Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB – Review| Test | Hashrate| Set-up| Specs | Config. Comparison will be made: RX 480 vs RX 580 vs RX 5500 XT Vs RX 5700 vs RX 5700 XT anticipating the arrival of the Radeon RX 5500 series in early October, postponing the debut of the products on the market during the fourth quarter, AMD is finally ready to bring the Radeon RX 5500 XT, in version with 4 and 8 GB of memory.
The Radeon RX 5500 XT integrates one Navi 14 GPU based on Radeon DNA architecture (RDNA). Like the other Navi cards released so far, this solution too does not support ray tracing at the moment and it has no acceleration units dedicated to technology. The graphics processor is produced with process a 7 nanometers, it has 6.4 billion transistors and supports PCIe 4.0 – the die has a size of 158 mm2, less than the 221 mm2 of the Polaris GPU of the RX 480/580.
Compared to the RX 480, AMD claims that performance per watt is 60% better, with performance growing 12% against a 30% drop in consumption.
Inside the Navi GPU there are 22 Compute Units, for a total of 1408 stream processors able to guarantee a computing power up to 5.2 teraflops (single precision FP32). The GPU has a base frequency of 1067 MHz, a typical frequency (Game Clock) up to 1717 MHz (the Sapphire Pulse we tested reaches 1737 MHz), while the boost frequency is 1845 MHz.
The card is, as mentioned, equipped with 4 or 8 GB of type memory GDDR6 which operates at 14 Gbps, connected to a 128 bit bus. As for TBP – Total Board Power – there is talk of a value of 130 watts. We got the Sapphire Pulse RX 5500 XT 4 GB, equipped with an 8-pin PCIe connector which however is necessary on all RX 5500 XT. In the back we find three DisplayPort outputs and an HDMI.
Specification: Hashrate – RX 5500 XT 4GB
What is the target of the Radeon RX 5500 XT? It is proposed as a card to play very well in Full HD (1080p), where the RX 5700 series points to WQHD (1440p). The price indicated at launch by AMD is $ 169 (4GB) and $ 199 (8GB) for the United States, and these are tax-free prices. As for Italy, there were no official prices communicated by AMD, but we talk about this in the conclusions.
| RX 480 | RX 580 | RX 5500 XT | RX 5700 | RX 5700 XT | |
| Architecture | GCN | GCN | RDNA | RDNA | RDNA |
| Project | Polaris 10 | Polaris 20 | Ships 14 | Ships 10 | Ships 10 |
| Productive process | 14 nm | 14 nm | 7 nm | 7 nm | 7 nm |
| Transistor number | 5.7 billion | 5.7 billion | 6.4 billion | 10.3 billion | 10.3 billion |
| Die size | 232 mm2 | 232 mm2 | 158 mm2 | 251 mm2 | 251 mm2 |
| Compute Unit | 36 | 36 | 22 | 36 | 40 |
| Stream Processor | 2304 | 2304 | 1408 | 2304 | 2560 |
| Base Clock | 1120 MHz | 1257 MHz | 1607 MHz | 1465 MHz | 1605 MHz |
| Game Clock | – | – | 1717 MHz | 1625 MHz | 1755 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1266 MHz | 1340 MHz | 1845 MHz | 1725 MHz | 1905 MHz |
| FP32 performance | 5.8 TFLOPs | 6.17 TFLOPs | 5.2 TFLOPs | 7.95 TFLOPs | 9.75 TFLOPs |
| FP16 performance | 5.8 TFLOPs | 6.17 TFLOPs | 10.4 TFLOPs | 15.9 TFLOPs | 19.5 TFLOPs |
| Fill-rate texture | 182.3 GT / s | 193 GT / s | 162.4 GT / s | 248.4 GT / s | 304.8 GT / s |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 | 64 | 64 |
| Fill-rate pixels | 40.51 GP / s | 42.8 GP / s | 59 GP / s | 110.4 GP / s | 121.9 GP / s |
| Memory | 8 GB GDDR5 | 8 GDDR5 | 4/8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory clock | 8 Gbps | 8 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps |
| bandwidth | 256 GB / s | 256 GB / s | 224 GB / s | 448 GB / s | 448 GB / s |
| Bus | 256 bit | 256 bit | 128 bits | 256 bit | 256 bit |
| TBP | 150 W | 185 W | 130 W | 180 W | 225 W |
On the market you will not see a reference card as instead happened with the RX 5700, but a host of proposals from AMD partners from brands such as ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, Sapphire and XFX. The RX 5500 XT – like many other company cards so far – will also be offered with a bundle: in this case we talk about Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and three months of Xbox Game Pass. The game is worth around 50 euros, while the Xbox Game Pass is worth around 10 euros.
The new drivers
Two days ago AMD announced the new drivers Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Obviously we used them to test the new video card. You can read all the news in this article, but the highlights are:
- Completely renewed interface: a new more elegant and intuitive design to have full control of the graphics hardware Radeonfeatures, game settings, streaming services, and more.
- Radeon Boost: offers up to 23% average performance increase in fast-paced game scenarios, dynamically reducing image resolution, increasing framerates and improving fluidity – without noticeable changes in image quality.
- AMD Link: allows you to bring the game streaming outside your home, for high quality gameplay on smartphones or tablets from anywhere and at any time.
- Integer Display Scaling: improves the graphic quality of old games by scaling the image pixel by pixel from one pixel to four (or more), without affecting performance.
Test configuration
To know how we test video cards you can read this article.
| Processor | Intel Core i9-9900K (available here) |
| Motherboard | Asus ROG Z390 Maximus XI Hero (WiFi) (available here) |
| RAM | 2 × 8 GB DDR4 Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 3600 MHz (available here) |
| power supply | Sharkoon Silentstorm IceWind Black 750W |
| SSD | Crucial BX300 480 GB (available here) |
| sink | Noctua NH-U12A (available here) |
| Buffet | Dimastech Mini V1.0 |
| Driver | Nvidia GeForce 441.21 WHQL AMD Radeon Adrenalin 2020 Edition (19.12.2) |
Video cards compared
In this table, the specifications of the cards inserted within the graphs you see below. The whole Nvidia GeForce GTX 16 line, to which is added the new RX 5500 XT with 4 GB of memory and the “usual” RX 590.
| GTX 1660 Ti | GTX 1660 SUPER | GTX 1660 | GTX 1650 SUPER | GTX 1650 | GTX 1060 6GB | RX 5500 XT | RX 590 | |
| GPU | 12nm TU116-300 | 12nm TU116-300 | 12nm TU116 | 12nm TU116 | 12nm TU117-300 | 16 nm GP106-400-A1 | 7 nm Ships 14 | 12 nm Polaris 30 |
| CUDA Core | 1536 | 1408 | 1408 | 1280 | 896 | 1280 | 1408 | 2304 |
| TMU | 96 | 88 | 88 | 80 | 56 | 80 | 88 | 144 |
| ROPs | 48 | 48 | 48 | 32 | 32 | 48 | 32 | 32 |
| Base Clock | 1500 MHz | 1530 MHz | 1530 MHz | 1530 MHz | 1485 MHz | 1506 MHz | 1607 MHz | 1469 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1770 MHz | 1785 MHz | 1785 MHz | 1725 MHz | 1665 MHz | 1709 MHz | 1845 MHz | 1545 MHz |
| Memory clock | 12 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 8 Gbps | 12 Gbps | 8 Gbps | 8 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 8 Gbps |
| Memory | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR5 | 4GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR5 | 6 GB GDDR5 | 4 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR5 |
| Memory bus | 192-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit | 256-bit |
| bandwidth | 288 GB / s | 336 GB / s | 192 GB / s | 192 GB / s | 128 GB / s | 192.2 GB / s | 224 GB / s | 256 GB / s |
| TDP | 120W | 125W | 120W | 100W | 75W | 120W | 130W | 175 W |
| Suggested price in dollars (tax-free) | USD 279 | USD 229 | USD 219 | 160 USD | USD 149 | USD 299 | USD 169 | USD 279 |
| Launch date | February 22, 2019 | October 29, 2019 | March 14, 2019 | November 22, 2019 | April 23, 2019 | 19th July 2016 | December 12, 2019 | November 15, 2018 |
Performance Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB
According to AMD’s statements during a briefing in which we participated, the 8 GB model guarantees an average performance 10/15% higher than the 4 GB version: it goes from + 12% with Borderlands 3 with high details to + 24% with Wolfenstein II set to Ultra as you can see in the following slide. Much, however, depends on the game, the details set and the resolution.
But which video card does the RX 5500 XT collide with? The GTX 1650 SUPER from Nvidia. The goal is obviously to beat it and at the same time to make the owners of the RX 480 and GTX 970 look at this new solution as a possible update. Let’s see how the card behaved in our tests.
During our tests, the card proved to be able to withstand games in Full HD with maximum or very high details at around 60 FPS. The card is slightly faster than the GTX 1650 SUPER in our suite as a whole, on average around 1.5 FPS and 3.5 FPS compared to the RX 590. As you can understand, they are not abysmal differences, so in the conclusions it will play a role the price is fundamental. There are, however, games in which the card performs really well.
Consumption, temperatures and noise
To detect noise, we placed the sound level meter 10 cm away from the central fan and perfectly perpendicular to the board. These are not absolute measurements, performed in an anechoic chamber with all the necessary precautions, but only serve to be able to give a yardstick of comparison between all the cards that we will try.
As for the RX 590, the model in our possession is the Red Devil by PowerColor. We have noticed that it consumes much more than other RX 590s, such as Sapphire Nitro +: we are talking about 40 watts more. So the gap between the other boards and the RX 590 under load is generally less wide than what it seems from our chart.
Consumption is really low, as are temperatures. The noise of the tested Sapphire Pulse RX 5500 XT 4GB model is really contained, and in idle the noise produced by the computer is chargeable only to the rest of the PC components since the two fans do not run.
Conclusions
The Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB that we tested offers good Full HD performance and high detail with most video games. There is no doubt about this. So if you are looking for a new graphics card to combine with a 1080p monitor, the RX 5500 XT should fall within the range of possible choices.
The personalization of Sapphire has convinced us fully: we have a rather compact size card, which it does not make noise even under load and that, listen, listen, it has no RGB lighting. Tastes and jokes aside, the two fans maintain very low temperatures and they do it with elegance.
Although none of the most recent video cards in this market segment consumption excessively, the RX 5500 XT has pleasantly impressed us from this point of view, and it is probably thanks to the 7 nanometer production process, which allowed AMD to create a small but powerful GPU. At the same time, it also helped the adoption of GDDR6.
The direct competitor of the RX 5500 XT is Nvidia’s GTX 1650 SUPER. The performance are similar, in some games the AMD card is better, in others the Nvidia card, but in no case the difference is such as to make one of the two prefer under the pure performance profile.
In summary, the RX 5500 XT does not upset the market, but it is a product that still served the Sunnyvale house to rejuvenate an offer that was starting to become stale. It is plausible that over the next few months, as already seen for other AMD proposals, the drivers improve by increasing the performance of the card – but this is a mere hypothesis based on experience.
The release of the new AMD graphics card is accompanied by the new Adrenalin 2020 Edition drivers, completely revised and with many new features. AMD has taken a big step forward and has thus bridged a disadvantage towards Nvidia which, especially in the last year, was starting to weigh. We were pleasantly surprised by AMD’s work, and we will talk more about all the new features in the coming weeks.
We now come to the sore point, the price. It is now a practice, with each new graphics card release we do not know the prices until the last second, and we have to wait a few weeks after the launch to understand, effectively, the market positioning. The following is our evaluation based on the prices that the various brands have communicated to us shortly before the publication of this article, and which see the new RX 5500 XT 4GB sold at a price of about 230-250 euros, a figure higher than to that of the direct competitor GTX 1650 SUPER, sold on average for 180-200 euros.
If these prices remain so, we have no doubt, the GTX 1650 SUPER is a better choice. Only the presence of a bundle for the RX 5500 XT, with Monster Hunter World: IceBorn and three months of the Xbox Game Pass, brings the value of the card on par with the Nvidia proposal. But obviously the perceived value will change based on personal preferences.
AMD must be able to sell the new 5500 XT at the same prices as the GTX 1650 SUPER if it wants to fight on equal terms. Unfortunately, the price has a high weight on the purchase decision, especially in this range, where 50 euros represent a very high percentage increase in price (or decrease).
If this does not happen, at least not in the immediate future, the real competitor of the GTX 1650 SUPER remains, once again, the RX 590/580, at least in terms of price and performance. Everything just said obviously concerns the 4GB RX 5500 XT, while for the 8 GB version we will meet you in the next few weeks as soon as we can test it.
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