AMD Radeon RX 6500M vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU

AMD Radeon RX 6500M

The AMD Radeon RX 6500M 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 128 Bit memory bus. The chip also includes 16 MB Infinity Cache. The game clock speed is specified at 2191 MHz. AMD specifies the theoretical performance at 9.97 TFLOPS (half precision +60% vs 6300M) and 4.98 TFLOPS (single precision). The 6500M supports Smart Access Memory and SmartShift Technology.

The performance should be similar to a mobile RTX 3050 (according to AMD) and therefore best suited for 1080p gaming with high settings.

The Navi 24 chip is manufactured at TSMC in the modern 6nm process and should offer a good energy efficiency. The RX6500M is specified at a TDP of 50 Watt and therefore best suited for normal multimedia laptops.

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).