Radeon 550X vs HD 8490 OEM

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the rankingnot rated704
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiencyno data5.15
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)GCN 4.0 (2016−2020)
GPU code nameCaicosLexa
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date23 July 2013 (11 years ago)27 March 2019 (5 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 cores160512
Core clock speed875 MHz1082 MHz
Boost clock speedno data1218 MHz
Number of transistors370 million2,200 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm14 nm
Power consumption (TDP)35 Watt50 Watt
Texture fill rate7.00038.98
Floating-point processing power0.28 TFLOPS1.247 TFLOPS
ROPs416
TMUs832

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).

InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16PCIe 3.0 x8
Length168 mm145 mm
Width1-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectorsNoneNone

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 typeDDR3GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount1 GB2 GB
Memory bus width64 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed900 MHz1750 MHz
Memory bandwidth14.4 GB/s112.0 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 Connectors1x DVI, 1x DisplayPort1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
HDMI-+

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.2 (11_0)12 (12_0)
Shader Model5.06.4
OpenGL4.44.6
OpenCL1.22.0
VulkanN/A1.2.131

Pros & cons summary


Recency 23 July 2013 27 March 2019
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 2 GB
Chip lithography 40 nm 14 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 35 Watt 50 Watt

HD 8490 OEM has 42.9% lower power consumption.

Radeon 550X, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 5 years, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 185.7% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 8490 OEM and Radeon 550X. We've got no test results to judge.


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

Vote for your favorite

Do you think we are right or mistaken in our choice? Vote by clicking "Like" button near your favorite graphics card.


AMD Radeon HD 8490 OEM
Radeon HD 8490 OEM
AMD Radeon 550X
Radeon 550X

Comparisons with similar GPUs

We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.

Community ratings

Here you can see the user ratings of the compared graphics cards, as well as rate them yourself.


3.9 356 votes

Rate Radeon HD 8490 OEM on a scale of 1 to 5:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
3.2 13 votes

Rate Radeon 550X on a scale of 1 to 5:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Questions & comments

Here you can ask a question about this comparison, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.