AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile Comparison

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT posts an average benchmark score of 19,765, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile averages 19,049. The AMD part sits at the 65th percentile among all GPUs, versus the 63rd percentile for the NVIDIA mobile chip.

Q: How large is the performance gap in the head-to-head benchmark suite?

A: The AMD card wins 8 of the 9 shared tests. Its largest victory is a 45% margin in Passmark G2D, and its smallest is a 1.6% edge in Passmark DirectX 12. The NVIDIA part wins only Geekbench OpenCL, and there it leads by 86.5%.

Q: Which GPU has the higher memory bandwidth?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT reaches 280.3 GB/s over a 128-bit bus with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile delivers 192.0 GB/s over a 96-bit bus with 6 GB of GDDR6.

Q: What are the power requirements for each card?

A: The AMD card has a 176 W TDP and requires a 450 W suggested PSU with a single 8-pin power connector. The NVIDIA mobile part has a 50 W TDP, uses no power connectors, and has no suggested PSU rating listed.

Q: Which GPU supports hardware ray tracing?

A: Both GPUs support it. The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT includes 32 ray accelerators, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile includes 20 RT cores. Both also support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2).

Q: What is the production status of each GPU?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is marked end-of-life, with a release date of May 2022. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile is active, with a release date of January 2023.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs come from fundamentally different design generations. The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT uses the Navi 23 chip built on RDNA 2.0 architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 7 nm process. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile uses the AD107 chip based on Ada Lovelace architecture, made on TSMC's 5 nm node. The process shrink is substantial: the NVIDIA chip packs 18,900 million transistors into a 159 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 118.9M per mm². The AMD chip, by contrast, holds 11,060 million transistors across a 237 mm² die, for a density of 46.7M per mm².

The compute layouts diverge sharply. The AMD card has 2,048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs. The NVIDIA part has more shading units at 2,560, but fewer TMUs at 80 and fewer ROPs at 48. For ray tracing, AMD fields 32 RT accelerators, while NVIDIA includes 20 RT cores plus 80 tensor cores — the latter are absent from the AMD spec sheet entirely. The floating-point throughput tells the story: AMD's FP32 peak is 10.79 TFLOPS, while NVIDIA's is 8.986 TFLOPS. Notably, AMD's FP16 rating doubles to 21.59 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio), whereas NVIDIA's FP16 matches its FP32 at 8.986 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio).

Clock behavior also differs. The AMD card runs a 2,055 MHz base clock, boosting to 2,635 MHz, with a game clock of 2,410 MHz. The NVIDIA mobile chip starts lower at 1,455 MHz base and boosts to 1,755 MHz. Memory clocks are closer: AMD runs 2,190 MHz (17.5 Gbps effective), NVIDIA runs 2,000 MHz (16 Gbps effective). Both use PCIe 4.0 x8 interfaces, and both support DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT dominates the head-to-head suite, taking 8 of 9 tests. Its wins span the entire DirectX family: 38% in DirectX 10, 30% in DirectX 11, 16.8% in DirectX 9, and a narrow 1.6% in DirectX 12. The GPU compute advantage is also clear, with AMD leading by 26.7% in Passmark GPU Compute. In the 3D gaming-oriented Passmark G3D test, the AMD card leads by 19%. Its biggest win comes in 2D work: 45% in Passmark G2D. Even in Vulkan, where the scores are closest among the non-OpenCL tests, AMD edges ahead by 8.1%.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile's single win is in Geekbench OpenCL, where it scores 74,748 against AMD's 10,111 — a massive 86.5% delta. That result is an outlier relative to every other test, but it signals that the NVIDIA part has a particular strength in OpenCL compute workloads. For everything else, the data points to the AMD card as the stronger performer. The NVIDIA chip's lower TDP of 50 W versus 176 W also suggests it is designed for thermal-constrained mobile chassis, trading performance for power efficiency.

In practical terms, the AMD card is the pick for raw rasterization performance, legacy DirectX titles, and general GPU compute. The NVIDIA mobile chip is the pick for OpenCL-heavy applications and for thin-and-light laptops where power draw matters more than peak FPS.

Specification Differences

| Specification | AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile |

|---|---|---|

| Architecture | RDNA 2.0 | Ada Lovelace |

| Process Node | 7 nm | 5 nm |

| Transistors | 11,060 million | 18,900 million |

| Die Size | 237 mm² | 159 mm² |

| Transistor Density | 46.7M / mm² | 118.9M / mm² |

| Base Clock | 2055 MHz | 1455 MHz |

| Boost Clock | 2635 MHz | 1755 MHz |

| Game Clock | 2410 MHz | None |

| Memory Clock | 2190 MHz (17.5 Gbps) | 2000 MHz (16 Gbps) |

| Memory Size | 8 GB | 6 GB |

| Memory Bus | 128 bit | 96 bit |

| Memory Bandwidth | 280.3 GB/s | 192.0 GB/s |

| Shading Units | 2048 | 2560 |

| TMUs | 128 | 80 |

| ROPs | 64 | 48 |

| RT Cores | 32 | 20 |

| Tensor Cores | None | 80 |

| Pixel Rate | 168.6 GPixel/s | 84.24 GPixel/s |

| Texture Rate | 337.3 GTexel/s | 140.4 GTexel/s |

| FP32 | 10.79 TFLOPS | 8.986 TFLOPS |

| FP16 | 21.59 TFLOPS (2:1) | 8.986 TFLOPS (1:1) |

| TDP | 176 W | 50 W |

| Slot Width | Dual-slot | IGP |

| Power Connectors | 1x 8-pin | None |

| Suggested PSU | 450 W | None |

| Display Outputs | 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a | Portable Device Dependent |

| Production Status | End-of-life | Active |

| Release Date | 2022-05-09 | 2023-01-02 |

| Launch MSRP | 399 USD | None |

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The Geekbench OpenCL result is the single most lopsided contest in the entire comparison. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile scores 74,748 against the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT's 10,111, a delta of 86.5%. That means the NVIDIA part delivers roughly 7.4 times the OpenCL score of the AMD card — a gap so wide it suggests the AMD driver or hardware is severely disadvantaged in this specific workload. No other test comes close to this margin.

Outside of OpenCL, the AMD card is consistently ahead. The Passmark G2D test shows a 45% lead (918 vs. 633), indicating that the AMD card handles 2D graphics operations with far more headroom. In DirectX 10, the AMD card wins 109 to 79, a 38% advantage. DirectX 11 follows the same pattern: 169 to 130, a 30% edge. These legacy API tests are not close, and the AMD card's higher pixel rate of 168.6 GPixel/s versus 84.24 GPixel/s helps explain why.

The compute tests are more nuanced. In Passmark GPU Compute, AMD leads 7,532 to 5,947, a 26.7% margin. But the Geekbench OpenCL result flips the script entirely. This split suggests that the two GPUs have very different compute personalities: AMD excels in the Passmark compute suite, while NVIDIA dominates in Geekbench's OpenCL implementation.

The DirectX 12 test is the closest of all nine benchmarks. AMD scores 62, NVIDIA scores 61, a 1.6% difference that is effectively a tie. This is notable because DirectX 12 is the modern gaming API, and the near-parity suggests that the NVIDIA mobile chip can hang with the AMD desktop card when the workload is well-optimized for current-generation APIs. In contrast, the DirectX 9 test shows AMD ahead by 16.8% (215 vs. 184), and the DirectX 10 and 11 tests show even larger AMD margins.

The Passmark G3D test, which aggregates 3D gaming performance, gives AMD a 19% win (17,166 vs. 14,423). The Vulkan test is closer: AMD wins 81,306 to 75,235, an 8.1% advantage. Across all nine benchmarks, the AMD card's average score of 19,765 sits just 3.7% above the NVIDIA chip's 19,049, which reflects the fact that the NVIDIA part's massive OpenCL win is offset by AMD's wins everywhere else. The percentile rankings tell the same story: AMD at the 65th percentile, NVIDIA at the 63rd.