AMD Radeon RX 550 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER Comparison

The AMD Radeon RX 550 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER occupy the same percentile rank among all GPUs (50th), yet their average benchmark scores are nearly identical, with the RX 550 at 11,075 and the GTX 1650 SUPER at 11,047. This statistical near-tie, however, masks a dramatic divergence in individual workloads, where the NVIDIA card dominates every head-to-head comparison by a wide margin, while the AMD card’s aggregate score is buoyed by a single strong Metal result. The data reveals two cards that are fundamentally different in architecture, capability, and intended use, despite their similar overall ranking.

The Verdict

The benchmark data is unambiguous: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER is the superior performer in every shared test. In 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, it scores 352 against the RX 550’s 127, a 63.9% advantage. In Geekbench OpenCL, the NVIDIA card reaches 43,875 versus 11,063, a 74.8% lead, and in Geekbench Vulkan it posts 50,519 against 12,270, a 75.7% margin. For any user whose primary concern is raw graphics throughput, particularly in modern DX12 or Vulkan titles, the GTX 1650 SUPER is the only rational choice based on these figures.

The AMD Radeon RX 550, however, is not without a niche. Its average score of 11,075 is actually 0.3% higher than its rival’s 11,047, and it achieves a Geekbench Metal score of 20,838, a benchmark the NVIDIA card does not appear in. This suggests the RX 550 retains relevance in Apple-centric or Metal-accelerated workflows, where its GCN architecture still functions adequately. The data also shows the RX 550 sits within 0.1% of the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000D Blackwell Max-Q in average score, an absurd pairing that underscores how misleading aggregate metrics can be for low-end cards. For a strictly compute-oriented or legacy DirectX 9/10 workload, the RX 550’s profile might be acceptable, but for gaming or general GPU compute, the GTX 1650 SUPER wins outright.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 550 has an average score of 11,075, which is 0.3% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER’s 11,047, despite losing every head-to-head test.

Q: How large is the performance gap in the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 test?

A: The GTX 1650 SUPER scores 352 while the RX 550 scores 127, giving the NVIDIA card a 63.9% advantage in that specific DX12 workload.

Q: Does the RX 550 win any shared benchmark?

A: No. In the three head-to-head benchmarks available (3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, Geekbench OpenCL, and Geekbench Vulkan), the GTX 1650 SUPER wins all three, with the RX 550’s win count at zero.

Q: What explains the RX 550’s higher average score despite losing every comparison?

A: The RX 550’s average includes a Geekbench Metal score of 20,838, which is not part of the GTX 1650 SUPER’s benchmark set. This additional data point raises the AMD card’s aggregate, even though its shared-test results are far lower.

Q: Are both cards at the same performance percentile?

A: Yes, both the AMD Radeon RX 550 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER are listed at the 50th percentile against all GPUs, which aligns with their nearly identical average scores.

Q: Which card has a higher memory bandwidth?

A: The GTX 1650 SUPER has 192.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the RX 550 offers 112.0 GB/s, a difference driven by the NVIDIA card’s faster 12 Gbps effective memory speed versus 7 Gbps on the AMD card.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs come from different manufacturers, process nodes, and architectural generations. The AMD Radeon RX 550 is built on the Lexa chip using GCN 4.0 architecture, part of the Polaris (RX 500) generation, fabricated on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. It packs 2,200 million transistors into a 103 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 21.4M per mm². In contrast, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER uses the TU116 chip with Turing architecture, from the GeForce 16 series, built on a 12 nm process at TSMC. This chip contains 6,600 million transistors on a 284 mm² die, with a density of 23.2M per mm². The NVIDIA chip is three times larger in transistor count and nearly three times larger in die area.

Feature-wise, the RX 550 supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3, while the GTX 1650 SUPER supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The higher DirectX feature level (12_1 vs 12_0) on the NVIDIA card indicates support for additional DX12 features, which is consistent with its newer Turing architecture. Neither card includes dedicated ray tracing or tensor cores, as both list null for RT cores and tensor cores. The RX 550’s FP16 throughput matches its FP32 at 1,211.4 GFLOPS (1:1 ratio), whereas the GTX 1650 SUPER doubles its FP16 to 8.832 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio), showing a significant compute advantage in half-precision workloads for the NVIDIA part.

Specification Differences

The specification sheets reveal stark differences in every meaningful compute resource. The RX 550 has 512 shading units, 32 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 16 raster output units (ROPs), while the GTX 1650 SUPER has 1,280 shading units, 80 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. This translates to a pixel rate of 18.93 GPixel/s and texture rate of 37.86 GTexel/s for the AMD card, versus 55.20 GPixel/s and 138.0 GTexel/s for the NVIDIA card. FP32 performance is 1,211.4 GFLOPS on the RX 550 versus 4.416 TFLOPS on the GTX 1650 SUPER, a 3.6-fold difference.

Memory is another clear separator. The RX 550 comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus, running at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective), for 112.0 GB/s bandwidth. The GTX 1650 SUPER offers 4 GB of GDDR6 on the same 128-bit bus width, but at 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective), achieving 192.0 GB/s. Clock speeds also favor NVIDIA: the RX 550 has a base of 1100 MHz and boost of 1183 MHz, while the GTX 1650 SUPER runs at 1530 MHz base and 1725 MHz boost. Power and physical specs differ as well, with the RX 550 rated at 50 W TDP and no power connectors, versus 100 W TDP and a single 6-pin connector for the GTX 1650 SUPER. The bus interface also differs, with PCIe 3.0 x8 on the AMD card and PCIe 3.0 x16 on the NVIDIA card.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head data is a one-sided affair. In 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, the GTX 1650 SUPER scores 352 against the RX 550’s 127, a delta of -63.9% from the AMD card’s perspective. This is the closest margin among the three tests, yet still a decisive victory. The Geekbench OpenCL test shows a wider gap: 43,875 for NVIDIA versus 11,063 for AMD, a 74.8% deficit for the RX 550. The largest margin appears in Geekbench Vulkan, where the GTX 1650 SUPER posts 50,519 versus 12,270, a 75.7% difference. In every case, the winner is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, and the data shows no scenario where the AMD part closes the gap to within even half of the NVIDIA score.

The RX 550’s only competitive showing comes from its Geekbench Metal score of 20,838, which is not part of the head-to-head set. This score, combined with its OpenCL and Vulkan numbers, produces an average of 11,075, which is 0.2% higher than the GTX 1650 SUPER’s average of 11,047 when viewed from the NVIDIA card’s rival list. The nearest rival data for the RX 550 shows it is 0.3% ahead of the GTX 1650 SUPER, a margin that is statistically negligible and entirely attributable to the Metal benchmark inclusion. For the GTX 1650 SUPER, its nearest rival is the RX 550 at -0.2%, followed by the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q at -0.4%, indicating that the two cards in this comparison are effectively tied in aggregate but wildly divergent in component tests.

Where Each One Wins

The GTX 1650 SUPER wins every scenario that involves DX12, OpenCL, or Vulkan compute. Its 63.9% lead in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 suggests it is far more capable in modern game engines that rely on DX12’s low-level API. The 74.8% OpenCL advantage and 75.7% Vulkan advantage indicate that any general-purpose GPU compute task, from rendering to machine learning inference, will be multiple times faster on the NVIDIA card. The GTX 1650 SUPER’s higher texture rate (138.0 GTexel/s vs 37.86) and pixel rate (55.20 GPixel/s vs 18.93) reinforce its dominance in rasterization-heavy workloads. For gaming at 1080p, the 4 GB GDDR6 memory and 192.0 GB/s bandwidth provide a buffer that the 2 GB GDDR5 and 112.0 GB/s on the RX 550 cannot match.

The RX 550’s wins are narrower and more situational. Its average score advantage of 0.3% over the GTX 1650 SUPER is driven entirely by the Geekbench Metal result of 20,838, which is absent from the NVIDIA card’s benchmark suite. This makes the RX 550 a plausible option for users running Metal-accelerated applications, such as certain macOS or iOS development environments, where its GCN 4.0 architecture still receives driver support. Additionally, the RX 550’s lower TDP of 50 W versus 100 W, and its lack of external power connectors, means it can be installed in systems with minimal power delivery, though the suggested PSU of 250 W versus 300 W is a modest difference. For legacy API workloads, the GTX 1650 SUPER’s Passmark DirectX 9 score of 148 and DirectX 10 score of 50 are not directly compared, but the absence of any RX 550 Passmark data prevents a definitive statement. The data shows the RX 550 wins zero head-to-head benchmarks, so its only "win" is the aggregate score anomaly, which is a statistical artifact rather than a performance advantage.