ATI Radeon 8500 vs HD 8550M

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking973not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2011−2020)Rage 7 (2001−2006)
GPU code nameSunR200
Market segmentLaptopDesktop
Release date13 July 2014 (10 years ago)14 August 2001 (23 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 cores320no data
Core clock speed650 MHz275 MHz
Boost clock speed850 MHzno data
Number of transistors690 million60 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm150 nm
Power consumption (TDP)no data23 Watt
Texture fill rate17.002.200
Floating-point processing power0.544 TFLOPSno data
ROPs84
TMUs208

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).

Laptop sizemedium sizedno data
InterfacePCIe 3.0 x8AGP 4x
Widthno data1-slot
Supplementary power connectorsno dataNone

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 typeDDR3DDR
Maximum RAM amount1 GB64 MB
Memory bus width64 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed900 MHz275 MHz
Memory bandwidth14.4 GB/s8.8 GB/s
Shared memory-no data

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 ConnectorsNo outputs1x DVI, 1x VGA, 1x S-Video

API compatibility

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

DirectX12 (11_1)8.1
Shader Model5.1no data
OpenGL4.61.4
OpenCL1.2N/A
Vulkan1.2.131N/A

Pros & cons summary


Recency 13 July 2014 14 August 2001
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 64 MB
Chip lithography 28 nm 150 nm

HD 8550M has an age advantage of 12 years, a 1500% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 435.7% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 8550M and Radeon 8500. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that Radeon HD 8550M is a notebook card while Radeon 8500 is a desktop one.


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

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AMD Radeon HD 8550M
Radeon HD 8550M
ATI Radeon 8500
Radeon 8500

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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3.5 31 vote

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2.7 94 votes

Rate Radeon 8500 on a scale of 1 to 5:

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Questions & comments

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