NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU vs AMD Radeon RX 6550M vs AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU (codename GN21-X2) is a mid-range laptop GPU. It is based on the AD107 chip and uses the Ada Lovelace architecture. The RTX 4050 Laptop offers 2560 shaders and uses 6 GB GDDR6 dedicated graphics memory with a clock speed of 16 Gbps (effective) and a 96 Bit memory bus. The TGP (Total Graphics Power) can be configured between 35 and 115 Watt (+ 10-25 Watt Dynamic Boost from the CPU) leading to different performance levels. The boost clock depends on the TGP settings and ranges from 1605 MHz (35 Watt) to 2370 MHz (115 Watt). The performance therefore is also highly depending on the laptop and TDP settings.

In our benchmarks, the RTX 4050 stays slightly behind the older mobile RTX 3060 but is clearly faster than the mobile RTX 3050 Ti. Therefore, it is best suited for 1920x1080 gaming at high to ultra settings depending on the game (see benchmarks below).

The RTX 4050 offers 80 tensor cores and therefore supports DLSS 3 including frame generation that can have a big impact in supported games. The raytracing cores however will see less usage, as the RTX 4050 does not offer enough performance for high detail settings and raytracing in demanding games.

The AD107 chip is manufactured on 5nm at TSMC (4N process).

AMD Radeon RX 6550M

The AMD Radeon RX 6550M is a mobile entry-level graphics card based on the Navi 24 chip (RDNA 2  architecture) manufactured in the modern 6nm process. It features 1024 cores (16 CUs - compute units) and 4 GB of fast GDDR6 graphics memory connected with a 64 Bit memory bus. The chip also includes 16 MB Infinity Cache. The game clock speed is specified at 2560 MHz. Compared to the RX 6500M, the 6550M offers an increased core clock (+17%) but the memory bus i cut in half (64 versus 128 Bit).

The performance should be slightly higher than an average RX 6500M, as long as the memory bandwidth reduction wont has a too big impact.

The Navi 24 chip is manufactured at TSMC in the modern 6nm process and should offer a good energy efficiency. The RX6550M is specified at a TDP of 50 - 80 Watt and therefore best suited for normal multimedia laptops.

AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT

The AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT is a mobile high-end graphics card for gaming laptops. It uses the Navi 22 chip based on the new RDNA 2 architecture. It uses all 2,560 shaders (= 40 CUs), 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs and therefore is similar to the desktop Radeon RX 6700 XT. The 192 Bit memory system connects 12 GB GDDR6 with 18 Gbps memory speed. Furthermore, the RX6850MXT includes 96 MB Infinity Cache. AMD specified 2.463 GHz game clock for 13.3 TFLOPS theoretical performance (SP) at a TDP of 135-165 Watt. The difference to the previous RX 6800M is the slightly increased clock speed of the CPU and GPU.

The gaming performance of the RX 6850M XT should be slightly faster than the old RX 6800M which positioned itself between a RTX 3070 and 3080 for laptops. For 

The Navi 22 chip is manufactured at TSMC in the modern 7nm process.