Last month, AMD publicly acknowledged that 4GB graphics cards (opens in new tab) are a thing of the past, saying it demonstrated a performance uplift of up to 24% on the 8GB variant of the Radeon RX 5500 XT (opens in new tab) over the 4GB variant. But this hasn't stopped Asus from releasing the Phoenix Radeon 550 (spotted via @momomo_us (opens in new tab)).
The Phoenix Radeon 550 (opens in new tab) (PH-550-2G) is likely an attempt at getting rid of older silicon rather than making the best graphics cards (opens in new tab) on the market. It arrives with a compact and dual-slot design. With a length of 19.2cm, the graphics card caters to small form-factor (SFF) PC builds.
Asus endowed the Phoenix Radeon 550 with a simple cooling system that consists of a circular heatsink (opens in new tab) and a single dual-ball bearing cooling fan that boasts IP5X certification for dust resistance.
Inside, the Phoenix Radeon 550 packs AMD's Polaris 12 (codename Lexa) silicon, which is built with TSMC's 14nm process node. Lexa features 512 Stream Processors (SPs) that boost up to 1,183 MHz. On the memory side, the Phoenix Radeon 550 provides 2GB of 6 Gbps GDDR5 memory across a 64 bit memory interface. The reference specification for memory is 7 Gbps so Asus seems to be cutting some corners with the Phoenix Radeon 550 by sticking slower memory chips in it.
The Phoenix Radeon 550 can support up to three displays simultaneously, thanks to the graphics card's multiple outputs. Asus slapped a DVI-D port, HDMI 2.0b port and a DisplayPort 1.4 output on the graphics card.
The Radeon 550 is a 50W graphics card, so it doesn't depend on any PCIe (opens in new tab) power connectors to function properly. A 400W power supply (opens in new tab) is more than enough to supply the graphics card.
Asus hasn't revealed availability or pricing for the Phoenix Radeon 550 graphics card yet.
