Radeon HD 6550A vs Radeon R7 M270

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 6550A and Radeon R7 M270, 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 R7 M270, check out specs charts below.

Radeon R7 M270 is a Laptop Graphics Card

Note: Radeon R7 M270 is only used in laptop graphics. It has lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Radeon R7 M270 here:

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 6550A Radeon R7 M270
Power consumption (TDP) 35 Watt
Interface MXM-A (3.0) PCIe 3.0 x8
Memory type GDDR3 Not Listed
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB
Display Connectors No outputs No outputs
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  • Radeon HD 6550A is connected by MXM-A (3.0), and Radeon R7 M270 uses PCIe 3.0 x8 interface.
  • Radeon HD 6550A is used in Desktops, and Radeon R7 M270 - in Laptops.
  • Radeon HD 6550A is build with TeraScale 2 architecture, and Radeon R7 M270 - with GCN.
  • Core clock speed of Radeon R7 M270 is 275 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 6550A.
  • Radeon HD 6550A is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon R7 M270 - by 28 nm process technology.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 0−1 0−1
QHD / 1440p 0−1 0−1
low / 720p 1−2 1−2
medium / 1080p 0−1 0−1
Radeon HD 6550A and Radeon R7 M270 have the same average FPS in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 6550A Radeon R7 M270
Architecture TeraScale 2 GCN
Code name Pinewood Opal XT / Mars
Type Desktop Laptop
Release date 7 February 2011 7 January 2014
Pipelines 480 384
Core clock speed 550 MHz 825 MHz
Transistor count 627 million 950 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 13.20 19.80
Floating-point performance 624.0 gflops 633.6 gflops
Memory bus width 128 Bit
Memory clock speed 1600 MHz
Memory bandwidth 25.6 GB/s 28.8 GB/s
Shared memory -
DirectX 11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model 5.0 5.1
OpenGL 4.4 4.4
OpenCL 1.2 Not Listed
Vulkan N/A
FreeSync +
Bus support PCIe 3.0
Laptop size medium sized
HD3D +
PowerTune +
DualGraphics +
ZeroCore +
Switchable graphics +
Mantle +
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