AMD Radeon RX 5500 tested - low-power replacement for RX 580

AMD’s major investment in 7 nanometers got off to a flying start at the beginning of the year with Radeon VII, while July offered the launch of both the Ryzen 3000 and new graphics cards manufactured on the shrunken node. The cards in question are thus Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT, native to the upper part of the price and performance segment.

Contents hide

1 Unofficial reference copies in the test systems

1.1 AMD’s specifications for the Radeon RX 5000 series

2 Relatively energy-efficient Radeon RX 580 successor

2.1 Read SweClocker’s tests of more recent graphics cards:

2.2 Related posts:

Recently, Nvidia has rolled out graphics cards for a more wallet-friendly segment, but in this category, AMD currently only offers aging Polaris and Radeon RX 500 series. However, this will change with the unveiled “Navi” model RX 5500, but the company has not revealed when the card can actually be purchased. German Heise and Techpowerup have now published early tests of the product.

Since the unveiling in October, AMD has put the lid on, but the Radeon RX 5500 is available in a few pre-built computers. Through OEM manufacturers, the two technology sites have put their hands on the entry-level model from the red team’s “Navi” family, which in the tested version has 4 GB of GDDR6 memory. The card must also come in a version with double the amount of memory.

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Unofficial reference copies in the test systems

Both tests do not refer to AMD’s official reference cards, but they are variants with clock frequencies at the same levels. Techpowerup presents, among other things, that the test copy is signed PCPartner – the same manufacturer that produces the reference cards in ordinary cases. In addition, the general design of the card and the included coolers are said to be of a high standard and the temperatures are constantly below 70 ° Celsius.

AMD’s specifications for the Radeon RX 5000 series

	RX 5700 XT	RX 5700	RX 5500
Technical	7 nm TSMC	7 nm TSMC	7 nm TSMC
Circuit	Navi 10	Navi 10	Navi 14
Circuit surface	251 mm²	251 mm²	158 mm²
Transistors	10.3 billion	10.3 billion	6.4 billion
Architecture	RDNA	RDNA	RDNA
Streamproc.	2 560 st.	2 304 st.	1 408 st.
Texture units	160 st.	144 st.	88 st.
Raster units	64 st.	64 st.	32 st.
Clock frequency	1 605 MHz	1 465 MHz	?*
Playing frequency	1 755 MHz	1 625 MHz	1 717 MHz
Turbo frequency (max frequency)	1 905 MHz	1 725 MHz	1 845 MHz
Computational power	9 754 GFLOPS	7 949 GFLOPS	5 196 GFLOPS
Memory bus	256-bit	256-bit	128-bit
Memory amount	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	4 / 8 GB GDDR6
Memory frequency	14 000 MHz	14 000 MHz	14 000 MHz
Memory bandwidth	448 GB/s	448 GB/s	224 GB/s
Power supply	8+6-pin	8+6-pin	8-pin
TBP	225 W	180 W	150 W
Rec. Award	$399	$349	?

* AMD no longer communicates the base frequency of graphics cards as it is “uninteresting”.

Heise tested the Radeon RX 5500 in the 3DMark Fire Strike synthetic test with a result of just over 12,000 points, marginally worse than a factory overclocked RX 580. With a solid test suite consisting of games, Techpowerup reached a similar conclusion, where the older card generally performs two percent better in resolution 1,920 × 1,080 pixels.

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Heise also tests a few games, more specifically Far Cry 5 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and like Techpowerup’s results from the same titles, about 60 frames per second (FPS) apply. According to the tests from the latter, the card offers an average of 66 FPS at a resolution of 1,080p. In higher-resolution 2,560 × 1,440 and 3,840 × 2,160 pixels, 46 FPS, respectively, can be seen instead of 46.

Relatively energy-efficient Radeon RX 580 successor

The sites’ conclusions about the Radeon RX 5500 are thus that it is a worthy replacement for Polaris, as a result of a significantly lower power consumption and similar performance. In the synthetic test Furmark, the card lands around 130 watts. It is admittedly on a par with the more competent Geforce GTX 1660 from Nvidia, but the step up to just over 200 watts for the RX 580 shows that energy efficiency has been significantly improved.

Since the newcomer has not yet been released as a loose component, the two technology sites can only predict the price, where Heise believes that the card should land well below 200 euros, ie below 2,100 kronor. Techpowerup writes that the model will be interesting if a price point of 160 USD or lower is reached, which corresponds to around 1,900 kronor including VAT.

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In conclusion, it can be added that Nvidia recently rolled out the Super variant of the Geforce GTX 1650 on the market, which is listed at Swedish retailers for around SEK 2,000. This card also appears in Techpowerup’s results, and is said to be on average five percent sharper than AMD’s freshman. At present, it is unclear when the RX 5500 will be available in trade and what the price will be.