AMD is having a great week. With the launch of the next generation of Radeon software and drivers yesterday, there was already plenty to like about team red’s chances heading into 2020. Now, the latest iteration of their mid-range GPU offerings has helped shore up competition against rival NVIDIA. Will the new Radeon RX 5500 XT do for AMD’s GPU efforts what the new generation of Threadrippers did for their CPU lines? Let’s find out.
The Radeon RX 5500 XT is being built into a hole in AMDs current Navi lineups, by integrating the Navi 14 GPU into a new package, aimed at middle of the road users. The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT features 1408 stream processors which mean that there are 22 CUs or compute units featured on the card. It also packs 88 TMUs and 32 ROPs with clock speeds rated at 1670 MHz base, 1717 MHz game, and 1845 MHz boost clocks. There are either 8 GB and 4 GB GDDR6 memory configurations available. The 4 GB variant is prices at $169 US, while the one with more RAM comes in at a respectable $199 US. This puts it far behind the much more expensive Radeon RX 5700 XT, which offers a much more powerful card for $399 US.
This combination of price and performance puts it in direct competition with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, a $159 US 4 GB GPU. And starting today, PC gamers can grab one of the new AMD GPUs from a variety of 3rd party card makers, including Powercolor, ASUS, MSI and more who all have their own variants coming to market. Each of these will also come in factory overclocked and reference designs. Custom cooling solutions are also on the docket.
And while the 8 GB model might offer slight improvements in performance over the lesser option, due to the increased head room for hi-res textures and the like, both cards sit comfortably as a 1080p gaming option in 2019. We will have to wait for benchmarks to wrap up and be confirmed before we can definitely say how the new 7nm GPU stacks up, but it seems like a solid lower-to-mid range option for those building a budget system.