GeForce MX550: FPS benchmarks and laptop guide

The GeForce MX550 is the 2021 successor to the MX450 — the same 25W thin-laptop formula with more bandwidth and a higher catalog ranking. This guide covers its 16 benchmarked games at 1080p on the high preset and the 43 catalog models that carry it.

Where the GeForce MX550 sits in 2026

A catalog score of 49.1 ranks it 128th of 341 — fourteen places above its MX450 predecessor. The neighbors show how far the thin-GPU class has climbed: the RX 6500M (49.6) and Radeon 780M pair (49.4/49.3) above, the GTX 1650 Max-Q (48.6), RX 6600S (48.4) and Radeon 680M (47.6) below. The MX550 now ranks level with genuine mid-tier gaming silicon of a few years ago — and ahead of every iGPU except AMD's best.

What the chip brings

Turing (TU117SB) on 12nm: 1024 CUDA cores at up to 1320MHz, 2GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit bus with 96GB/s of bandwidth, 25W envelope, 2.7 teraflops peak. Public benchmarks: PassMark 4419, Time Spy 2470, Fire Strike 6126, compute at 32369 (Vulkan) and 34068 (OpenCL) — a clean step up from the MX450 across every axis that matters for a small card.

FPS in games at 1080p

At the high preset: DOTA 2 at 111, Valorant at 95, Fortnite at 60, Counter-Strike 2 at 55, The Witcher 3 at 50, Forza Horizon 5 at 47, Battlefield 5, Far Cry 5 and Forza Horizon 4 at 45 each. The heavy modern tier is where the 2GB buffer bites: Cyberpunk 2077, the Resident Evil 4 remake and Metro Exodus at 21 each. Compared with the MX450, the gain is consistent — roughly a tier up the table for the same wattage.

Laptops that carry it

The 43-model roster is the 2023 business generation, twelve shown: Dell Latitude 5540/5440 at $524/509, Latitude 3540 at $210, ThinkPad L14 Gen 4 at $447, T16 Gen 2 at $769, T14 Gen 4 at $779, the ThinkPad E16/E14 Gen 5/L15 Gen 4 trio at $886, Vostro 14/15 at $886 and Inspiron 15 3530 at $553. Fleet medians: best-CPU 66.4, gaming index 46, energy efficiency 83.9, mobility 64 — a full point ahead of the MX450 generation on efficiency. The $210 Latitude 3540 entry makes this the cheapest route to a dGPU-class game table in the catalog.

Bottom line

The MX550 is the refined version of the thin-GPU idea: more bandwidth, more ranking, same 25W. For 2023-vintage business machines it delivers high-settings esports and medium-settings modern titles, and the wide fleet means bargain listings appear regularly. The 2GB buffer remains the boundary — within it, this is one of the best value-per-watt cards in the used market.