AMD Radeon RX 5500M vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M Comparison

# The Verdict

The data presents a decisive generational mismatch. The AMD Radeon RX 5500M wins both head-to-head benchmark comparisons by overwhelming margins, making it the clear choice for any workload leveraging OpenCL or Vulkan. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RX 5500M scores 38,725 against the GTX 965M's 14,509, a 62.5% advantage. In Vulkan, the gap is nearly as stark: 35,693 versus 14,299, a 59.9% deficit for the NVIDIA part.

The GTX 965M, with an average benchmark score of 14,404, sits at the 56th percentile of all GPUs, while the RX 5500M's average of 13,356 places it at the 54th percentile — despite the AMD card's superior raw performance in these specific tests. This discrepancy underscores that average scores across different benchmark suites can obscure dramatic performance differences in particular APIs. For users running OpenCL compute workloads or Vulkan-based applications, the RX 5500M is the only rational selection based on this data.

The GTX 965M's nearest rivals — AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 (0.1% ahead), NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN (0.2% ahead), AMD Radeon Vega 11 (0.4% ahead), and Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics (0.6% ahead) — all cluster within a single percentage point of its average score. This indicates the NVIDIA part is essentially performance-parity with integrated and lower-tier discrete solutions from its era. The RX 5500M, conversely, competes with AMD FirePro M6100 (0% delta), AMD Radeon HD 8950M (0.1% behind), AMD Radeon Pro 555X (0.3% ahead), and AMD Radeon Pro 555 (0.4% behind) — a grouping of professional and workstation-oriented parts. The RX 5500M's average score is dragged down by PassMark results (G3D score of 5,848) that are notably lower than its Geekbench scores, suggesting benchmark-specific optimization differences.

For a user choosing between these two mobile GPUs today, the RX 5500M is the superior option in every measured category. The GTX 965M should only be considered if legacy driver support or specific Maxwell-era feature compatibility is required, though the data offers no evidence of such advantages.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs represent fundamentally different design philosophies separated by nearly five years of silicon evolution. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M uses the GM204 chip built on Maxwell 2.0 architecture, manufactured on TSMC's 28 nm process. This is a large die at 398 mm², housing 5,200 million transistors for a density of 13.1 million transistors per square millimeter. The AMD Radeon RX 5500M employs the Navi 14 chip with RDNA 1.0 architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 7 nm node. Its die is dramatically smaller at 158 mm² but packs 6,400 million transistors, achieving a density of 40.5 million per square millimeter — more than three times the transistor density of the NVIDIA part.

Clock speeds reflect this architectural leap. The GTX 965M operates at a 924 MHz base clock with a 950 MHz boost. The RX 5500M starts at 1,375 MHz base, boosts to 1,645 MHz, and has a game clock of 1,448 MHz. The AMD part runs substantially faster out of the box, and its 7 nm process allows these higher frequencies within an 85 W TDP.

Memory configurations differ significantly. The GTX 965M ships with 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus, delivering 80.19 GB/s of bandwidth at 5 Gbps effective. The RX 5500M doubles capacity to 4 GB of GDDR6, also on a 128-bit bus, but achieves 224.0 GB/s at 14 Gbps effective — a 2.8× bandwidth advantage. This memory bandwidth disparity is critical for texture-heavy workloads and higher resolutions.

Compute resources favor the AMD part across the board. The RX 5500M has 1,408 shading units, 88 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. The GTX 965M has 1,024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The pixel rate for the RX 5500M is 52.64 GPixel/s versus 30.40 GPixel/s for the GTX 965M. Texture rate shows an even larger gap: 144.8 GTexel/s versus 60.80 GTexel/s. Floating-point performance is 4.632 TFLOPS (FP32) for the AMD card versus 1.946 TFLOPS for the NVIDIA card, and the RX 5500M additionally supports 9.265 TFLOPS FP16 via 2:1 ratio, a feature the GTX 965M lacks entirely.

Both GPUs support DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The GTX 965M uses an MXM-B (3.0) bus interface, while the RX 5500M uses PCIe 4.0 x8 — a newer, faster interconnect. Neither card has ray tracing or tensor cores. The GTX 965M's predecessor is GeForce 800M and successor is GeForce 10 Mobile; the RX 5500M's predecessor is Polaris Mobile. Both are end-of-life products.

Where Each One Wins

Benchmark results show the RX 5500M winning every head-to-head comparison, so the "wins" for the GTX 965M are relative to its own peer group rather than against the AMD card. The GTX 965M's average benchmark score of 14,404 places it near the top of its immediate competitive set — it trails the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 by only 0.1% and leads the Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics by 0.6%. In Geekbench OpenCL, the GTX 965M scores 14,509, and in Vulkan 14,299, showing balanced performance across both APIs. This makes it a reasonable choice for legacy Maxwell-era software ecosystems or systems where driver maturity for older titles is prioritized.

The RX 5500M's wins are comprehensive. In Geekbench OpenCL, its 38,725 score is more than 2.6 times the GTX 965M's result. In Vulkan, the 35,693 score is roughly 2.5 times higher. The AMD card also demonstrates versatility across additional benchmark suites: PassMark G3D score of 5,848, GPU compute score of 2,316, and DirectX 9 score of 100 (normalized), with lower scores in DirectX 10 (39), DirectX 11 (35), and DirectX 12 (28). The 2D graphics score of 414 in PassMark indicates competent desktop compositing performance.

The use-case split is therefore straightforward: for modern API workloads (OpenCL compute, Vulkan gaming), the RX 5500M is categorically superior. For users constrained to DirectX 9-era applications, both cards would likely perform adequately, though the RX 5500M's normalized score of 100 in that test suggests strong legacy compatibility. The GTX 965M's 2 GB memory capacity may be sufficient for older titles but will bottleneck in modern games that require more VRAM. The RX 5500M's 4 GB GDDR6 configuration is better suited to contemporary game assets and higher-resolution textures.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has higher raw compute performance?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 5500M delivers 4.632 TFLOPS FP32, more than double the GTX 965M's 1.946 TFLOPS. It also offers 9.265 TFLOPS FP16 performance, which the NVIDIA card cannot provide.

Q: How do the memory subsystems compare?

A: The RX 5500M has 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 224.0 GB/s bandwidth. The GTX 965M has 2 GB of GDDR5 on the same bus width but only 80.19 GB/s bandwidth. The AMD card offers nearly three times the memory bandwidth.

Q: What are the architectural differences between the two?

A: The GTX 965M uses NVIDIA's Maxwell 2.0 architecture (GM204 chip) on a 28 nm process. The RX 5500M uses AMD's RDNA 1.0 architecture (Navi 14 chip) on a 7 nm process. The 7 nm node enables higher clock speeds and transistor density (40.5M/mm² vs 13.1M/mm²).

Q: Which GPU performs better in Vulkan benchmarks?

A: The RX 5500M scores 35,693 in Geekbench Vulkan, which is 59.9% higher than the GTX 965M's 14,299. The AMD card is the clear winner in this API.

Q: Are these GPUs still in production?

A: No. Both are end-of-life products. The GTX 965M was released in January 2015, and the RX 5500M in October 2019.

Q: How does each card compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The GTX 965M's average score of 14,404 is within 0.6% of its top four rivals (AMD Radeon RX Vega 11, NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN, AMD Radeon Vega 11, Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics). The RX 5500M's average of 13,356 is within 0.4% of its nearest competitors (AMD FirePro M6100, AMD Radeon HD 8950M, AMD Radeon Pro 555X, AMD Radeon Pro 555).

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head comparison consists of two Geekbench tests, and the AMD Radeon RX 5500M dominates both. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RX 5500M produces a score of 38,725 against the GTX 965M's 14,509. This represents a delta of -62.5% from the perspective of the NVIDIA card — meaning the GTX 965M achieves less than 40% of the AMD card's performance. The absolute difference of 24,216 points is substantial enough to represent a multi-generation leap in compute capability. OpenCL workloads such as physics simulation, video encoding, and general-purpose GPU compute will run dramatically faster on the RX 5500M.

The Geekbench Vulkan test shows a similar pattern with slightly smaller but still decisive margins. The RX 5500M scores 35,693, while the GTX 965M manages 14,299, a delta of -59.9%. This 21,394-point gap confirms that the AMD architecture's advantages — higher clock speeds, more shading units, superior memory bandwidth — translate directly into real-world graphics API performance. Vulkan-based game engines and compute applications will see roughly 2.5 times the frame throughput on the RX 5500M.

The GTX 965M records zero wins in this head-to-head, while the RX 5500M wins both tests. The NVIDIA card's scores of 14,509 (OpenCL) and 14,299 (Vulkan) are remarkably consistent, differing by only 1.5%, suggesting balanced execution across both APIs. The RX 5500M shows a larger spread — its OpenCL score is 8.5% higher than its Vulkan score — indicating that OpenCL workloads extract slightly more performance from the RDNA architecture.

When contextualized within each card's broader benchmark profile, these results align with the average scores. The GTX 965M's average of 14,404 closely matches its individual Geekbench results, confirming these tests are representative of its typical performance level. The RX 5500M's average of 13,356 is significantly lower than its Geekbench scores, which means the head-to-head tests show the AMD card at its best. The PassMark results — particularly the G3D score of 5,848 and DirectX 10/11/12 scores of 39, 35, and 28 respectively — pull the average down. This suggests that while the RX 5500M excels in OpenCL and Vulkan, its DirectX performance may be comparatively weaker, a nuance worth considering for DirectX-centric applications.