AMD’s launch of the Radeon RX 5700-series in July signalled a revitalisation of competition within the performance gaming market as both they and their competitors finally had equivalent generation products within the same pricing and performance bands. It may not have had hybrid ray-tracing support or fancy deep learning inferencing resources, but the architecture was able to crunch through the raw performance necessary for great frame rates in titles you play today rather compromising that to serve an uncertain future.

That being said, the RX 5700-series serves a performance-oriented segment pitched well above £250 and out of the reach of mainstream customers, so an equivalent release satisfying less affluent consumers was inevitable. A next-generation GPU tailored for 1080p gaming, with better frame rates that complement the latest range of affordable FreeSync monitors, would certainly fit the bill. Today that’s here, in the form of the Radeon RX 5500 XT.

Read our launch review of the Sapphire Pulse RX 5500 XT

Pricing and performance guidelines released by AMD line it up against NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1650-series, in particular the recently released GTX 1650 SUPER. That said, their competition have piled in multiple SKUs in the £150 to £250 bracket up to and including the GTX 1660 Ti, with the consequence that pricing is an exceptionally sensitive aspect influencing the release’s expectations of success.



As you can see from the above, if pitched too high sales will be gobbled up by ‘affordable’ versions of NVIDIA’s next higher placed GPU. It will be up to AMD’s board partners to keep customers keen in the wake of launch reviews.



Launching as a range of graphics cards starting from £159.99/$169.99 with no reference model, the various flavours of AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 XT will be available in a plethora of partner designs differentiated by cooling solution, factory overclock and other features exclusive to that partner. Be it ASUS, Sapphire, MSI or others, interested parties should have a wide enough range to choose from immediately. Given the criticism levied at timed exclusivity for the RX 5700-series reference model, or more precisely its' blower cooling solution, that’s something to be welcomed.

AMD’s guidance is that the Radeon RX 5500 XT would be a good upgrade for owners of Radeon RX 480/GTX 970-class GPUs that need just a bit more horsepower to maintain 60fps in the titles they play, and an ideal mainstream replacement for even lower performing GPUs now long in the tooth. In house testing judges it to be between 4 and 30% faster than the GTX 1650 SUPER, depending on title and in-game settings, but you also check out independent reviews (including our own) today before you lay a penny down.



Moving on from OEM - XT as a retail exclusive

In November the Radeon RX 5500 and RX 5500M were launched into OEM markets, and at the time it was widely anticipated that the add-in-card would make its way to customer/DIY discrete sale segments. Instead AMD have chosen to maintain OEM exclusivity for this SKU, reserving the XT moniker for 4GB and 8GB variants cards sold to the public through retailers.

That strikes us as poor practice. The only clear differences between RX 5500 and RX 5500 XT 4GB specifications is a minor bump to the Game Clock target operating frequency, which itself will vary from unit to unit based on cooling solution and the ‘silicon lottery’. It doesn’t feature any more Compute Units or faster memory, and even the quoted 15W lower TDP is an essentially meaningless metric for consumers given how partners push these boundaries to the limit and beyond.

Simply reserving the XT suffix for the 8GB model would also mitigate against less than scrupulous system integrators disingenuously selling an ‘RX 5500 XT’ without specifying VRAM configurations. We’re not at NVIDIA GTX 1060-level of potential confusion thankfully, but this is not a trend that AMD should be in the habit of continuing.

Under the Hood - Navi’s Back



The Radeon RX 5500 XT is based on AMD’s Navi GPU architecture, manufactured using TSMC’s 7nm lithographic node. Although it doesn’t operate at the same performance level as the RX 5700-series, it does roll through the improvements incorporated into the RDNA architectural framework that serves as a broad replacement for Graphics Core Next.

A more detailed breakdown of the benefits of RDNA over GCN can be found in our RX 5700-series Primer, but the core takeaways are the improvements to performance per watt and performance for the chip package size, the same fundamentals that have made Ryzen such a rip-roaring success in the DIY PC market.

Returning once again is GDDR6 memory, supplying a memory bandwidth of up to 224GB/s. The 5500 XT can be configured with 4 or 8GB of memory, the latter of which will make a difference in a subset of games at the 1080p ‘sweet spot’ resolution running at Ultra image quality presets. However for now at least AMD believe that 4GB of VRAM is sufficient for 1080p gaming at 60 fps, and so have opted for that as the baseline specification in order to keep costs down. Nonetheless prospective owners may want to pick up the 8GB variant with an eye to the future.

Like the RX 5700-series, the RX 5500 XT also supports the PCI-Express 4.0 standard, and just like the 5700-series it’s unlikely to make a significant difference to real-world performance. Plus, equipping an AMD X570/3rd Gen. Threadripper platform (the only ones currently capable of PCIe 4.0 support) with a <$200 GPU seems like an odd missmatch.

Technical Specifications



Apart from an 8GB variant, the only difference from the Radeon RX 5500 for OEMs is an increase in Game Clock from 1670MHz to 1717MHz. Even the Boost Clock is unchanged at 1845MHz.

The RX 5500 XT isn’t a full-fat, 24 CU version of the Navi GPU each card is equipped with, which is disappointing given that in the past AMD have used the XT suffix to denote a fully utilised GPU. That being the case, we should expect to see an RX 5600 XT in the very near future, bridging the gap somewhat between 5500 and 5700-series performance.

Features



As part of the Radeon RDNA family the RX 5500 XT fully supports all of AMD’s latest gaming technologies, including:



Pricing and Availability

AMD have released the following MSRP guidance for the Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB & 8GB:





The GPU will however be sold as partner cards only, each with their own MSRP set by the manufacturer. Cooling solution and level of factory overclock (if any) will vary, and the lack of a reference PCB layout may make for novel implementations.

Both 4GB and 8GB versions of the RX 5500 XT are part of AMD’s Raise The Game promotion. The purchase of a card from an eligible retailer qualifies for a free copy of Monster Hunter World Iceborne Master Edition and three months of the Xbox Game Pass for PC. Terms and conditions are available at amd.com/rewards.