Same Price? Who's better? Nvidia GT 1030 vs AMD Radeon RX550 Benchmark

Benchmarking the underdogs. Nvidia Geforce 1030 vs AMD's Radeon RX 550. Benched on an AMD FX 8320
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:56 Specs
01:18 Heaven
01:47 Superposition
02:00 Unreal Tournament 3
02:27 Fallout NV
03:03 Raft
03:22 Crysis
03:34 BeamNG
04:02 Portal 2
04:16 GTA SA
04:34 GTA IV
04:57 GTA V
05:54 Overclocking
06:16 Heaven OC Results
06:48 Raft OC Results
06:58 BeamNG OC Results
07:21 Crysis OC Results
07:37 Graphs
#amd
#nvidia
#geforce
#radeon
#benchmark

[@MichaeltheORIGINAL1]

I don't know what it is, I am a high-spec 4K gamer with a 4090, but something about watching those older low-end cards perform in more modern and older titles is just oddly interesting to me. Somehow, it is so much more fun to see what they are capable of than watching modern mid- or high-tier GPUs perform against each other. :D

[@JoseMariArceta]

It's the limitations that satisfy you. Seeing hardware so weak and tweaking it so much just to eek out just a little bit more performance is very satisfying haha.

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

Same for me.

[@MichaeltheORIGINAL1]

@@JoseMariArceta I absolutely agree with that sentiment!

[@bradl7439]

@@JoseMariArceta A more modern version of watching videos of 1980's 8 bit computers wondering how the hell they managed to squeeze so much out of 32kb of RAM.

[@martinkoyle]

I'd love to see the 550 overclocked higher like you said. If you're able to. Also going against the 1650, you'd be able to benchmark their encoding abilities.

[@MJ-mk8jg]

Great video, many thanks

[@ningyuanwang600]

One advantage of 1030 is the capability to decode vp9 video. This alone will make it much more useful as a daily driver. AMD once claimed that all the Polaris series GPU would support hybrid vp9 decoding, but they secretly removed that functionality from the driver back in 2017.

[@VGHOST008]

Huh? But why?

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

Good video. Keep it up!

[@jims_junk]

Thanks!

[@rickh8380]

Thanks for the info. I have a GT 1030 and use it mainly for video troubleshooting.

[@exaltedb]

I think this came down to whether the 550 had proper driver optimizations for a given game, as the ones that didn’t really liked to stutter

[@jims_junk]

Probably right

[@huseyinozdemir139]

Interesting GT 1030 seems to better in DX9 games expect GTA4 while RX550 better in DX11 games also i think using DXVK conversion and New vegas tick fix should improve performance in Fallout NV

[@MrEdioss]

Finally, overclock.

[@N0zer0]

The FX bottlenecked the results. Should have used a Ryzen system. As I Linux user, I would take the RX, regardless of the performance, because of drivers.

[@betara_indera_gunung_timur]

agreed. it is quite possible the 'bottleneck' he mentioned at 2:12 was exactly this. personally i would prefer the tests were done with a cpu from the same period, and that's either 1st gen ryzen, or 7th gen intel core (or 6th gen at least)

[@jims_junk]

Think the bottleneck is my own fault. I just posted a video about it and will be reposting an updated version of this video. The board I used in this video was only PCIE 2.0 and the 550 was a 3.0 card.

[@aku2dimensional]

I used a GT 1030 myself for about six years in an old HP SFF workstation, I bought the card new at Microcenter in 2017 for just $66.99. It's also the Asus 2G-CSM, but has a slightly different part number. Played games at 1080p on high or medium settings without much issue, frame rates were playable, but the card is very limited in what it can do. The RX 550 might have offered more flexibility with its 4GB VRAM, though they both seem to perform about the same. I needed something a little more powerful and now I have a Lenovo Thinkstation P520 with a GTX 1070, but I still use the 1030 whenever I need it. I'm currently using it to explore gaming on Linux using my old system.

[@jims_junk]

Totally agree. I currently use it in systems that need a temp gpu, like for testing. But I used it in a workbench pc and was really impressed with its performance for the price. It also ran very cool. I also used this exact gpu for many of the early videos on this channel. I could definitely see someone gaming on it in a low end system without trouble.

[@aku2dimensional]

@@jims_junk Indeed. It has great performance for the price, a little inflated now, but as long as your expectations are reasonable the 1030 can do it. I also used to render 4k video with it occasionally, though I mostly did 1080p videos because 4k would take longer and was unnecessary.

[@Super123456789Kuba]

I would also pick RX550, While GT 1030 sometimes is better at some games and benchmarks... It's 4 GB VRAM what ultimately wins. And DX11 performance.

[@infinity2z3r07]

interesting results. according to techpowerup rx 550 is on average 26% stronger than gt 1030

[@jims_junk]

I did some reading before doing the video and I found it depends on who you ask. Some places swear the 550 was better, others say the 1030. I'm thinking its the old ford/chevy debate. I think their actual performance is so similar that it depends on the game.

[@edmonddantes15]

I used a wx 3100 when the market was crazy due to crypto miners. From what I understand its basically a pro version of a 550. To be honest it served me well until I got something better, even managed to play some modern demanding titles with a decent FPS, at 720p low obviously but was still a decent experience.

[@jims_junk]

Might have to check that out. I don't have a lot of experience with AMD gpu's. At work and even home, I always used Nvidia. Not a fanboy or anything of Nvidia, just always worked out that way. Plus at work the software we used recommended nvidia cards.

[@foobar-9k]

Only the 2 GB model was ever near the price of the GT 1030 GDDR5 in my country, so I went with the latter. BTW, the GT 1030 benefits from being undervolted (flatten the freq/voltage curve in MSI Afterburner), as keeps power/temps lower, allowing it to boost above 1700 MHz consistently (I found this to be better than trying to push the GPU core freq just as high as possible).

[@10WA]

I'd request you add in the RX 640 in the RX 550 vs GTX 1650. The RX 640 is another AMD OEM readily available on ebay used for the same price as the RX 550 but has slightly better specs.

[@jims_junk]

Ok I'll take a look into that. I was kind of planning on just keeping the overclocking video short and simple. If I don't pickup a 640 by the time I do it, I'll see about maybe comparing it in the future.

[@REMYZEUS]

At that point you might as well get the 1050/1050ti or the 580 the price difference is minimal

[@Compact-Disc_700mb]

I have always kinda wanted a RX 550, I have been looking at a radeon pro wx 2100 which is the business grade version, due to lower power consumption which would be nice for my old optiplex. The wx 2100 is pretty cheap now too. Would be interested to see a comparison of the wx 2100 and rx 550 since the wx 2100 only has 2GB of VRAM and how it compares to the gt 1030.

[@ikaa-gx4dh]

I think amd would be better if you use a modded driver from amernime or R ID

[@stanb1455]

a processor that isn't bulldozer and either linux or modded windows drivers would help the RX 550 a bit

[@maciek6919]

PCIe was set to 1.1 on RX 550, so the stutter appear, and lack of performance on high FPS

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

I doubt that because the rx 550 doesn't come close to saturating PCI-e 1.0 bandwidth, if it did then overclocking would do little which wasn't the case. PCI-e 1.0 x16 lanes = PCI-e 2.0 at x8 lanes = PCI-e 3.0 at x4 lanes.

[@maciek6919]

​@@JamesSmith-sw3nk rx 550 have only 8 physical PCI lanes. Instead PCIe x8 3.0 max throughput 8.0 GB/s, card use PCIe x8 1.1 (because there is only 8 lanes) and max throughput is limited to 2GB/s. GT 1030 PCIe x4 2.0 max throughput is 2GB/s. It would be nice to check whether or not this thing cause stutter.

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

@@maciek6919 If you are referring to around the #01:10 mark with gpu-z read outs, Zwormz gaming has shown in multiple cards that gpu-z will show pci-e 1.1 until the card is under load then it will show it's proper pci-e usage. Jims Junk could quickly debunk (if he wants to) this by running a small Furmark window running with gpu-z running.

[@jims_junk]

@JamesSmith-sw3nk maybe I will :)

[@alphadog6970]

64bit bus on the 1030 oof. Please people don't do this to yourselfs😅

[@TheInternetHelpdeskPlays]

Whats the connection on the GT1030? Because the RX550 uses PCI-e x8. if the 1030 uses x16, that could explain the frame time difference on the 550 since moving the data in to the memory would be slower, but once its in the memory, you'd have the same fps averages.

[@AliceC993]

PCI-e 3.0 x4 - GTX 1050+ uses x16, 1030 and 1010 are limited to x4.

[@jims_junk]

I messed up. Just released a video explaining. But I'm going to redo this video and upload the fixed version. The 1030 is pcie 2.0 x8 and the 550 is pcie 3.0 x8 . I thought the motherboard I was using was a 3.0 but turns out it was only a 2.0. Dunno what I was thinking. BUT that was probably the bottleneck. So I"m redoing everything on another motherboard and will upload the updated video. Completely my fault.

[@ecchichanf]

>7:28 Default RX 550 runs with ~1065Mhz instead of 1219Mhz and the overclock with 1355Mhz. Both cards run with 100% utilization. I think your overclock fix the GPU Mhz for the GPU and you gain more than +130Mhz :3

[@jims_junk]

Default on this card is 1219

[@ecchichanf]

@@jims_junk In Crysis you can see the GPU Mhz. And the default RX 550 is not running with 1219Mhz. That what I mean. I think you can see also the actually GPU Mhz in GPU-Z.

[@jims_junk]

@@ecchichanf at 1:10 you can see gpuz shows 1219mhz . Like many other things it'll run at lower speeds to limit power consumption when full speed is not needed. Afterburner only updates that metric every couple seconds, so its probably bouncing between max and minimum very quickly.

[@ecchichanf]

@@jims_junk In Crysis Afterburner show only 1055-1080Mhz between 7:22 - 7:37. And the game runs at 100% utilization. But I think it's a Crysis thing.

[@Sam-K]

Personally, I'd go with neither as one can easily find an HD7850 (if not the HD7870/R9-370) for a similar price and that GPU is practically on par with PS4 vanilla's graphics. Of course, it's a full-height card that draws twice as much power (28nm versus 14nm) and requires auxiliary 6-pin PCIe connector as a result but if you can circumvent these issues (easier said than done for OEM machine owners, admittedly), it's a no brainer.

[@TylerDurden-oy2hm]

id look for a intel arc 310....even if it cost more

[@qfortynopeone5247]

So 1030 4gb better?

[@gejamugamlatsoomanam7716]

Nvidia is always the better choice. gt 1030 drivers ate better than the rx 550

[@jims_junk]

LOL Yeah, unless its Linux. Never had good luck with Nvidia cards on linux.

[@ejro3063]

which**, you don't refer to inanimate objects or brands as "who"

[@martinkoyle]

LMFAO . Get over yourself, its a title! Besides I think he was referring to AMD vs Nvidia.

[@ejro3063]

@@martinkoyle AMD vs Nvidia is still which

[@jims_junk]

I intentionally titled it that way.

[@homelessEh]

oo can the rx 550 do helldivers 2.