AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM vs AMD Radeon RX 6650M Comparison

The Verdict

The AMD Radeon RX 6650M is the clear winner in this comparison, taking both head-to-head benchmark victories. Its average benchmark score of 71,768 places it at the 91st percentile of all GPUs, while the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM sits at 58,085 and the 87th percentile. The RX 6650M leads by 23.6% in average score, a substantial gap that reflects its newer architecture and higher clock speeds.

The RX 6650M wins the OpenCL test with 65,800 points versus 62,427 for the RX 5600 OEM, a 5.4% advantage. The Vulkan test shows an even larger disparity: 77,735 versus 53,743, a 44.6% margin. This is not a close contest; the RX 6650M is the superior part across both recorded workloads.

For users choosing between these two, the RX 6650M is the obvious pick for any application that leverages Vulkan or OpenCL. The RX 5600 OEM, while still a capable GPU in its own right, trails significantly in the newer API. The RX 6650M also offers a higher boost clock, more memory capacity, and a newer feature set. The only area where the RX 5600 OEM holds an edge is memory bandwidth, which we will explore in the sections below.

Where Each One Wins

The RX 6650M wins both recorded benchmark tests, so on raw compute it is the clear victor. Its OpenCL score of 65,800 is 5.4% higher than the RX 5600 OEM's 62,427, a modest but real advantage. In Vulkan, the RX 6650M's 77,735 crushes the RX 5600 OEM's 53,743, a 44.6% lead that suggests the RDNA 2.0 architecture handles the Vulkan API far more efficiently than RDNA 1.0.

The RX 5600 OEM does not win any benchmark in the database, but it does have one specification advantage that could matter in specific workloads. Its memory subsystem uses a 192-bit bus with 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth, compared to the RX 6650M's 128-bit bus and 224.0 GB/s. This means the RX 5600 OEM moves data 28.6% faster between the GPU and memory. For memory-bound tasks that do not scale with compute throughput, the RX 5600 OEM could theoretically narrow the gap, though the recorded benchmarks do not show this translating into a win.

The RX 5600 OEM also has more shading units (2,048 versus 1,792), more texture mapping units (128 versus 112), and a wider PCIe interface (x16 versus x8). However, its lower clocks and older architecture prevent these raw counts from overcoming the RX 6650M's advantages in practice.

Architecture Differences

The RX 6650M is built on RDNA 2.0, while the RX 5600 OEM uses RDNA 1.0. Both use a 7 nm process at TSMC, so the manufacturing node is identical. The RX 6650M uses the Navi 23 chip, which packs 11,060 million transistors into a 237 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 46.7 million per mm². The RX 5600 OEM uses the larger Navi 10 chip with 10,300 million transistors across 251 mm², resulting in a lower density of 41.0 million per mm².

The RX 6650M has a base clock of 2068 MHz, a boost clock of 2416 MHz, and a game clock of 2222 MHz. The RX 5600 OEM runs at 1130 MHz base, 1560 MHz boost, and 1375 MHz game clock. The RX 6650M's boost clock is 54.9% higher, which largely explains its compute advantage despite having fewer shading units.

Memory configurations differ significantly. The RX 6650M offers 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 224.0 GB/s bandwidth and 14 Gbps effective speed. The RX 5600 OEM has 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus with 288.0 GB/s bandwidth and 12 Gbps effective speed. The RX 6650M has more capacity, but the RX 5600 OEM has more bandwidth.

The RX 6650M includes 28 ray tracing cores, a feature entirely absent from the RX 5600 OEM. It also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the RX 5600 OEM only reaches DirectX 12 (12_1). Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. The RX 6650M is an integrated graphics part (IGP) with no power connectors and a 120 W TDP, while the RX 5600 OEM is a dual-slot card requiring a single 8-pin connector and a 300 W suggested power supply. The RX 6650M uses a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface, while the RX 5600 OEM uses PCIe 4.0 x16.

The RX 6650M belongs to the Radeon RX 6000 series and the Navi Mobile (RX 6000M) generation, released in January 2022. The RX 5600 OEM belongs to the Radeon RX 5000 series and the Navi (RX 5000) generation, released in January 2020. The RX 6650M's predecessor is Polaris Mobile, while the RX 5600 OEM's predecessor is Vega and its successor is Navi II. Both parts are listed as end-of-life.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6650M scores 71,768 on average, placing it at the 91st percentile. The AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM scores 58,085, placing it at the 87th percentile. The RX 6650M is 23.6% faster on average.

Q: How large is the Vulkan performance gap?

A: The RX 6650M scores 77,735 in Geekbench Vulkan, while the RX 5600 OEM scores 53,743. This gives the RX 6650M a 44.6% lead, the largest single-benchmark advantage in this comparison.

Q: Does the RX 5600 OEM have any specification advantage?

A: Yes, it has higher memory bandwidth at 288.0 GB/s versus 224.0 GB/s for the RX 6650M. It also has a wider 192-bit memory bus compared to 128-bit, and more shading units (2,048 versus 1,792).

Q: What is the process node for both GPUs?

A: Both the RX 6650M and the RX 5600 OEM are manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm process. The RX 6650M uses the Navi 23 chip, while the RX 5600 OEM uses the Navi 10 chip.

Q: Does the RX 6650M support ray tracing?

A: Yes, the RX 6650M includes 28 ray tracing cores. The RX 5600 OEM has no ray tracing cores at all.

Q: Which GPU is newer?

A: The RX 6650M was released on January 3, 2022, while the RX 5600 OEM was released on January 20, 2020. The RX 6650M is nearly two years newer and belongs to the RDNA 2.0 generation.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database records two benchmark tests for this pair, and the RX 6650M wins both. The first test, Geekbench OpenCL, shows the RX 6650M scoring 65,800 against 62,427 for the RX 5600 OEM. This 5.4% delta reflects the RX 6650M's higher clocks and newer architecture, but the gap is relatively modest. In raw compute terms, the RX 6650M delivers 8.659 TFLOPS of FP32 performance versus 6.390 TFLOPS for the RX 5600 OEM, a 35.5% theoretical advantage. The smaller real-world OpenCL gap suggests the RX 5600 OEM's wider memory bus and higher bandwidth help it close some of the compute deficit.

The second test, Geekbench Vulkan, is where the RX 6650M dominates. Its score of 77,735 is 44.6% higher than the RX 5600 OEM's 53,743. This is a dramatic difference that cannot be explained by clock speeds alone. The RX 6650M's RDNA 2.0 architecture with its 28 ray tracing cores and DirectX 12 Ultimate support likely contributes to superior Vulkan driver efficiency and feature utilization. The RX 5600 OEM, built on RDNA 1.0 with no ray tracing hardware and only DirectX 12 (12_1), falls far behind in this API.

Looking at the nearest rivals in the database provides context. The RX 6650M's average score of 71,768 sits just 0.5% below the NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal (72,098) and 0.8% below the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 (72,379). It is 1.3% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6600 LE (70,829) and 2.2% below the AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition (73,370). This places the RX 6650M in the upper tier of GPUs, competing with high-end desktop parts from previous generations.

The RX 5600 OEM's average score of 58,085 is nearly identical to the Intel Arc A570M (58,239, a 0.3% difference) and the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT (58,392, a 0.5% difference). It is 0.6% ahead of the Intel Arc A580 (57,756) and 0.8% below the NVIDIA P102-100 (58,528). The RX 5600 OEM sits in a lower performance tier, roughly 19% below the RX 6650M's nearest rivals.

The pixel and texture rates reinforce the hierarchy. The RX 6650M achieves 154.6 GPixel/s and 270.6 GTexel/s, while the RX 5600 OEM manages 99.84 GPixel/s and 199.7 GTexel/s. The RX 6650M is 54.8% faster in pixel fill and 35.5% faster in texture fill. The RX 6650M also leads in FP16 performance at 17.32 TFLOPS versus 12.78 TFLOPS for the RX 5600 OEM, a 35.5% advantage that mirrors the FP32 ratio.

Memory bandwidth remains the RX 5600 OEM's only clear specification win, with 288.0 GB/s versus 224.0 GB/s. This 28.6% bandwidth advantage does not translate into benchmark victories in the recorded tests, but it could matter for specific memory-intensive workloads that are not represented in the Geekbench suite. The RX 5600 OEM also has a wider bus (192-bit versus 128-bit) and more memory chips, but the RX 6650M's 8 GB capacity versus 6 GB could be more important for modern game textures and larger datasets.

In summary, the RX 6650M is the faster GPU across every recorded benchmark, with a particularly large lead in Vulkan. Its RDNA 2.0 architecture, higher clocks, and ray tracing support make it the better choice for most workloads. The RX 5600 OEM retains a memory bandwidth advantage that may help in specific scenarios, but the data shows it trailing by a wide margin overall.