Asus Phoenix Radeon 550: Old Card Rises From the Ashes

News
By Les Pounder
published

Old tech made new.

ASUS Phoenix Radeon 550 GPU
(Image credit: Asus)

The Polaris architecture may be four years old, and also be two generations (Vega and Navi) behind the times but Asus have resurrected this product line with the Asus Phoenix Radeon 550 (PH-550-2G) which is based on the Polaris 12 GPU and comes with 2GB of GDDR5 RAM. The card is able to output to three screens at once via DVI, Displayport 1.4 and HDMI 2.0b which is capable of upto 4k at 60Hz but don’t expect to be gaming with this card, as it is based on an older architecture. This appears to be a budget card for compact builds.

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ASUS Phoenix Radeon 550 GPU
(Image credit: Asus)

The Asus Phoenix Radeon 550 looks to be a replacement to the now end of life Phoenix Radeon RX 550 released in 2017. The Asus Phoenix Radeon 550 has only half the RAM and with it only half the memory interface of the older Phoenix Radeon RX 550.

Right now there are no indications on price but we hope that it falls around the price of a used RX550, otherwise this card may languish in the warehouse.

Les Pounder
Les Pounder

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

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8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • King_V
    Wait, so yet ANOTHER version of the RX 550?

    I posted a table here, but now this version cuts it down even further?

    It's a 512-shader version, with only 2 GB of RAM, but the former 128-bit memory interface is now 64-bit, AND the memory clock is now 6000 instead of 7000. I suspect this will push performance below the GT 1030.

    They're going to have to sell this one REAL cheap if they don't want a bunch of GPU-shaped paperweights.
    Reply
  • cfbcfb
    I had an RX550 in my prebuilt and it honestly gamed just fine on a lot of lower end games, and even played Doom 2016 at 1080 with perfectly good performance. I ended up putting it in an HTPC.

    I think folks aren't understanding that gamers account for a very small percentage of PC users. This is a fine card, better than most if not all integrated parts, for multi monitor setups and home theater applications along with business applications usage.
    Reply
  • King_V
    cfbcfb said:
    I had an RX550 in my prebuilt and it honestly gamed just fine on a lot of lower end games, and even played Doom 2016 at 1080 with perfectly good performance. I ended up putting it in an HTPC.

    I think folks aren't understanding that gamers account for a very small percentage of PC users. This is a fine card, better than most if not all integrated parts, for multi monitor setups and home theater applications along with business applications usage.

    But which variant of the RX550 did you have? The one with 512 shaders, or 640 shaders? Either one of those could be equipped with 2GB or 4GB of 7000MHz GDDR5, with a 128-bit interface. In the hierarchy chart, the RX550-512 4GB is what I think was used, and it's ahead of the GT 1030. This new "even-further-cut-down" one, though...
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    King_V said:
    It's a 512-shader version, with only 2 GB of RAM, but the former 128-bit memory interface is now 64-bit, AND the memory clock is now 6000 instead of 7000. I suspect this will push performance below the GT 1030.
    Remember that there are cut-down DDR4 versions of the GT 1030 as well though, which only perform about half as fast as the regular GDDR5 version, while costing just as much...

    https://www.techspot.com/review/1658-geforce-gt-1030-abomination/
    Reply
  • King_V
    cryoburner said:
    Remember that there are cut-down DDR4 versions of the GT 1030 as well though, which only perform about half as fast as the regular GDDR5 version, while costing just as much...

    https://www.techspot.com/review/1658-geforce-gt-1030-abomination/

    Also pretty terrible. Call it the 1030LE or something.

    Though, AMD is kind of ridiculous with the now FIVE variants of the RX 550.
    Reply
  • Spectre4444
    On any given day you can find a used RX 570 with 3X the power of this 550 within $20 or $30 more - why would anyone EVER buy this at this price. Also even hinting that this is somehow a gaming capable card seems a bit of exaggeration.
    Reply
  • cfbcfb
    King_V said:
    But which variant of the RX550 did you have? The one with 512 shaders, or 640 shaders? Either one of those could be equipped with 2GB or 4GB of 7000MHz GDDR5, with a 128-bit interface. In the hierarchy chart, the RX550-512 4GB is what I think was used, and it's ahead of the GT 1030. This new "even-further-cut-down" one, though...
    Its an HP branded 2GB RX550, looks identical to the Dell branded one. Not sure how many shaders it has. They've both used this card for some time now, saw it for sale on Amazon going back a couple of years.
    Reply
  • Oregonstitch
    It’s the best single slot card for micro ATX.
    Reply