Radeon HD 8550 OEM vs Quadro NVS 420
Primary details
GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.
| Place in the ranking | not rated | not rated |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | not in top-100 |
| Architecture | Tesla (2006−2010) | TeraScale 2 (2009−2015) |
| GPU code name | G98 | Turks |
| Market segment | Workstation | Desktop |
| Release date | 20 January 2009 (15 years ago) | 25 October 2013 (11 years ago) |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $131.43 | no data |
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 | 8 | 480 |
| Core clock speed | 550 MHz | 650 MHz |
| Number of transistors | 210 million | 716 million |
| Manufacturing process technology | 65 nm | 40 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 40 Watt | 60 Watt |
| Texture fill rate | 4.400 | 15.60 |
| Floating-point processing power | 0.0224 TFLOPS | 0.624 TFLOPS |
| ROPs | 4 | 8 |
| TMUs | 8 | 24 |
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 1.0 x16 | PCIe 2.0 x16 |
| Width | 1-slot | 1-slot |
| 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 | GDDR3 | GDDR3 |
| Maximum RAM amount | 256 MB | 1 GB |
| Memory bus width | 64 Bit | 128 Bit |
| Memory clock speed | 700 MHz | 800 MHz |
| Memory bandwidth | 11.2 GB/s | 25.6 GB/s |
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 | No outputs | 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x VGA |
| HDMI | - | + |
API compatibility
List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.
| DirectX | 11.1 (10_0) | 11.2 (11_0) |
| Shader Model | 4.0 | 5.0 |
| OpenGL | 3.3 | 4.4 |
| OpenCL | 1.1 | 1.2 |
| Vulkan | N/A | N/A |
| CUDA | 1.1 | - |
Pros & cons summary
| Recency | 20 January 2009 | 25 October 2013 |
| Maximum RAM amount | 256 MB | 1 GB |
| Chip lithography | 65 nm | 40 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 40 Watt | 60 Watt |
NVS 420 has 50% lower power consumption.
HD 8550 OEM, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 4 years, a 300% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 62.5% more advanced lithography process.
We couldn't decide between Quadro NVS 420 and Radeon HD 8550 OEM. We've got no test results to judge.
Be aware that Quadro NVS 420 is a workstation graphics card while Radeon HD 8550 OEM is a desktop one.
Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.
Comparisons with similar GPUs
We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.
