Dota 2 (Vulkan)
Medium Results
Dota 2 yields similar results as Civilization VI, illustrating that the Radeons all behave similarly in their triumph over Intel’s HD Graphics 530.
An almost-76% advantage proves that Radeon RX 550 is a big upgrade over an integrated GPU at 1920x1080. But we wouldn’t expect Polaris 12 to lead AMD’s other cards in a comparison like this. What's going on there?
In order to generate usable results for our Core i3 host processor, quality dropped to the second-lowest preset. Let’s pull Intel’s graphics out of the list, max out Dota 2’s quality slider, and see if the Radeons land in the same order.
Best Looking Results
A 15% slow-down brings Radeon RX 550 back below the other two cards, though it’s still plenty playable averaging 60 FPS. We do record some big frame time spikes, but they register on the other cards as well.
The fact that AMD’s Radeon RX 460 only gives up 2% of its performance shifting to Dota 2’s top quality setting suggests a host processing bottleneck. In other words, generating higher frame rates calls for something faster than a Core i3.
MORE: Best Graphics Cards
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This is an 85$ GPU, competing with more the likes of a GT 740. So don't expect good details at such a low price point. $30 GPUs are worse than IGPUs BTW.
However, you can still find GTX 750s and 750 tis used for the price of a 550 and it performs much better.
Its hard to buy a card that you know can't keep up with the consoles. What happens when a big game comes out and you don't have the horse power to actually play it? The 460 and 560 can keep up, but the 550 might he left behind.
Save your pennies for another couple weeks and buy something better, its worth the wait
On a side note, images finally load correctly using Firefox on Android.
That's the value proposition that should be explored. the A10 w. integrated, or the 550 discreet.
Keep in mind that out of that $80 MSRP, there is a ~60% distributor and retailer markup on the manufacturer's own price, so the manufacturer itself only sees ~$50 of it to cover DRAM, GPU chip, PCB, support components, HSF, assembly, testing, packaging, R&D, marketing, gross profit margin, etc. In other words, manufacturers barely break even on those and don't want you to buy them unless your choice boils down to either that or nothing. They'd much prefer that you buy the RX560 for $20-30 more which translates to $10-20 more gross profit for the manufacturer.
Who are you going to get an alternative sub-$100 GPU from? Nvidia has bailed out of that market altogether to focus on $150+ (launch-time MSRP) GPUs.