AMD Radeon Pro 5500M vs NVIDIA GeForce MX350 Comparison

The AMD Radeon Pro 5500M and NVIDIA GeForce MX350 represent two very different approaches to mobile graphics, separated by architecture, process technology, and intended workload. The data shows a decisive performance gap, with the Radeon Pro 5500M winning both shared benchmarks by margins exceeding 168%, but the MX350 counters with dramatically lower power consumption and a smaller physical footprint. These are not direct competitors in the traditional sense; rather, they serve distinct segments of the laptop market, and the benchmark results quantify just how wide that chasm is.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon Pro 5500M is the clear winner in raw compute and graphics throughput. In the two benchmarks where both GPUs have recorded scores, the Radeon Pro 5500M dominates completely. Its Geekbench OpenCL score of 31088 is 257.8% higher than the MX350's 8689, and its Geekbench Vulkan score of 35134 is 168.7% above the MX350's 13077. This makes the Radeon Pro 5500M the obvious choice for any application that leverages general-purpose GPU compute, such as video encoding, 3D rendering, or scientific simulations. The data also shows it sitting at the 51st percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 11528, placing it just 0.4% above the NVIDIA Tesla K20c and 1.3% below the GeForce GTX 1660.

The NVIDIA GeForce MX350 wins where power efficiency and portability are paramount. With a TDP of just 20 W compared to the Radeon Pro 5500M's 85 W, the MX350 draws less than a quarter of the power. This translates to thinner, lighter laptops with longer battery life and less thermal management required. The MX350's 49th percentile ranking and average benchmark score of 10883 place it just 0.7% above the AMD Radeon Pro 450 and 1.5% below the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, showing it holds its own within its own performance class. For users whose primary tasks are light photo editing, casual gaming, or everyday productivity with hardware acceleration, the MX350 provides adequate performance without the power and thermal overhead of a higher-end GPU.

Architecture Differences

The architectural divide between these two GPUs is stark. The AMD Radeon Pro 5500M is built on the RDNA 1.0 architecture using a 7 nm process at TSMC, packing 6,400 million transistors into a 158 mm² die. This yields a transistor density of 40.5 million per square millimeter. The NVIDIA GeForce MX350, in contrast, uses the older Pascal architecture on a 14 nm process at Samsung, with 3,300 million transistors on a 132 mm² die, resulting in a density of 25.0 million per square millimeter. The Radeon Pro 5500M's newer, denser process node is a fundamental advantage, enabling more compute units and higher clock efficiency within a similar power envelope.

The compute configurations differ substantially. The Radeon Pro 5500M features 1,536 shading units, 96 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs, while the MX350 has 640 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. This 2.4x advantage in shader count and 3x advantage in TMUs directly explains the performance gap. The Radeon Pro 5500M also supports FP16 at a 2:1 ratio, delivering 8.909 TFLOPS, whereas the MX350's FP16 implementation is severely limited at 29.36 GFLOPS (1:64 ratio), indicating it is essentially a compute afterthought. Both GPUs support DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, so API compatibility is not a differentiator.

Memory architectures are also fundamentally different. The Radeon Pro 5500M uses 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, delivering 192.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The MX350 uses 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 64-bit bus, providing only 56.06 GB/s. The Radeon Pro 5500M's memory bandwidth is 3.4x higher, which is critical for texture-heavy workloads and large datasets. The Radeon Pro 5500M also uses a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface, while the MX350 is limited to PCIe 3.0 x4, further widening the gap in data transfer capabilities.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head data is unambiguous: the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M wins both recorded benchmarks. The most lopsided result comes in Geekbench OpenCL, where the Radeon Pro 5500M scores 31088 against the MX350's 8689. This 257.8% advantage is a direct reflection of the Radeon Pro 5500M's superior shader count, memory bandwidth, and FP32 throughput of 4.454 TFLOPS versus the MX350's 1.879 TFLOPS. In OpenCL workloads, which often scale with raw compute resources, the Radeon Pro 5500M simply overwhelms the MX350.

The Geekbench Vulkan benchmark shows a slightly narrower but still massive gap. The Radeon Pro 5500M scores 35134, while the MX350 manages 13077, representing a 168.7% advantage. Vulkan is a lower-level API that can sometimes favor architectures with better driver optimization, but here the Radeon Pro 5500M's hardware advantages are too large to overcome. The MX350's 14 nm Pascal architecture, despite its respectable base clock of 1354 MHz and boost of 1468 MHz, cannot compensate for having less than half the shading units and a fraction of the memory bandwidth.

It is notably the Radeon Pro 5500M has additional benchmark data that the MX350 lacks, including Passmark scores. The Radeon Pro 5500M scores 6732 in Passmark G3D, 3240 in GPU compute, and shows strong legacy DirectX performance with 96 in DirectX 9, 42 in DirectX 11, and 36 in DirectX 10. These scores, combined with its 51st percentile ranking, paint a picture of a GPU that is competitive with mid-range desktop parts from its era, such as being just 0.8% above the Radeon RX 7800 XT in average score.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in general compute tasks?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro 5500M is dramatically faster. In Geekbench OpenCL, it scores 31088 versus the MX350's 8689, a 257.8% advantage, and in Geekbench Vulkan it scores 35134 versus 13077, a 168.7% advantage.

Q: How do their power requirements compare?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce MX350 has a TDP of 20 W, while the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M has a TDP of 85 W. The MX350 consumes significantly less power, making it suitable for thinner, more battery-efficient laptops.

Q: What are the memory specifications of each GPU?

A: The Radeon Pro 5500M has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus with 192.0 GB/s bandwidth. The MX350 has 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 64-bit bus with 56.06 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which GPU has a higher transistor count?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro 5500M has 6,400 million transistors on a 158 mm² die using a 7 nm TSMC process. The NVIDIA GeForce MX350 has 3,300 million transistors on a 132 mm² die using a 14 nm Samsung process.

Q: Are both GPUs still in production?

A: No. Both the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M and the NVIDIA GeForce MX350 are listed as end-of-life production status.

Q: How do their shading unit counts compare?

A: The Radeon Pro 5500M has 1,536 shading units, while the MX350 has 640 shading units. This 2.4x difference is a primary factor in the Radeon Pro 5500M's superior performance.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ across nearly every major specification field. The AMD Radeon Pro 5500M uses the Navi 14 chip with RDNA 1.0 architecture on a 7 nm TSMC process, while the NVIDIA GeForce MX350 uses the GP107S chip with Pascal architecture on a 14 nm Samsung process. The Radeon Pro 5500M has 6,400 million transistors on a 158 mm² die, compared to 3,300 million transistors on a 132 mm² die for the MX350, yielding transistor densities of 40.5M/mm² and 25.0M/mm², respectively.

Clock speeds show the MX350 has a higher base clock at 1354 MHz versus 1000 MHz for the Radeon Pro 5500M, but the boost clocks are similar at 1468 MHz and 1450 MHz, respectively. Memory clocks also favor the MX350 at 1752 MHz (7 Gbps effective) versus 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective) for the Radeon Pro 5500M, though the latter's GDDR6 memory and wider bus deliver far more bandwidth. The Radeon Pro 5500M has 8 GB GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 192.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the MX350 has 2 GB GDDR5 on a 64-bit bus with 56.06 GB/s.

Compute resources differ substantially: the Radeon Pro 5500M has 1,536 shading units, 96 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, while the MX350 has 640 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. Pixel rate is 46.40 GPixel/s for the Radeon Pro 5500M versus 23.49 GPixel/s for the MX350, and texture rate is 139.2 GTexel/s versus 46.98 GTexel/s. FP32 performance is 4.454 TFLOPS for the Radeon Pro 5500M and 1.879 TFLOPS for the MX350, with FP16 at 8.909 TFLOPS (2:1) versus 29.36 GFLOPS (1:64). TDP is 85 W versus 20 W, and the bus interface is PCIe 4.0 x8 versus PCIe 3.0 x4. The Radeon Pro 5500M was released on 2019-11-12, while the MX350 followed on 2020-02-09.