AMD Radeon RX 580 vs NVIDIA GeForce MX350 Comparison

The AMD Radeon RX 580 and NVIDIA GeForce MX350 occupy very different positions in the graphics hardware landscape. The RX 580 is a desktop-oriented, full-size card from AMD’s Polaris generation, while the MX350 is a low-power mobile chip from NVIDIA’s Pascal family. Benchmark data in the database shows a decisive performance gap, but the nature of that gap, and what each product is suited for, requires closer inspection. The recorded average benchmark scores place the RX 580 at 12,928, while the MX350 sits at 10,883. This difference, however, understates the chasm seen in individual compute workloads, where the RX 580 often delivers multiple times the throughput of the MX350.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database contains two direct head-to-head results for these products: Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan. In both cases, the AMD Radeon RX 580 wins outright. The wins are not marginal; they are overwhelming.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the RX 580 scores 37,453 points. The MX350 scores 8,689. The delta is 331%. This means the RX 580 delivers more than four times the OpenCL compute performance of the MX350. OpenCL is a general-purpose compute API, often used for rendering, physics simulation, and certain productivity tasks. A score of 37,453 places the RX 580 in a range where it can handle substantial parallel workloads, while 8,689 is indicative of a chip designed for light acceleration, not heavy compute lifting.

The Vulkan result is similar in direction but slightly smaller in magnitude. The RX 580 records 45,173 points, while the MX350 manages 13,077. That is a 245.4% advantage for the AMD card. Vulkan is a low-overhead graphics and compute API, and the higher score suggests the RX 580 can sustain much higher frame throughput in Vulkan-based games and applications. The MX350’s score is not trivial, but it is less than a third of the AMD card’s output.

Across these two shared tests, the RX 580 wins 2 out of 2. There are no benchmark instances where the MX350 takes the lead. The average benchmark score difference, roughly 19% in favor of the RX 580, is actually a compressed view. The head-to-head deltas show that in pure compute and modern graphics API workloads, the RX 580 is in a different performance class. The MX350’s nearest rivals in the database, such as the AMD Radeon Pro 450 (average 10,804) and the NVIDIA Quadro K2200 (average 10,761), are all within 1.7% of its score, confirming that the MX350 is grouped with entry-level or older professional parts. The RX 580, by contrast, sits near the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile (average 12,940, delta -0.1%) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER (average 12,986, delta -0.4%), indicating it competes with much more capable hardware.

Where Each One Wins

Based on the recorded data, the AMD Radeon RX 580 wins in every scenario where the two are directly compared. There is no workload in the head-to-head set where the MX350 comes out ahead. This is not a case of trade-offs; it is a case of tier separation.

The RX 580’s strengths are evident in compute-heavy and modern API workloads. Its Geekbench Vulkan score of 45,173 is among the highest recorded for any GPU in its peer group, and its OpenCL score of 37,453 confirms strong parallel processing capability. For users running Vulkan titles, which are increasingly common in newer game engines, the RX 580 offers a clear advantage. The card also has a large memory pool of 8 GB, which the MX350 does not match, though the benchmark data does not directly measure memory capacity effects. The RX 580’s PassMark G3D score of 8,813 further underscores its suitability for sustained 3D rendering tasks, while its PassMark GPU compute score of 3,488 indicates it can handle non-graphics compute workloads with reasonable efficiency.

The MX350’s wins, if any, are not visible in the shared benchmarks. However, its profile suggests a different purpose. With a TDP of 20 W, it is clearly built for notebooks where power draw is a primary constraint. The RX 580 has a TDP of 185 W, a nine-fold difference. This means the MX350 is the only viable choice for ultra-thin laptops that run on battery power and have no discrete power connectors. The MX350 also has a higher base clock (1354 MHz) and boost clock (1468 MHz) than the RX 580 (1257 MHz and 1340 MHz, respectively), which can be beneficial for short, bursty workloads that do not saturate the GPU. But in sustained compute or graphics loads, the RX 580’s far larger shading unit count (2304 versus 640) and memory bandwidth (256.0 GB/s versus 56.06 GB/s) dominate.

For a user who needs to play modern games at high settings or run GPU-accelerated productivity tools, the RX 580 is the clear choice. For a user who needs a discrete GPU in a slim laptop for light photo editing, video playback, or older games, the MX350 is the only one that fits physically and thermally. The data does not show the MX350 winning any benchmark, but its low power envelope is a qualitative advantage that no score can capture.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 580 has an average benchmark score of 12,928, which is 19% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce MX350’s average of 10,883.

Q: How large is the performance gap in Vulkan compute?

A: In Geekbench Vulkan, the RX 580 scores 45,173 versus 13,077 for the MX350, representing a 245.4% advantage for the AMD card.

Q: Does the MX350 win any shared benchmark?

A: No. In the two direct comparisons recorded (Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan), the RX 580 wins both. The MX350 has zero recorded wins in head-to-head testing.

Q: What is the frame rate implication of the OpenCL score difference?

A: The OpenCL scores (37,453 for RX 580, 8,689 for MX350) translate to a 331% delta. This indicates the RX 580 can process more than four times the parallel compute instructions per unit time, which often corresponds to higher frame rates in compute-heavy game effects and faster completion of GPU-accelerated tasks.

Q: Are these GPUs in the same performance class?

A: The nearest rivals in the database place them in different tiers. The RX 580 is within 0.5% of the AMD Radeon 740M (average 12,870) and within 0.1% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile (average 12,940). The MX350 is within 1.1% of the NVIDIA Quadro K2200 (average 10,761) and within 0.7% of the AMD Radeon Pro 450 (average 10,804).

Q: Which GPU has a higher transistor density?

A: The MX350 has a transistor density of 25.0M per mm², slightly higher than the RX 580’s 24.6M per mm², despite the RX 580 having significantly more total transistors (5,700 million versus 3,300 million).

Specification Differences

The two GPUs diverge sharply across nearly every measured specification. The RX 580 is built on a larger die and uses more power, while the MX350 is a compact, low-power part.

The RX 580 uses the Polaris 20 chip with 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die. The MX350 uses the GP107S chip with 3,300 million transistors on a 132 mm² die. Both are fabricated on a 14 nm process, but the MX350’s foundry is Samsung, while the RX 580’s is GlobalFoundries.

Memory configuration is a major differentiator. The RX 580 has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 256.0 GB/s. The MX350 has 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 64-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 56.06 GB/s. The RX 580’s memory clock is 2000 MHz (8 Gbps effective), while the MX350’s is 1752 MHz (7 Gbps effective).

Compute unit counts are also vastly different. The RX 580 has 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 32 raster operations pipelines (ROPs). The MX350 has 640 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. This translates to a pixel rate of 42.88 GPixel/s for the RX 580 versus 23.49 GPixel/s for the MX350, and a texture rate of 193.0 GTexel/s versus 46.98 GTexel/s.

Power requirements are not comparable. The RX 580 has a TDP of 185 W, requires a 1x 8-pin power connector, and a suggested PSU of 450 W. The MX350 has a TDP of 20 W, requires no power connectors, and has no suggested PSU listed. The RX 580 is a dual-slot card with a length of 241 mm (9.5 inches), while the MX350 has no listed dimensions and is described as “Portable Device Dependent” for display outputs.

The RX 580 uses a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, while the MX350 uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. Both support DirectX 12 and OpenGL 4.6, but the RX 580’s DirectX feature level is 12_0, while the MX350’s is 12_1. The RX 580 supports Vulkan 1.3, while the MX350 supports Vulkan 1.4. The RX 580’s display outputs include 1x HDMI 2.0b and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the MX350’s outputs are not specified beyond being portable-device dependent.

Architecture Differences

The architectural split is fundamental. The RX 580 is based on GCN 4.0, AMD’s fourth-generation Graphics Core Next design, which was introduced with the Polaris family. The MX350 is based on NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture, a design that predates GCN 4.0 but is optimized for efficiency in a different way.

The RX 580 belongs to the Polaris (RX 500) generation and is a successor to the Arctic Islands family. Its predecessor is listed as Arctic Islands, and its successor is Vega. The MX350 belongs to the GeForce MX (3xx) generation, with no predecessor or successor listed in the database. The RX 580 was released on April 17, 2017, while the MX350 was released on February 9, 2020.

The compute pipelines differ in their floating-point capabilities. The RX 580 delivers 6.175 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, and its FP16 performance is identical at 6.175 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio). The MX350 delivers 1.879 TFLOPS of FP32, but its FP16 performance is only 29.36 GFLOPS, a 1:64 ratio. This means the RX 580 can process half-precision floats at full speed, while the MX350 is heavily throttled in that mode.

Neither GPU has ray tracing cores or tensor cores. Both rely on traditional shader-based rendering. However, the RX 580’s much larger shader array (2304 units) and higher texture rate (193.0 GTexel/s) give it a structural advantage in any workload that scales with parallel execution units. The MX350’s higher clock speeds (1354 MHz base, 1468 MHz boost) do not compensate for the 3.6x difference in shading units.

The transistor density figures are nearly identical (24.6M per mm² for RX 580, 25.0M per mm² for MX350), indicating similar manufacturing maturity. But the RX 580 uses 73% more transistors and a 76% larger die, which directly enables its higher throughput. The MX350’s design is a deliberate trade-off: fewer resources, lower clocks, and a narrow memory bus to achieve a 20 W TDP. The RX 580’s 185 W TDP allows it to sustain high clocks across all 2304 shaders, and the 256-bit memory bus provides the bandwidth needed to feed them.

In the database’s percentile ranking against all GPUs, the RX 580 sits at the 53rd percentile, while the MX350 sits at the 49th percentile. These are close, but the average benchmark scores and head-to-head results show that the RX 580’s percentile is supported by a much wider range of tested software, including 11 recorded benchmarks, versus only 2 for the MX350. The MX350’s lack of DirectX-specific PassMark scores or 3DMark results in the database limits direct comparison, but the available Geekbench data is unambiguous. The RX 580 is a high-throughput compute and graphics card, while the MX350 is a low-power mobile companion GPU. The architecture choices reflect these divergent goals, and the benchmark results confirm that the RX 580 is the superior performer in every measured test.