX 650 Ti Boost sits at the 42nd percentile. Despite losing both head-to-head tests, the AMD card ranks slightly higher overall, likely because its average score is not penalized by a Metal result. This illustrates the importance of interpreting benchmark aggregates carefully: the average score is not always the best indicator of relative performance in a specific API.

The pixel rate and texture rate figures deserve attention in this comparison. The Radeon 550X achieves 19.49 GPixel/s, which is 18% higher than the GTX 650 Ti Boost's 16.51 GPixel/s. This is counterintuitive given the NVIDIA card's higher ROP count (24 versus 16), but the AMD card's higher clock speed and architecture efficiency in pixel output explain the result. In texture throughput, the GTX 650 Ti Boost is far ahead at 66.05 GTexel/s versus 38.98 GTexel/s, a 69% advantage driven by its 64 TMUs versus 32. For workloads that stress texturing, such as certain game engines and image processing, the NVIDIA card has a decisive edge. For fill-rate-bound scenarios, the AMD card is the better option, despite losing the compute benchmarks.

The FP32 compute figures reinforce the NVIDIA advantage in general-purpose compute. The GTX 650 Ti Boost delivers 1.585 TFLOPS versus 1,247.2 GFLOPS for the Radeon 550X, a difference of roughly 27%. This aligns with the OpenCL benchmark results, where the NVIDIA card led by 4.7%, though the benchmark gap is smaller than the theoretical compute gap would suggest, likely due to driver overhead and workload characteristics. The Radeon's FP16 performance is listed at 1,247.2 GFLOPS with a 1:1 ratio, meaning it offers no half-precision acceleration over FP32. The GTX 650 Ti Boost has no FP16 data recorded, which is typical for GPUs of its generation.

In terms of platform integration, the GTX 650 Ti Boost uses a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, while the Radeon 550X uses PCIe 3.0 x8. The x16 connection provides double the bandwidth to the host system, which can matter for data transfer-heavy workloads, though the practical impact depends on the application. The display outputs also differ: the Radeon offers 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0b, and 1x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the GTX 650 Ti Boost offers 2x DVI, 1x HDMI 1.4a, and 1x DisplayPort 1.2. The AMD card supports newer display standards, which matters for modern monitors and HDR content.

The production status of both cards is end-of-life, meaning neither is a viable new purchase. The Radeon 550X was released on March 26, 2019, and the GTX 650 Ti Boost on March 25, 2013. The NVIDIA card is six years older, yet it still outperforms the newer AMD card in the recorded compute benchmarks. This speaks to the GTX 650 Ti Boost's relatively high-end positioning in its generation, with 768 shading units and a 192-bit memory bus, versus the Radeon 550X's entry-level positioning with 512 shading units and a 128-bit bus. The AMD card compensates with newer architecture features, lower power consumption, and a smaller footprint, but in raw performance, the older NVIDIA part holds the lead.