Radeon HD 6550A vs Radeon HD 7970

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 6550A and Radeon HD 7970, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon HD 6550A stacks up against Radeon HD 7970, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 6550A Radeon HD 7970
Power consumption (TDP) 35 Watt 300 Watt
Interface MXM-A (3.0) PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin
Memory type GDDR3 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 3 GB
Display Connectors No outputs 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 7970 has 757% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 6550A.
  • Radeon HD 6550A is connected by MXM-A (3.0), and Radeon HD 7970 uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • Radeon HD 7970 has 1 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 6550A.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 6550A is build with TeraScale 2 architecture, and Radeon HD 7970 - with GCN.
  • Radeon HD 6550A is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon HD 7970 - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 6550A is 225 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 7970.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 0−1 35−40
ultra / 1080p 21−24
QHD / 1440p 0−1 16−18
4K / 2160p 10−11
low / 720p 1−2 60−65
medium / 1080p 0−1 40−45
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 7970 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 6100% more, than Radeon HD 6550A.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 6550A Radeon HD 7970
Architecture TeraScale 2 GCN
Code name Pinewood Tahiti XT
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 7 February 2011 22 December 2011
Pipelines 480 2048
Core clock speed 550 MHz
Boost Clock 925 MHz
Transistor count 627 million 4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 13.20 118.4
Floating-point performance 624.0 gflops 3,789 gflops
Length 274 mm
Memory bus width 128 Bit 384 Bit
Memory clock speed 1600 MHz 1375 MHz
Memory bandwidth 25.6 GB/s 264 GB/s
Shared memory -
DirectX 11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model 5.0 5.1
OpenGL 4.4 4.6
OpenCL 1.2 1.2
Vulkan N/A
FreeSync +
Bus support PCIe 2.1 x16
HDMI +
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 485 Mh/s
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Design reference
CrossFire +
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