AMD either has started to provide Japan-based add-in board (AIB) partners with quantities of Polaris 12 GPUs, or a company has unearthed piles of old stocks, allowing them to release new Radeon RX 550 graphics cards. Hermitage Akihabara reports that AMD's 2017 vintage low-end GPUs have recently become available in Japan at least four major retailers/etailers.
At the time of writing, the AMD Radeon RX 550 re-release might be widespread in Japan, but it is limited to an AIB whose brand name translates to "Expert-Oriented." The RX 550 initially launched in 2GB and 4GB varieties, and the Expert-Oriented model is just the 4GB version, which is one small blessing in 2022.
Another essential quality of the Expert-Oriented Radeon RX 550 is its size. The "RD-RX550-E4GB / LP" measures just 167mm in length, 68mm tall, and 16mm thick, so it is a single-slot, low-profile design. While the photos only show the card with a full-height bracket attached, if you squint at the Japanese text on the packaging label, you can see that extra LP bracket in the box. Key specs of this Expert-Oriented AMD Radeon RX550, which runs at stock clocks, are tabulated below, alongside its Polaris brethren.
Other details about the Japanese released card that you might like to know are that it features just two outputs, an HDMI 2.1 x1, and a DVD-D x1. No DP ports here.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Radeon RX 580 | Radeon RX 570 | Radeon RX 560 | Radeon RX 550 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Code-name | Ellesmere XT | Ellesmere | Baffin | Lexa |
| Shader Units | 2304 | 2048 | 1024 | 512 |
| Texture Units | 144 | 128 | 64 | 32 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 16 | 16 |
| Transistor Count | 5.7 Billion | 5.7 Billion | 3 Billion | 2.2 Billion |
| Base Clock / Boost Clock | 1257 MHz / 1340 MHz | 1168 MHz / 1244 MHz | 1175 MHz / 1275 MHz | 1100 MHz / 1183 MHz |
| Memory | Up To 8GB GDDR5 @ 8 Gb/s 256-bit | Up To 8GB GDDR5 @ 7 Gb/s 256-bit | Up To 4GB GDDR5 @ 7 Gb/s 128-bit | Up To 4GB GDDR5 @ 7 Gb/s 128-bit |
| TDP | 185W | 150W | 80W | 50W |
You might well be wondering about the performance of the RX 550. Luckily, Tom's Hardware has an extensive 13-page review of this GPU from released in April 2017. If you click through that link, you can check out how well this 50W card performed in Battlefield 1, Doom, Dota 2, and more against its contemporary rivals.
AMD proudly claimed that the RX 550 was three or four times faster in gaming than Intel integrated graphics (HD 530) at the time of its launch. However, iGPUs have moved on, even if desktop GPUs are moving back in time. A quick dig through Geekbench Vulkan scores reveals that the RX 550 achieves about 15,900 points, but an iGPU like the RX Vega 11 graphics can reach ~14,900, and the Intel Iris Xe Max ~14,737. It still seems quite a good choice against the Nvidia GeForce GT 1030, though, which only gets ~10,200 points in the same Vulkan tests.
Pricing
Before signing off on this story about the reanimated Polaris 12 GPU, we must look at the price. Perhaps this is the saddest part of this tale – as we can see from the sticker on the Japan retail box, these old low-power graphics cards are selling for 17,600 Japanese Yen, which is about $155.
A few months after the April 2017 launch, Tom's Hardware looked at the best prices you could find a Radeon RX 550 graphics card for, and it was widely available between $80 and $100, depending on memory quota, brand, and cooler.
