GPUs

AMD Radeon RX 5500 Benchmarks suggest Lacklustre Navi 14 showing

While AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 hasn’t exactly been released, the OEM variant’s out in the wild. With the same specs as the reference model, it gives us a look at what AMD’s latest budget card is capable of.

The folks over at Heise.de got hold of an HP Pavilion pre-built system with an RX 5500 in it. The OEM build has the RX 5500 running at reference clocks. From the benchmarks they posted, we have a pretty good idea now of why AMD insisted on comparing this part to the sad, sad GTX 1650 and not something higher up on the food chain.

To put it bluntly, the RX 5500 is really not a good deal today. Heise.de’s tests show the RX 5500 lagging behind a custom RX 580 by about 5 percent, in both synthetics and games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Far Cry 5. The RX 5500 will likely launch in the $150 range. However, Polaris cards can already be had at that price-point. And your average RX 580/570 can easily hit 1450 MHz.

Making things worse, Nvidia introduced the GeForce 1650 Super today at $160. This is a card that matches the RX 580 and trades blows with the RX 590 in many titles. It is almost certainly faster than than the RX 5500 and won’t come at a big price-premium

If you dive into the secondhand market, you can even find older Maxwell-based 980 Tis priced below $200. Just who is the RX 5500 meant for? With the arrival of Navi, a new architecture built on the 7nm process, it was reasonable to expect a bump to budget performance. But with the RX 5500, all AMD’s seemingly done is offer up Polaris-level performance again at a problematic price-point.

Arjun

Penguin-published author, and journalist. Loves PC hardware but has terrible hand-eye coordination. Most likely to be found playing Total War or watching weird Russian sitcoms.
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