AMD Radeon RX 550 (Laptop) vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile vs AMD Radeon RX 560X (Laptop)

AMD Radeon RX 550 (Laptop)

The AMD Radeon RX 550 is mobile mid-range graphics card for laptops based on the Polaris 12 chip . It is manufactured in an improved 14 nm FinFET process at Globalfoundries or Samsung. The Polaris 12 chip (codename Lexa) is a smaller chip than the Polaris 11 and 21 and uses the improved 14nm process that allows higher clock rates than the first generation (Radeon RX 400 series). It features 640 shaders (10 CUs) and (at least in the Pavilion 15t) all cores are activated in the mobile version (where 512 are activated in the desktop RX 550).

According to the specified peak performance, the chip should be similar fast as a Radeon Pro 455 in the MacBook Pro 2016. In our tests it reaches the Radeon Pro 455 and bests the Nvidia GeForce MX150, but stays behind the GeForce GTX 1050.

The features of the Radeon RX 550 are identical to the faster RX 460 and all other Polaris chips. See more details on the Polaris architecture here.

The power envelope of the faster Radeon Pro 460 is rated at 35 Watt according to the AMD blog post. In our tests with The Witcher 3, the GPU needed in the Pavilion 15t 80 Watt and positiones itself between the much more power efficient MX150 and the GTX 1050.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile

The mobile Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is a graphics card for high end laptops. It is based on the Pascal architecture and manufactured in 16 nm FinFET at TSMC. The GPU is using the smaller GP106 chip. Compared to the desktop version of the GTX 1060, the laptop version offers the same amount of shaders but slightly lower clock rates. The TDP is slightly less than the old GTX 970M (predecessor).

For thin and light laptops Nvidia offer a Max-Q called version of the GTX 1060 with lower TDP and also significantly lower performance. Sadly this variant im sold with the same GTX 1060 name, making it hard to judge the performance.

The performance of the mobile GTX 1060 is a few percent below a reference GTX 1060 desktop card. In our benchmark so far (no max-Q version) the mobile GTX 1060 was somewhere between -1 and -16% slower than a desktop variant. A comprehensive review of the dekstop GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition with 6 GB GDDR5 can be found here. Therefore, the card is most suited for Full HD or WQHD gaming in high to maximum details (see benchmarks below).

The GP106 chip is produced in 16nm FinFET at TSMC and offers a range of new features, like DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and improved H.265 video de- and encoding (PlayReady 3.0). A list of improvements and features can be found in our article on the Pascal architecture.

The power consumption is specified with a TGP of 80 Watt and therefore slightly below the old GTX 970M. Since summer 2017 a low power variant (Max-Q) is available for thin and light laptops with reduced performance and a lower TGP of 60 - 70 Watt.

AMD Radeon RX 560X (Laptop)

The AMD Radeon RX 560X for laptops (RX 560X Mobile) is a mid-range Polaris 11 / 21 gaming graphics card for laptops. Compared to the slightly older Radeon RX 560 for laptops (see for benchmarks), the RX 560X features only slightly altered clock speeds but should perform quite similar. Offers 1024 shader cores and a usual clock speed of 1175 - 1275 MHz. More information on the Polaris architecture and its features can be found here.

Currently AMD sells the mobile Radeon RX 560X with 4 GB GDDR5 (128 Bit) and a TDP of 60 - 80 Watt for around 50 - 60 Dollars to laptop manufacturers.