AMD's Radeon RX 570 and RX 580 have already dominated the low-end market of the enthusiast graphics card market. Therefore, the successor products released in the form of RX 5500 earlier this year caused a lot of interest. Since then, the RX 5500 has debuted as an option for pre-installed desktops from vendors such as Acer and HP, but the promise of a standalone card has never been achieved. Today, this is changing as a series of custom designs from AMD partners debut under the new name Radeon RX 5500 XT.
So what's the difference between the RX 5500 and 5500 XT? Looking at the reference specifications, there are only a few changes-the target power of the XT is 130W, while the target power of the vanilla model is 110W, and the clock speed is adjusted. However, custom boards made by companies like PowerColor, MSI and Sapphire are free to make their own modifications, and both cards AMD sent us for review are overclocked models with powerful thermal solutions and higher TDP.
Like the previous RX 570 and RX 580, there are two versions of 4GB and 8GB, the price is 159 pounds / 169 dollars and 179 pounds / 199 dollars. AMD provides every one for testing: our 4GB model is a sapphire pulse overclocked to 1815MHz, while the 8GB model is a PowerColor Red Dragon running at 1830MHz. One of the biggest questions we want to answer in this review is whether the 8GB model is worth the extra cost, as the 4GB option is as powerful as its big brother. By testing a series of games at different resolutions, we can show how important the additional VRAM is-and it makes no difference at all.
The reference RX 5500 graphics card used by OEMs is a two-slot 18cm design with a single fan, two DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, and HDMI 2.0b, but the custom RX 5500 XT design can freely deviate significantly-usually. The Sapphire Pulse 4GB model is also two slots, but it is longer at 24cm and provides space for two fans and more ports: three DisplayPort and one HDMI. At the same time, the PowerColor Red Dragon 8GB card is closer to 23 cm, with two fans and one of the three most popular ports: DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI-D. The two custom designs also include a backplane not found on the reference RX 5500 and an eight-pin auxiliary power input.
| RX 5500 XT | RX 5700 | RX 5700 XT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| unit of measurement | twenty two | 36 | 40 |
| Stream processor | 1408 | 2304 | 2560 |
| Leaderboard | 5.2 | 7.95 | 9.75 |
| Game clock | 1717 MHz | 1625 MHz | 1755 MHz |
| Boost clock | 1845 MHz | 1725MHz | 1905 MHz |
| memory | 4GB / 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory interface | 128-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Technology Development Plan | 130 watts | 180 watts | 225 watts |
| Suggested retail price | $ 169 / $ 199 | $ 349 | $ 399 |
In terms of competition, the RX 5500 XT faces severe challenges. First of all, it seems to be an alternative to AMD's Polaris 10 series GCN graphics card, but it takes advantage of the 7nm production node to fundamentally reduce the chip size, presumably to make cheaper and more flexible products. product. The Navi 14 chip used in the 5500 series is only 158mm2 Size, up to 232mm2 Can be found in 14nm / 12nm Polaris products. TDP has also been greatly reduced. This is a significant improvement in the efficiency of the 7-nanometer process, leading to cooler, more efficient products that can work in a smaller form factor that Polaris 10 has never had before.
However, in terms of raw performance, we need to open our eyes to this level. The RX 580 and RX 590 each have 36 computing units based on the GCN architecture. AMD's new Navi technology is much more efficient, but fundamentally, it only uses 22 CUs-despite their significant increase in clock frequency and radical architectural improvements, there are still large gaps .
Then there are Nvidia products to consider. The entry-level GTX 1650 has never really become a contender in the 1080p gaming space-not when the Polaris-based RX 570 is the same or cheaper and more powerful. However, the GTX 1650 Super 4GB (its replacement) has a big increase in frame rate, making it more consistent with the previous generation GTX 1060 6GB-just with less VRAM. Although the 1650 Super is the main competitor emphasized by AMD, the pricing of the RX 5500 XT in its 8GB version actually brings it closer to the more expensive GTX1660. Nvidia offers less memory but better performance than the GTX 1650. Super important.
But AMD faces many opportunities: the performance of the quad-core RX 5500 XT may exceed that of the GTX 1650 Super, and the powerful computing power is enough to compete with the GTX 1660, while providing more memory at a lower price. The 1660 comes with a higher-end 8GB version. But, ignore the elephant in the room: GTX 1660 Super is our negligence. It's more expensive than AMD's release and is still a 6GB card. But it's much faster, and just as important as the importance of pricing in this market, one might argue that the price to performance ratio is just as important-not even as important. With all this in mind, let's dive into some benchmarks.
AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT vs GTX 16 series analysis
