AMD announces Radeon RX 5500 Series with GDDR6 memory

Published: Oct 7th 2019, 08:53 GMT   Comments

AMD Radeon RX 5500 gets 7nm Navi and GDDR6 memory

Today AMD announces a new mid-range solution for desktop and mobile markets. The RX 5500 series will feature three SKUs: the RX 5500M, RX 5500 and RX 5500 XT. Not once, does AMD mention the XT variant in the presentation, yet that’s what the SERIES would indicate.

Throughout the presentation, AMD compares its new graphics card to Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 1650. The RX 5500 is meant to be better than both. In the footnotes, we learn that the card used for this comparison is the RX 5500 4GB. Therefore, we assume that the XT variant will share the specs with a non-XT variant, with an exception of higher memory capacity (8 GB).

The RX 5500 series will be the first Radeon mid-range cards to feature GDDR6 memory. A combination of 8GB G6 and 128-bit bus has never been used in consumer graphics before, but thanks to the higher GDDR6 specs, the maximum theoretical bandwidth will reach 224 GB/s, just 32 Gb/s short of RX 580’s bandwidth.

AMD has not confirmed the Navi variant used by RX 5500 series, but the speculation points towards Navi 14. This is a new chip with a die area of 158 mm2. Thanks to the 7nm fabrication process this should translate into higher power efficiency than the Polaris series (AMD claims the RX 5500 provides 1.6X performance per Watt over RX 480). It’s worth adding that the chip has more transistors than Polaris 10 (6.4B vs 5.7B).

This GPU will sport 1408 Stream Processors (22 Compute Units) for all variants of the RX 5500 series (including the mobile version). The boost clock will be lower than RX 5700’s at 1845 MHz, but the memory speed should be the same (14 Gbps).

AMD promises that RX 5500 series will be available this quarter, but no date was given, neither was the pricing.

AMD Radeon RX 5000 Series
VideoCardz.comRX 5700 XTRX 5700RX 5500
GPU7nm Navi 10 XT7nm Navi 10 XL7nm Navi 14 XL (TBC)
Die Size251 mm2 / 10.3B tran.251 mm2 / 10.3B tran.158 mm2 / 6.4B tran
Stream Processors
 
2560
 
2304
 
1408
Game Clock
 
1755 MHz
 
1625 MHz
 
up to 1717 MHz
Boost Clock
 
1905 MHz
 
1725 MHz
 
up to 1845 MHz
Memory Speed
 
14 Gbps
 
14 Gbps
 
14 Gbps
Memory
 
8GB GDDR6
 
8GB GDDR6
 
4GB GDDR6
Memory Bus
 
256-bit
 
256-bit
 
128-bit
Max. Bandwidth
 
448 GB/s
 
448 GB/s
 
224 GB/s
InterfacePCI-Express 4.0PCI-Express 4.0PCI-Express 4.0

AMD Radeon RX 5500 4GB performance

Desktop version

Note: the slide does not mention the resolution for this comparison (not even in the footnotes).

AMD Radeon RX 5500 vs RX 480 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
VideoCardz.comRadeon RX 5500 4GBRadeon RX 480 8GBGeForce GTX 1650 4GB
Gears 5
 
92
 
79
 
61
Borderlands 3
 
82
 
69
 
61
Ghost Recon Breakpoint
 
60
 
49
 
47
Ryzen 5 3600X, 16GB DDR4-3200, Win10 Pro

 

AMD Radeon RX 5500 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (1080p)
VideoCardz.comRadeon RX 5500 4GBGeForce GTX 1650 4GB
Fortnite (High)
 
90
 
71
Apex Legends (Ultra High)
 
93
 
68
PUBG (High)
 
99
 
76
World of Warcraft (10)
 
115
 
85
Overwatch (EPIC)
 
135
 
89
Rainbow Six Siege (Ultra)
 
173
 
125
Radeon 7 3800X, 16GB DDR4-3200, Win10 Pro

Mobile version

AMD Radeon RX 5500M vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile (1080p)
VideoCardz.comRadeon RX 5500M 4GBGeForce GTX 1650 Mobile 4GB
Monster Hunter World (High)
 
61
 
47
Borderlands 3 (Medium)
 
65
 
57
The Division 2 (High)
 
70
 
55
Sid Meier’s Civilization 6 (Ultra)
 
71
 
56
World War Z (Ultra)
 
78
 
51
Battlefield 5 (Ultra)
 
79
 
55
World of Warcraft (BFZ) (10)
 
90
 
68
PUBG (Medium)
 
91
 
74
Apex Legends (Medium)
 
96
 
77
Ryzen 7 3750H, 32GB DDR4 (AMD); Ryzen 7 3750H, 8GB DDR4 (NVIDIA)

A reference design of RX 5500

AMD is allegedly not planning to launch it for the public. The RX 5500 will stick to custom designs, which were not unveiled yet.

 

What’s missing in the presentation:

  • The GPU Variant (Navi 14?).
  • Pricing.
  • Release date.
  • Custom models.
  • The difference between XT and non-XT variants.
  • Something to actually be excited about?



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