The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT Review, Feat. Sapphire Pulse: Navi For 1080p
by Ryan Smith on December 12, 2019 9:00 AM ESTThe Test
As is usually the case for launches without reference hardware, we’ve had to dial down our Sapphire cards slightly to meet AMD’s reference specifications. In this case, Sapphire’s secondary BIOS offers reference settings, so for our reference-spec testing, we’re using that BIOS. Otherwise, for at-stock testing of the Sapphire Pulse RX 5500 XT 8GB, that is being done with the primary (performance) BIOS.
Meanwhile on the driver front, we’re using AMD’s new Radeon Software Adrenaline Edition 19.2.2 software set, which are the launch drivers for the RX 5500 XT. AMD has introduced a number of control panel features here (not to mention a UI overhaul) that we’ll cover in a separate article. Otherwise for performance testing, these drivers are not substantially different from earlier AMD drivers – though we’ve retested the RX 570 and RX 5700 to ensure those results are fully up to date.
Finally, as the RX 5500 series is focused on 1080p gaming, this is what our benchmark results will focus on. I have also tested the RX 5500 XT 8GB at our 1440p settings – as expected, it’s not very playable there – and while these results haven’t been graphed, they are available in our Bench system.
| CPU: | Intel Core i9-9900K @ 5.0GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Z390 Taichi |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Phison E12 PCIe NVMe SSD (960GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4-3600 2 x 16GB (17-18-18-38) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: | AMD Radeon RX 5700 Sapphire Pulse RX 5500 XT 8GB Sapphire Pulse RX 5500 XT 4GB AMD Radeon RX 580 AMD Radeon RX 570 AMD Radeon RX 460 4GB AMD Radeon R9 380 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 441.41 NVIDIA Release 441.07 AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 19.12.2 AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.10.2 |
| OS: | Windows 10 Pro (1903) |
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dr.denton - Friday, December 13, 2019 - link
Bought an RX570 8GB this summer and feeling pretty good about that decision right now. Especially seeing how well Polaris cards seem to hold up in modern titles like Metro and RDR2.n0x1ous - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Only matching power numbers with 7nm vs Nvidia's 12nm. Sad. Nvidia on 7nm is going to dominate again.Fataliity - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Nvidia's 7nm should be going against RDNA2. Which I"m sure will help alot. RDNA was rebuilt because of issues, and didn't get everything it was supposed to (Similar to Zen vs Zen2. They could only do so much with its budget).This is their first gen of a new arch.
Personally though, the compression synthetics speak the biggest to me. They need to match Nvidia's compression on color changes for bandwidth. That's why AMD's cards need more TFLOPS to reach same performance. If they can get their compression to Nvidia's level, then I think it will do wonders for their numbers.
eva02langley - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
However during that time, AMD image quality is better.peevee - Friday, December 20, 2019 - link
Their cards have so much memory bandwidth compared to flops they would not benefit much from compression I 'm afraid.Something else is terribly wrong. Just not enough ALUs on 5500 series, have to keep frequency up = bad efficiency. They needed to use TSMCs high-density/low-power libraries, not high-performance libraries for GPUs... They would be immensely better with twice as many ALUs at 1GHz and low-power DDR5...
eva02langley - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
It is the first iteration of a new uarch, things will only get better and better.jabber - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Oh well no need to swap out my 480 for another year at least.eva02langley - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Hell no, you don't need to. This generation of cards is the first time I can remember seeing identical performances for the same price tag.lightningz71 - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
So, for what I'm seeing, if you're shopping for a sub-$200 video card, you have the following scenario:1) If you have no real concerns about power usage (i.e. have a 750+ watt PSU and don't have high electricity costs) then the RX590-8GB Cards offer you the best bang for the buck.
2)If power is a MAJOR issue for you, the GeForce 1650 Super is your best option, unless you absolutely need to have more VRAM, then it's the 5500XT 8GB.
3) If you need solid drivers and advanced video encoding/decoding codec support, the 1660 is what you need as it has the full, current NVenc solution that appears to outstrip AMD for the moment.
For me, with an 850 Watt PSU, and only an occasional gamer and desktop user, I'm going to be looking at good deals on the RX590 8GB for now, unless the 1660 super comes down drastically in price.
eva02langley - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Total disinformation, you don't need a 750W Power Supply for a 590. 500W is more than enough. Basically, If you don't have a 9900k or an OC R9 3000, I don't see the need for more than 500-600 Watts.