AMD Radeon RX 5500

[altermere]

Wow, even a $200 GPU has a proper fan instead of a blower. Please AMD, just ditch the reference vacuum cleaners already.

 

[fancucker]

Basically it is still same old same old. GTX 960 to 1060 was 75 percent faster. RX 470 to 5500 is basically 20 percent faster, and maybe $20 cheaper. AMD and nVidia both suck, hope we can agree on that. Look at the performance per dollar chart, it is either 8 percent worse or 6 percent better than the RX 570. $160 or $140.

That's mainly because of the shifting of pricing brackets. The true 1060 successor is ridiculously overpriced and AMD followed suit financially. Imagine if for some reason nvidia was forced to price the 2060 at 280$ forcing AMD to substantially lose on the 5700/XT.

 

[bug]

That's mainly because of the shifting of pricing brackets. The true 1060 successor is ridiculously overpriced and AMD followed suit financially. Imagine if for some reason nvidia was forced to price the 2060 at 280$ forcing AMD to substantially lose on the 5700/XT.

The 1060 successor is 1660(Ti)

 

[msroadkill612]

If it is an 8 lane pcie 4 card, many users will now have a spare 8 lanes on their am4 rigs. There could be some interesting possibilities.

 

[Darksword]

Used 580 8GB cards are pretty cheap these days, around $115.00 USD. I don't see why anyone would pay $160.00 for this card.

 

[Palladium]

Used 580 8GB cards are pretty cheap these days, around $115.00 USD. I don't see why anyone would pay $160.00 for this card.

At $160, it's a tough sell against a 1660S or even a 570.
If priced any higher, I can only say AMD is smoking some really nice stuff.

 

[Agent_D]

At $160, it's a tough sell against a 1660S or even a 570.
If priced any higher, I can only say AMD is smoking some really nice stuff.

Maybe a tough sell against the 1660S, but not against the 570/580/590 that literally take double or more power (and the 580/590 were selling for near $300 for quite a while). There are multiple areas of savings to be had if you're wanting to stick with AMD over nVidia with the 5500 and looking in this performance bracket.

Not to mention that with a bit of undervolting, these should sit comfortably at 100w or less (have a computer with a 5700 @ 930mv that sits in the 125-140w range on average), that's pretty nice for the performance and noise levels. Hopefully we'll see them starting at a $130-140 price point.

Used 580 8GB cards are pretty cheap these days, around $115.00 USD. I don't see why anyone would pay $160.00 for this card.

If you're a heavy gamer, the 5500 would make up that price difference in electricity bills alone in 6-8 months.

 

[fancucker]

If you're a heavy gamer, the 5500 would make up that price difference in electricity bills alone in 6-8 months.

So essentially money you could've put down on a more efficient nvidia card? Plus undervolted nvidia competitors would bring even more savings.

 

[illli]

Hmm these benchmarks for this card are all over the place. One of them showed less performance than a 570, others closer to 590.

Makes me wonder if this is due to some immature drivers? Maybe things will get better optimization down the road?

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

Hats off to W1zzard for another great review.

Definitely more positive than I would have been though, seems like a minimal upgrade over Polaris, though I do guess there will be some performance uplift in time. Either way they seem to have pushed this little chip too hard so like the 5700XT it's quite uncompetitive power wise against NVidia's stack. I get the impression that they expected more performance for a given die size and ended up having to push the clocks and power up to meet their performance targets (1650S in this case).

Then again I guess NVidia pushed the 1650S out of the 75w power envelope too...

 

[Searing]

person 1: "So essentially money you could've put down on a more efficient nvidia card?"
person 2: "uncompetitive against nVidia's stack" re: power consumption

Did you read the review? same as the 1060 and 1660, and the second lowest peak consumption and some of the lowest idle levels, jeeze, even when AMD wins people still just say "it has high power consumption" no matter the facts

 

[fancucker]

person 1: "So essentially money you could've put down on a more efficient nvidia card?"
person 2: "uncompetitive against nVidia's stack" re: power consumption

Did you read the review? same as the 1060 and 1660, and the second lowest peak consumption and some of the lowest idle levels, jeeze, even when AMD wins people still just say "it has high power consumption" no matter the facts

That's precisely the problem, equaling an older architecture on a newer process. An AMD 'win' would've been a proper successor to Polaris that this price point, Nvidia literally gained 30% from the 1060 to 1660ti at the same power envelope, which the 5500 also occupies.

All AMD did was achieve 3-year old performance levels at a lower TDP despite a new uarch and a much better node

 

[Mouth of Sauron]

Great review!

Sadly for me, it puts the new card exactly where I don't need it - namely bit below RX580 8gb, which I'm looking to replace...

Those numbers I'm pulling of... somewhere... but say that I've read somewhere that the lowest card on foodchain will be ~130g and the next (probably the same with 8Gb) ~150g. With a mountain of salt...

 

[mahoney]

When was the last time AMD gpu's were less power hungry than Nvidia gpu's?

 

[fancucker]

Great review!

Sadly for me, it puts the new card exactly where I don't need it - namely bit below RX580 8gb, which I'm looking to replace...

Those numbers I'm pulling of... somewhere... but say that I've read somewhere that the lowest card on foodchain will be ~130g and the next (probably the same with 8Gb) ~150g. With a mountain of salt...

Don't worry, ampere will knock down the 5700/XT prices hard and they'll get the 570/580 treatment until RDNA2/5nm materializes. Pick one up with a 1440p monitor.

Edit: Actually nvidia might ride this till Q4 2020 at this level of competition and mercifully let AMD enjoy the new pricing scheme it set

 

[HwGeek]

IMO 5500 4GB will go $159 and 5500XT 8GB $199.

 

[btarunr]

When was the last time AMD gpu's were less power hungry than Nvidia gpu's?

9 years ago, when this happened:

After that, NVIDIA switched to a "efficiency first, performance later" GPU development policy. There's so much power-management engineering done on the GPU die, that AICs can make do with the cheapest VRM solutions.

 

[sutyi]

That's precisely the problem, equaling an older architecture on a newer process. An AMD 'win' would've been a proper successor to Polaris that this price point, Nvidia literally gained 30% from the 1060 to 1660ti at the same power envelope, which the 5500 also occupies.

All AMD did was achieve 3-year old performance levels at a lower TDP despite a new uarch and a much better node

Well considering the silicon is yet again being run out of its comfort zone... no wonder. Just look at this table from my fellow countrymen, this is a ref. board RX 5700XT. With manual UV and a custom fancurve he reached -130mV on the GPU core and it was still able to run trough SuperPosition, while consuming 46W less power, with literally zero performance loss...

 

[Fouquin]

If only AMD's reference boards they build for ordinary consumers were as good as the reference boards they build for OEMs...

That isn't how this works. AMD doesn't waste time and money on multiple reference boards that fit the same exact purpose. They send one reference out to their OEMs and AIBs, who then either adopt and adapt or redesign and validate.

They do sample different designs internally for testing, but only one of those becomes the official reference.

 

[fancucker]

Well considering the silicon is yet again being run out of its comfort zone... no wonder. Just look at this table from my fellow countrymen, this is a ref. board RX 5700XT. With manual UV and a custom fancurve he reached -130mV on the GPU core and it was still able to run trough SuperPosition, while consuming 46W less power, with literally zero performance loss...

View attachment 137377

Now show me the direct nvidia competitor and its undervolt. Sure AMD is a bit liberal to ensure viable silicon across the board, but there are massive benefits there.

And before you accuse me, I have a 570 4GB AIB running 1325Mhz/0.95V, 1800Mhz/0.9V mem and 74C max in a hot climate. 94W power draw too. Good card.

 

[HwGeek]

When we gonna see new products on N7P? or maybe it's already used by current AMD products?

 

[Searing]

The RX 5700 is MORE efficient than the RTX 2060, and the RX 5500 ties the 1060, 1660, 1660 ti. So it's at parity. There's no problem with the 5000 series power consumption. The RX 5700 XT I bought is the coolest card I've ever seen, running at 61 degrees at 100 percent (Gigabyte model).

 

[sutyi]

Now show me the direct nvidia competitor and its undervolt. Sure AMD is a bit liberal to ensure viable silicon across the board, but there are massive benefits there.

And before you accuse me, I have a 570 4GB AIB running 1325Mhz/0.95V, 1800Mhz/0.9V mem and 74C max in a hot climate. 94W power draw too. Good card.

Mostly works the same on the green side too, they just don't really max. out the silicon the same way as AMD does.

Putting architecture aside to make an analogy: Lets say the sweetspot for said silicon is 1700MHz @ 0.900V, then AMD does 2100MHz @ 1.2V (to get glose as possible to the NV part) and leaves the decision for you to run into a power limit or not. While nVIDIA goes 1900MHz @ 1.1V and powerlimits their card.

another fail for amd

An OEM design that goes into DELL, HP, etc. office machine has a decent heatsink with a copper base and heatpipes, the horror...

 

[Komshija]

WOW! This GPU is more powerful than I would have expected. If it's price tag in Europe will be under 180€, I bet this will be the best buy GPU for budget 1080p gaming. AMD only needs slightly better marketing to familiarize budget gamers with their products, especially if their GPU outperforms all similarly priced Nvidia GPUs.

 

[Agent_D]

So essentially money you could've put down on a more efficient nvidia card? Plus undervolted nvidia competitors would bring even more savings.

Within a few percent of the 1650 Super at similar power levels, and likely lower prices, with no voltage changes; seems like a win if you're an AMD fan and looking in this performance/power/price bracket.