Radeon RX 550 Linux Benchmarks: $89 Polaris GPU On Open-Source

And then lastly some overall power consumption and thermal figures across the multiple OpenGL tests on Linux:

The Radeon RX 550 is available today for those wanting a Polaris GPU and not wanting to spend more than $100 USD: this RX 550 card I purchased for testing can be found for $89 USD on Amazon.com. This is great if you want something based on a newer GPU architecture and for very cheap while being backed by open-source drivers, but that's about it. If the driver being open/closed-source is indifferent to you, there is much better performance-per-Watt and performance-per-dollar in going for the GeForce GTX 1050 series, with pricing starting out at $99 USD+. Across the board the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 series offers noticeably better performance than the RX 550 used for testing. Compared to other Radeon GPUs, the RX 460 was also offering greater value at similar pricing levels.

If you do end up finding your hands on a Radeon RX 550, do keep in mind that if using Mesa 17.1/17.2-dev you will need to be using Mesa Git since the crucial Polaris 12 fix only landed in Git code yesterday. Additionally, only on Mesa 17.2-dev Git as of hours ago is the Polaris 12 support within the RADV Vulkan driver.

Stay tuned for RX 550 AMDGPU-PRO vs. Open and RADV tests, among other Polaris 12 Linux benchmarks, in the days ahead.