AMD Radeon RX 5500 Marketing Sheets Reveal a bit More About the Card

[Mouth of Sauron]

I'm wondering... Why 4Gb is dominating? Someone tested how much memory modern games use, and result was 'about 4Gb' in 1080 and 'mostly over 4Gb' in 1440. This trend always goes up. I have RX580 and check memory utilization from time to time - 5-6Gb isn't rare and I'm not exactly playing most demanding games. On aggregate test above, it appears +14% over 4Gb variant. I'd never go 4Gb way.

 

[Valantar]

Well at least you know if the fury dies then you can grab a rx 580 lol

Heh, I don't think I would bother buying a used 580 - I'd likely pay more for a waterblock for it than the card itself at this point. While the 5700 XT is tempting, I'm holding out for a higher-end option next year. Hopefully that will last me another 4-5 years like the Fury.

I'm wondering... Why 4Gb is dominating? Someone tested how much memory modern games use, and result was 'about 4Gb' in 1080 and 'mostly over 4Gb' in 1440. This trend always goes up. I have RX580 and check memory utilization from time to time - 5-6Gb isn't rare and I'm not exactly playing most demanding games. On aggregate test above, it appears +14% over 4Gb variant. I'd never go 4Gb way.

VRAM utilization isn't that simple - a lot of games reserve VRAM they don't use or need just because it's available. While not the most graphically demanding game, The Outer Worlds uses something like 2.2GB at 1440p for me. Not Ultra quality, though, but it's a far cry from 4GB, let alone 8. And while a 5500 XT might beat my Fury X, it's not likely to need more than 4GB of VRAM outside of edge cases.

 

[Ibotibo01]

RX 5500M's benchmarks reviewed in Notebookcheck. It doesn't powerfull to match with GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q in game benchmarks. Some titles RX 5500M is same with GTX 1650 Laptop. Even the GTX 1650 Laptop performs better in some games.

Some games:
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019

Witcher 3

Control

AC Odyssey

Far Cry 5

I think that AMD overrate the RX 5500M. Also This Laptop has R7 3750H which is not as fast as i5 9300h(r7 3750h is equal with i7 7700hq). Thus, R7 3750H bottlenecks with RX 5500M in some games such as AC Odyssey. Meanwhile GTX 1650 Laptop is more powerfull than GTX 1650 Desktop in some games because of the fact that Laptop version has 1024 cores. AMD said their RX 5500M pair with 32GB RAM in their benchmarks but GTX 1650 Laptop's RAM is 8GB and their CPU is R7 3750H.
I think that RX 5500 will be same with RX 580-590 and RX 5500 XT will be same with RX 590 8GB.

 

[Valantar]

RX 5500M's benchmarks reviewed in Notebookcheck. It doesn't powerfull to match with GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q in game benchmarks. Some titles RX 5500M is same with GTX 1650 Laptop. Even the GTX 1650 Laptop performs better in some games.

Some games:
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019
View attachment 135993
Witcher 3
View attachment 135994
Control
View attachment 135995
View attachment 135996
AC Odyssey
View attachment 135997
Far Cry 5
View attachment 135998

I think that AMD overrate the RX 5500M. Also This Laptop has R7 3750H which is not as fast as i5 9300h(r7 3750h is equal with i7 7700hq). Thus, R7 3750H bottlenecks with RX 5500M in some games such as AC Odyssey. Meanwhile GTX 1650 Laptop is more powerfull than GTX 1650 Desktop in some games because of the fact that Laptop version has 1024 cores. AMD said their RX 5500M pair with 32GB RAM in their benchmarks but GTX 1650 Laptop's RAM is 8GB and their CPU is R7 3750H.
I think that RX 5500 will be same with RX 580-590 and RX 5500 XT will be same with RX 590 8GB.

I don't follow. Don't these benchmarks pretty much match what AMD said? Sure, there's game-to-game variance, but there will always be, particularly in mobile when you can't use the same CPU across GPUs tested. (On a side note, system RAM should have zero effect on gaming benchmarks, 8GB on a relatively clean system is enough for any game.) AMD has only compared the RX 5500 to the GTX 1650, which it either soundly beats or matches in the worst case scenarios. It's also worth noting that the cases where the 1650 wins seem to have massive variance according to the graph - might be a sign of a CPU bottleneck? Sure, there's is work to be done on the games where it seems to underperform, but all in all this looks to deliver more or less as promised.

 

[candle_86]

The only thing AMD makes are mid range cards and it's sad. There are more than enough of them AMD, how about making something 1080ti/2080/2080ti owners/potential owners might buy...

Because that part of the market is called 3%, while rx5500 price sits in the 60-70% area

 

[AzraeiHalim]

For does wandering "How about 5500XT spec?" AMD already give few hint for XT model.

Base on AMD:

5500M have 22CUs, 1448 MHz Game Frequency, 1645 MHz Boost Frequency, 4GB GDDR6 128bit
5500 have 22CUs, 1670 MHz Game Frequency, 1845 MHz Boost Frequency, 4GB GDDR6 128bit
5500 Series have 22CUs, 1,717 MHz Game Frequency, 1845 MHz Boost Frequency, 8GB GDDR6 128bit

I aspect that what AMD mean 5500 Series actually the XT model because we know that AMD already give 5500 spec only have 4GB. "Coreteks" youtuber said AMD plan to release this 5500XT for $240 meanwhile the non XT ~$150.
In my opinion if the prices XT was "true", that prices simply overprices for very minimal difference between XT and non-XT

Source:

Reference 5500 Desktop: https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/amd-radeon-rx-5500
Reference 5500 Series: https://www.amd.com/en/press-releas...5500-series-graphics-superior-visual-fidelity
Coreteks:

 

[Valantar]

For does wandering "How about 5500XT spec?" AMD already give few hint for XT model.

Base on AMD:

5500M have 22CUs, 1448 MHz Game Frequency, 1645 MHz Boost Frequency, 4GB GDDR6 128bit
5500 have 22CUs, 1670 MHz Game Frequency, 1845 MHz Boost Frequency, 4GB GDDR6 128bit
5500 Series have 22CUs, 1,717 MHz Game Frequency, 1845 MHz Boost Frequency, 8GB GDDR6 128bit

I aspect that what AMD mean 5500 Series actually the XT model because we know that AMD already give 5500 spec only have 4GB. "Coreteks" youtuber said AMD plan to release this 5500XT for $240 meanwhile the non XT ~$150.
In my opinion if the prices XT was "true", that prices simply overprices for very minimal difference between XT and non-XT

Source:

Reference 5500 Desktop: https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/amd-radeon-rx-5500
Reference 5500 Series: https://www.amd.com/en/press-releas...5500-series-graphics-superior-visual-fidelity
Coreteks:

"RX 5500 Series" is an OEM product range. Don't conflate that with consumer products with similar names. The reason for this is simple: OEM products are loosely defined so that OEMs can tweak their configuration to fit their needs without breaking spec. Goods sold directly to consumers must match a consumer-facing spec sheet (otherwise they would get in trouble with consumer protection laws and bodies), which gives less flexibility.

Given that AMD confirmed directly that the 22 CU OEM card is a cut-down part, there's no reason to expect a consumer XT card to have 22 CUs. And a $100 price jump for a slight overclock and some extra VRAM is idiotic. That itself should be reason enough to not listen to silly speculation off YouTube.

 

[AzraeiHalim]

"RX 5500 Series" is an OEM product range. Don't conflate that with consumer products with similar names. The reason for this is simple: OEM products are loosely defined so that OEMs can tweak their configuration to fit their needs without breaking spec. Goods sold directly to consumers must match a consumer-facing spec sheet (otherwise they would get in trouble with consumer protection laws and bodies), which gives less flexibility.

Given that AMD confirmed directly that the 22 CU OEM card is a cut-down part, there's no reason to expect a consumer XT card to have 22 CUs. And a $100 price jump for a slight overclock and some extra VRAM is idiotic. That itself should be reason enough to not listen to silly speculation off YouTube.

Rather then speculation, at least he has few leak that actually close to real one. If you watch the video he said "AMD PLAN TO...". So it just "plan" prices not final one. Maybe they try to see 1650S before make final prices like previous 5700 series prices drop before launch.

We also have leak 5 navi 14 chip leak with clock speed. It turn out that 5500 Series with 1,717 MHz Game Frequency is Navi 14 XTR meanwhile 5500 with 1670 MHz Game Frequency already using navi 14 XT chip. So for an XT and XTR chip but cut down GPU? That very weird already or maybe AMD plan the 5500 series was cut down like RX 460 that full chip arrive later in RX 560. I not really sure, I just try speculate thing base on what already leak

Navi 14 leak: https://videocardz.com/82538/five-variants-of-amds-navi-14-gpu-spotted

 

[Th3pwn3r]

Because that part of the market is called 3%, while rx5500 price sits in the 60-70% area

So is it better to have less money or more money? Some is better than none is it not? Point being if you can grab a hold of the high end why wouldn't you?

 

[B-Real]

And don't forget the RX 5500 will also participate in the AMD promotion, meaning you will get either Borderlands 3 or GR: Breakpoint with a sub $200 (?) card.

The only thing AMD makes are mid range cards and it's sad. There are more than enough of them AMD, how about making something 1080ti/2080/2080ti owners/potential owners might buy...

Yes, the RX 5700 XT can't match the 1080Ti, but at least it's close to it (less than 10% difference maybe). But it's not mid range. It's high.

So the RX5500 will replace the RX570? Specwise it seems similar...

Can you please elaborate? the specs are worse than the RX580 (CU's, Mem interface, TFLOP's, etc)

Check the graphs. If you average the 15 games presented in the graph (that includes games favoring NV and AMD too), you'll see that the RX 5500 should be about 43% faster than the GTX 1650. The RX 570 is about 10% faster than the 1650 and the 1660 is about 50% faster than the 1650. This means this will be about 30% faster than the RX570 and will be close to the 1660. If this is combined with a sub $200 price tag, that will be pretty awesome, knowing you will also get a Borderlands 3 or GR: BP copy with the card.

 

[AzraeiHalim]

So the RX5500 will replace the RX570? Specwise it seems similar...



Can you please elaborate? the specs are worse than the RX580 (CU's, Mem interface, TFLOP's, etc)

Are you try to troll or what? Take this example, RX Vega 64 far better specs in every aspect compare to RX 5700XT but 5700XT win in many games test average 20%+. This what you call GPU architecture improvement. So I very sure that RX 5500 performance higher then 570 even if it has lower spec

 

[Fouquin]

So is it better to have less money or more money? Some is better than none is it not? Point being if you can grab a hold of the high end why wouldn't you?

It's actually pretty simple; developing and deploying a flagship card costs more than it would make. It's happened in the past, and it will happen again where they have the faster card and still sell fewer units. It's not worth wasting their cash reserves on that 3% of the market when they can put that into developing cards that fit the average.

For what it's worth this strategy saved their asses in the past. The so called "Small-Die" era of TeraScale where they made extremely competitive mid-range cards in massive quantity for the average consumer instead of focusing efforts into flagships. The reduced unit cost also allowed them to pack newer tech into their cards, advance API feature support, and leverage OEMs with better pricing.

 

[Valantar]

Rather then speculation, at least he has few leak that actually close to real one. If you watch the video he said "AMD PLAN TO...". So it just "plan" prices not final one. Maybe they try to see 1650S before make final prices like previous 5700 series prices drop before launch.

We also have leak 5 navi 14 chip leak with clock speed. It turn out that 5500 Series with 1,717 MHz Game Frequency is Navi 14 XTR meanwhile 5500 with 1670 MHz Game Frequency already using navi 14 XT chip. So for an XT and XTR chip but cut down GPU? That very weird already or maybe AMD plan the 5500 series was cut down like RX 460 that full chip arrive later in RX 560. I not really sure, I just try speculate thing base on what already leak

Navi 14 leak: https://videocardz.com/82538/five-variants-of-amds-navi-14-gpu-spotted

A) Leaks based on unnamed sources are always dubious. They can of course be accurate, but should nevertheless be approached with healthy skepticism.

B) Saying "AMD plan to" is a statement of fact, which is not how one should speak of rumored/unsubstantiated information. Prefacing with "According to the leak, AMD plans to" is of course something else entirely. But the explicit statement of the information being uncorroborsted and unofficial is of paramount importance.

C) What on earth is a "plan price"? The point of a plan is to make it happen. You don't plan pricing that you aren't aiming to make real. And nobody at AMD is dumb enough to think they can sell a card 5-10% slower than the 1660 for $20-30 more.

D) Again, leaked specs - even hardware IDs and other info from drivers - rarely paint the full picture. Information found like this might be placeholders, preliminary, incomplete or just plain wrong. Will there be five Navi 14 SKUs out there? Undoubtedly, and likely more. OEM 5500 series is 1-2 (high and low clock bins, for example), then there's a 5500 and a 5500 XT for retail, then there's mobile - that's five already - and then there's likely at least one Pro version. It's quite likely Apple will want two Navi 14 SKUs for their laptops too, which are normally separate from non-Mac Radeon Pro cards. It's not unlikely we'll see a further cut-down variant for a 5400 or 5300 card either.

Speculation is fine and good, but it needs to be tempered by realistic outlooks (such as not believing they would charge $240 for an overclocked version of a $150 GPU) and a smidgen of caution. Of course I might be wrong and that random Youtuber might be right, but I'd rather be cautious and wrong than make stupid speculations.

It's actually pretty simple; developing and deploying a flagship card costs more than it would make. It's happened in the past, and it will happen again where they have the faster card and still sell fewer units. It's not worth wasting their cash reserves on that 3% of the market when they can put that into developing cards that fit the average.

For what it's worth this strategy saved their asses in the past. The so called "Small-Die" era of TeraScale where they made extremely competitive mid-range cards in massive quantity for the average consumer instead of focusing efforts into flagships. The reduced unit cost also allowed them to pack newer tech into their cards, advance API feature support, and leverage OEMs with better pricing.

That's true, but it wouldn't be very expensive developing a 64-ish CU bigger sibling to Navi 10 - just scale everything up including the memory interface. It would still be a relatively small die (less than 400mm2) and lowering clocks would keep it within reasonable power limits. This would still of course cost quite a few million dollars to develop, test, tape out and make, but the $6-700 GPU market these days is more than big enough to justify that as long as the card is competitive. Which the 5700 series has demonstrated that it would be. I'm still hoping that "big" Navi 23 rumors with some form of RT are accurate though.

 

[IceShroom]

RX 5500M's benchmarks reviewed in Notebookcheck. It doesn't powerfull to match with GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q in game benchmarks. Some titles RX 5500M is same with GTX 1650 Laptop. Even the GTX 1650 Laptop performs better in some games.

Some games:
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019
View attachment 135993
Witcher 3
View attachment 135994
Control
View attachment 135995
View attachment 135996
AC Odyssey
View attachment 135997
Far Cry 5
View attachment 135998

I think that AMD overrate the RX 5500M. Also This Laptop has R7 3750H which is not as fast as i5 9300h(r7 3750h is equal with i7 7700hq). Thus, R7 3750H bottlenecks with RX 5500M in some games such as AC Odyssey. Meanwhile GTX 1650 Laptop is more powerfull than GTX 1650 Desktop in some games because of the fact that Laptop version has 1024 cores. AMD said their RX 5500M pair with 32GB RAM in their benchmarks but GTX 1650 Laptop's RAM is 8GB and their CPU is R7 3750H.
I think that RX 5500 will be same with RX 580-590 and RX 5500 XT will be same with RX 590 8GB.

RX 5500M is competitor to GTX 1650 NOT 1660.
I see no one saying 1660 Super is loosing to RX 5700??

 

[B-Real]

RX 5500M's benchmarks reviewed in Notebookcheck. It doesn't powerfull to match with GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q in game benchmarks. Some titles RX 5500M is same with GTX 1650 Laptop. Even the GTX 1650 Laptop performs better in some games.

Some games:
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019
View attachment 135993
Witcher 3
View attachment 135994
Control
View attachment 135995
View attachment 135996
AC Odyssey
View attachment 135997
Far Cry 5
View attachment 135998

I think that AMD overrate the RX 5500M. Also This Laptop has R7 3750H which is not as fast as i5 9300h(r7 3750h is equal with i7 7700hq). Thus, R7 3750H bottlenecks with RX 5500M in some games such as AC Odyssey. Meanwhile GTX 1650 Laptop is more powerfull than GTX 1650 Desktop in some games because of the fact that Laptop version has 1024 cores. AMD said their RX 5500M pair with 32GB RAM in their benchmarks but GTX 1650 Laptop's RAM is 8GB and their CPU is R7 3750H.
I think that RX 5500 will be same with RX 580-590 and RX 5500 XT will be same with RX 590 8GB.

The benchmarks' 43% lead over the 1650 say that the RX5500 will be a bit above the RX590, about 6% from the 1660. If that was true for ~$160-170, that would be awesome.

 

[Vya Domus]

a lot of games reserve VRAM they don't use or need just because it's available.

There is no such thing, you can't reserve memory, memory is either used or not. That wouldn't even make sense, why "reserve" memory when it would have otherwise been available anyway.

When objects are no longer needed they're deleted from memory, that's all there is to it.

 

[dj-electric]

It was told to press that the dGPU is rated at 150W, and that the mobile version will range up to 85W.

 

[Xuper]

AMD should NOT mention 1660, They should compare this to 570 or 580.Yes Nvidia has more market share but AMD shouldn't mention rival card.

 

[Valantar]

AMD should NOT mention 1660, They should compare this to 570 or 580.Yes Nvidia has more market share but AMD shouldn't mention rival card.

AMD haven't mentioned the 1660, they've compared this to the 1650. Besides that, why should they not compare themselves to the competition?

It was told to press that the dGPU is rated at 150W, and that the mobile version will range up to 85W.

The OEM card has a 150" TGP, yes. OEM cards often have massive safety margins, so expecting 150W power draw for this is unlikely. Remember, RDNA on 7nm matches Turing on 12nm for power efficiency, at least in the RX 5700/XT. There's no reason to expect a card faster than the 1650 and slower than the 1660 to pull 150W.

 

[jabbadap]

AMD haven't mentioned the 1660, they've compared this to the 1650. Besides that, why should they not compare themselves to the competition?

The OEM card has a 150" TGP, yes. OEM cards often have massive safety margins, so expecting 150W power draw for this is unlikely. Remember, RDNA on 7nm matches Turing on 12nm for power efficiency, at least in the RX 5700/XT. There's no reason to expect a card faster than the 1650 and slower than the 1660 to pull 150W.

It's simple: the closer the gtx1660 perf card have, the more money they can ask for it. AMD probably pushes voltages some where between rx5700 ~1V to rx5700xt 1.2V, thus power consumption might be on a tad high side.

But yeah... I don't really think it is as high as 150W, sounds more like a some arbitrary number drawn from hat.

 

[Valantar]

It's simple: the closer the gtx1660 perf card have, the more money they can ask for it. AMD probably pushes voltages some where between rx5700 ~1V to rx5700xt 1.2V, thus power consumption might be on a tad high side.

But yeah... I don't really think it is as high as 150W, sounds more like a some arbitrary number drawn from hat.

There's easily room for AMD to make an RX 5600 series in between the 5500 XT and 5700, both in terms of performance, price, die size and production cost - but they'll likely not stack their product portfolio that tightly until RDNA is more mature. Still, AMD is presenting the OEM RX 5500 series (and, according to this leak also the retail RX 5500) as a competitor to the GTX 1650, not the 1660. Even if it's close to the 1660 in performance, the former comparison is obviously better for AMD - a clear victory, and one they can easily match on price. Using a die this small to just match a higher-end competing product is a much worse plan. I guess we'll have to see how many CUs a fully enabled Navi 14 die actually has to see whether it will take the step up to a full-fledged 1660 competitor. Of course I'd much rather buy a $150 RX 5500 than a $219 GTX 1660, even if the latter is ~10% faster on average. Can't beat that value proposition.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Heh, I don't think I would bother buying a used 580 - I'd likely pay more for a waterblock for it than the card itself at this point. While the 5700 XT is tempting, I'm holding out for a higher-end option next year. Hopefully that will last me another 4-5 years like the Fury.


VRAM utilization isn't that simple - a lot of games reserve VRAM they don't use or need just because it's available. While not the most graphically demanding game, The Outer Worlds uses something like 2.2GB at 1440p for me. Not Ultra quality, though, but it's a far cry from 4GB, let alone 8. And while a 5500 XT might beat my Fury X, it's not likely to need more than 4GB of VRAM outside of edge cases.

not to mention the fury has 4gb of HDM memory, which does make it a different story due to the high bandwith.
And i kinda doubt an 5500 XT will beat a Fury X

 

[Valantar]

not to mention the fury has 4gb of HDM memory, which does make it a different story due to the high bandwith.
And i kinda doubt an 5500 XT will beat a Fury X

Actually that's not too unlikely. The RX 580 is very close to the Fury X in a lot of games released the last year or two (blame it on lack of driver optimizations for a rare sub-architecture I guess?), and this looks to beat the 580 - not by much, but a clear win if it lives up to expectations.

 

[Vayra86]

Are you waiting for an AMD equivalent of those?
Because Im pretty sure its not the most lucrative market segment, makes more sense to make cards where they are now and if you want that kind of performance then...well buy Nvidia.

I mean lets be real, look at the landscape, no prices are being dropped but just new cards are being made to fit every price gap (which is hate with a passion but here we are).
So if AMD makes a competitor it will just be more cards on both sides but nothing will really change, unless they make an amazing card and throw at a normal price but the current climate does not show they would do that.
They had that chance with the 5700(XT) but nope, lets keep that at 400+ dollars.....

This man gets it. But the only reason that rationale works is because Nvidia decided to advance pretty much nothing for a whole gen AND because AMD simply doesn't have anything faster.

Its action/reaction and the bottom line still stands, if AMD had been making actual progress beyond Vega we would have seen a different landscape. Right now we're stuck at 1080ti performance for nearly 3 years, and the only real alternative is a ridiculously overpriced product. And note; prior to the Navi 5700XT and Nv SUPER line there wasn't even a price change to that sub-top perf level.

The idea that AMD has (made) some sort of choice is wrong. AMD has no other option but to trail behind and has completely dropped leadership of ANY segment. Being value king isn't an achievement either, its a sign the product portfolio has no USPs.

It does NOT make more sense in a GPU market to focus entirely on midrange. Tomorrow's midrange is today's high end, and missing it as a high end product means missing the opportunity to milk it for good margins and then re-use it. AMD has missed that chance with Polaris, Vega and with Radeon VII, and Navi is a similar thing because its also way too late.

 

[trom89]

Are you try to troll or what? Take this example, RX Vega 64 far better specs in every aspect compare to RX 5700XT but 5700XT win in many games test average 20%+. This what you call GPU architecture improvement. So I very sure that RX 5500 performance higher then 570 even if it has lower spec

Not trolling, just trying to figure out based on the specs how to see if this card (or any other) is lower or top tier performance.
That improvement with lower specs comes with the change to DLNA achitecture, the change to 7nm or both?

The RX 5500 is a Navi card, which dramatically outperforms Polaris and Vega at similar specs. The 40 CU/9.75 TFlop 5700 XT dramatically outperforms the 64 CU/ 12.66 Tflop Vega 64. Spec comparisons are not necessarily valid across architectures.

So if you cant compare CU's, TFLOP's, TDP's there are no way to compare based on the specs, how can we know if it is an entry level or a enthusiast card?