Radeon Vega 7 vs RX 550X

Place in the ranking	586	530
Place by popularity	not in top-100	39
Power efficiency	8.28	11.56
Architecture	GCN 4.0 (2016−2020)	GCN 5.1 (2018−2022)
GPU code name	Lexa	Cezanne
Market segment	Desktop	Laptop
Release date	16 December 2018 (5 years ago)	13 April 2021 (3 years ago)

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	512	448
Core clock speed	1100 MHz	300 MHz
Boost clock speed	1183 MHz	1900 MHz
Number of transistors	2,200 million	9,800 million
Manufacturing process technology	14 nm	7 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	50 Watt	45 Watt
Texture fill rate	37.86	53.20
Floating-point processing power	1.211 TFLOPS	1.702 TFLOPS
ROPs	16	8
TMUs	32	28

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	PCIe 3.0 x8	IGP
Length	145 mm	no data
Width	2-slot	no data
Supplementary power connectors	None	None

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR5	System Shared
Maximum RAM amount	4 GB	System Shared
Memory bus width	128 Bit	System Shared
Memory clock speed	1500 MHz	System Shared
Memory bandwidth	96 GB/s	no data
Shared memory	-	+

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort	No outputs
HDMI	+	-

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	12 (12_0)	12 (12_1)
Shader Model	6.4	6.4
OpenGL	4.6	4.6
OpenCL	2.0	2.1
Vulkan	1.2.131	1.2

Gaming performance

Let's see how good the compared graphics cards are for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS.

Average FPS across all PC games

Here are the average frames per second in a large set of popular games across different resolutions:

Full HD	16−18 −37.5%	22 +37.5%
1440p	21−24 −33.3%	28 +33.3%
4K	14−16 −42.9%	20 +42.9%

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	5.94	7.46
Recency	16 December 2018	13 April 2021
Chip lithography	14 nm	7 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	50 Watt	45 Watt

Vega 7 has a 25.6% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 2 years, a 100% more advanced lithography process, and 11.1% lower power consumption.

The Radeon Vega 7 is our recommended choice as it beats the Radeon RX 550X in performance tests.

Be aware that Radeon RX 550X is a desktop card while Radeon Vega 7 is a notebook one.

Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.