AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB/8GB review: Is the extra memory worth it?

Built for 1080p gaming

AMD has traditionally done well when it comes to mid-range GPUs. The company recently introduced its Radeon RX 5500 series, a new range of Navi-based cards targeting the budget and mainstream markets. While the Radeon RX 5500 will probably go up against something like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, the Radeon RX 5500 XT tackles the GeForce GTX 1650 Super and GeForce GTX 1660.

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is also available in either 4GB or 8GB variants, which AMD says should help it cover as wide a swathe of the 1080p mainstream audience as possible. After all, 4GB of GDDR6 video memory can be rather limiting, and the hope is that the larger 8GB configuration will help it out in modern games that can use the additional frame buffer, especially at higher resolutions and settings. 

AMD isn't releasing reference versions of the Radeon RX 5500 XT, opting to go straight to launch with custom cards from its add-in board (AIB) partners. This means I'll be working with the ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 5500 XT O8G Gaming and Sapphire Plus Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB for this review – in addition to checking how they stack up against the relevant NVIDIA cards, I'll also look at how much extra performance 8GB of VRAM can net you.

As it turns out, both 4GB and 8GB models share the same basic specifications, including GDDR6 memory with an effective clock of 14,000MHz and a 128-bit memory bus for 224GB/s of bandwidth. The TDP is 130W for both cards, compared to 100W for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super, so the green camp has a slight edge here. 

Under the hood, both cards are built around AMD's new Navi 14 GPU, which features fewer Compute Units (CUs) and ROPs and less memory bandwidth than the original Navi 10, which the Radeon RX 5700 XT is based on. It's also cut down on the number of transistors to just 3.9 billion, which results in a die that is around 37 per cent smaller than Navi 10. What's interesting is that this doesn't even appear to be the full-fat version of Navi 14, since we know from the Radeon Pro 5500M that the part actually features up to 24 CUs. That said, it has managed to pack more transistors into the chip compared to the ageing Polaris GPUs, all while occupying just 70 per cent of the space.

In addition, it's based on RDNA architecture at its very core, which means all the features and efficiency improvements that debuted on the Radeon RX 5700 series are still there, including the entirety of the media processing block.

Many of these improvements are made possible thanks to TSMC's more advanced 7nm process, which enabled AMD to cram in smaller and more efficient transistors. In comparison, NVIDIA is still using TSMC 12nm, which is itself derived from the 16nm process.

A closer look at the custom cards

The Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4G ships with a slight factory overclock, although it's nothing compared to the more aggressive frequencies reserved for the company's Nitro series. The card has a Game clock of 1,737MHz and Boost clock of 1,845MHz, which is basically a small 20MHz increase over the reference Game clock. Meanwhile, the Boost clock has remained unchanged.

This is a pretty plain dual-slot card, featuring a dual-fan open air cooler. The two 95mm fans support semi-passive operation, so they go completely silent when the card is idle. Sapphire calls this its Dual-X Cooling Technology, and the cooler actually extends beyond the PCB, drawing heat away from the GPU by way of three heat pipes.

One nice touch is the dual onboard BIOS. You can select which one you want via a switch at the top, but the default performance BIOS automatically increases the GPU power limit to 135W. The second BIOS is tuned for quieter operation, bringing the power limit back down to 120W.

The card also relies on a single 8-pin connector for power, which seems a little overkill.

Another thing to note is that while this is physically a PCIe x16 card, it only uses eight lanes electrically. I wouldn't worry too much about this though, especially since this is a PCIe 4.0 card. Ultimately, eight PCIe 4.0 lanes is more than enough when paired with a PCIe 4.0-compatible motherboard (not that it's actually going to be a problem with PCIe 3.0 anyway). 

To cap things off, the card comes with a metal backplate to reinforce the PCB, complete with a pulse rate motif.

On the other hand, the ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 5500 O8G Gaming comes with a few more bells and whistles. For starters, it comes with a FanConnect II header for you to hook up an extra system fan. It's also got some RGB lighting built in, but that's mostly confined to the ROG logo on the cooling shroud. 

Elsewhere, it's very similar to the Sapphire card, featuring also dual onboard BIOS and a single 8-pin power connector. Of course, it ships with a factory overclock too, boasting a 1,737MHz Game clock and 1,865MHz boost clock in OC Mode. 

Both cards have the same selection of display outputs, comprising three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0b connector. 

Test setup

The detailed specifications of our new graphics card testbed system is as follows:-

• Intel Core i7-8086K (4.0GHz, 12MB L3 cache)
• ASUS ROG Strix Maximus X Hero (Intel Z370)
• 4 x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3000 (Auto timings: CAS 15-15-15-35)
• Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD
• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• ASUS PB287Q, 4K monitor

The full line-up of graphics cards tested are listed below:

• ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 5500 XT O8G Gaming
• Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB
• ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming OC
• Zotac Gaming GeForce GTX 1660 Super
• ASUS Phoenix GeForce GTX 1660
• ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming OC

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Next up, here's a list of all the benchmarks used:

• 3DMark
• Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Far Cry 5
• Metro Exodus
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Tom Clancy's The Division 2

3DMark

The synthetic 3DMark benchmark tests graphics and computational performance at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K. A series of two graphics test, one physics test, and then a combined test stresses your hardware in turn to assess its performance.

The extra 4GB of video memory doesn't do the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB much good in a synthetic benchmark like 3DMark. In fact, there's hardly any significant difference between the 4GB and 8GB versions of the card. Both cards ended up performing around the level of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660, although the NVIDIA card had the edge in the Time Spy tests. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity has long been the poster child for the performance benefits a low-level API like DirectX 12 can bring. It is based on the Nitrous engine and can be extremely punishing thanks to the huge number of onscreen units and the sheer level of detail accorded to each unit. However, the CPU does become the limiting factor at lower resolutions and settings.

Once again, the 8GB model was practically indistinguishable from its 4GB counterpart. The performance difference will only become apparent when a game demands more VRAM resources with more complex textures and higher resolutions, and it seems like Escalation is not that game. That said, we do see the 8GB version inch ahead at Crazy settings and a 4K resolution. When compared to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660, the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB was around 11 per cent slower at 1080p and High settings.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Mankind Divided features just about every trick to make your game look pretty, including things like volumetric and dynamic lighting, screenspace reflections, and cloth physics. Even though it was released in 2016, the game is capable of bringing even the most powerful systems to their knees.

That said, Mankind Divided doesn't do a lot to bring out the benefits of the extra memory either. At 1080p and Ultra settings, both versions of the Radeon RX 5500 XT pull nearly level with the GeForce GTX 1660.

Far Cry 5

Far Cry 5 is actually an AMD launch title, so it'll be interesting to see how the red camp fares here.

The Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB does pull ahead of its 4GB sibling at 4K, but with average frame rates still hovering around 30FPS, it's almost an inconsequential difference since 4K gaming is totally out of this card's league. However, both cards continue to push out very similar numbers as the GeForce GTX 1660. 

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus runs better in DirectX 12, so that's the setting we chose to run our benchmarks at. There's just one caveat though – actual in-game performance is generally better than the results you get in the in-game benchmark, so this is best taken as an indicator of relative performance, rather than the absolute numbers you can expect in game.

This is also an NVIDIA game through and through, with options to turn on PhysX and HairWorks. However, these have been disabled to enable a more level playing field with AMD cards, as have options for ray tracing and DLSS. 

This is also a very demanding game to run, but the Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB and 8GB look capable of handling it at 1080p and High settings. That said, that's about as far as the cards can go and it doesn't seem the best idea to push the settings or resolution higher. The 8GB version of the card also isn't any faster than its 4GB counterpart here. 

Middle-earth: Shadow of War

By this point, it's apparent that doubling the amount of VRAM doesn't help a lot with performance in most cases. After all, the GeForce GTX 1660 Super has 6GB of GDDR6 memory, but is still around 20 per cent faster than the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Like Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs better in DirectX 12 as well. DLSS and ray tracing have been added to the game already, but these numbers are obtained without those features turned on.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the games where the extra 4GB of memory seems to come in handy. At 1080p and the Highest settings, the 8GB model was around 9 per cent faster than the 4GB card. The 4GB model also falls behind the GeForce GTX 1660 here, coming in at roughly 15 per cent slower.

Tom Clancy's The Division 2

Division 2 is another new addition to our benchmark suite, and it replaces 2016's The Division. We've also shifted to DirectX 12 here as well because of the performance gains offered by the low-level API.

The additional VRAM comes into play to some extent in The Division 2 as well. At 1080p and High settings, the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB was around 5 per cent faster. The difference was even more pronounced at 4K and Ultra settings, where the 8GB card was a good 58 per cent faster. However, it's still nowhere close to delivering a playable experience at 4K, so the performance boost doesn't have any tangible impact on real-world usage.

Temperature and power consumption

The temperature measurements were obtained after running 40 loops of 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme's stress test and checking the peak sustained temperature. Similarly, the total system power consumption figures were read off a power meter during a run of Fire Strike Extreme.

Unfortunately, all the cards here use different coolers, so the temperature numbers can't really be taken as a fair comparison of how hot the chips are relative to each other. 

That aside, power consumption numbers are pretty decent, with lower idle power draw than the GeForce GTX 1660 and only slightly higher peak power numbers. 

Which version to get?

The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT is a decent card for 1080p gaming, but NVIDIA already has many solid options in this category. AMD's biggest differentiating factor will be the amount of VRAM it offers – it has released 4GB and 8GB versions of the card, which cost US$169 and US$199 respectively. The whole reason the 8GB version exists is so AMD can cover those specific situations where you need more than 4GB of VRAM to hold all those complex textures that are being stuffed into today's games. 

However, a look at the benchmarks on the previous pages shows that in most cases, you don't actually see a benefit from doubling the VRAM. In fact, the 4GB and 8GB versions perform almost identically in many games. However, titles like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Tom Clancy's The Division 2 allow the 8GB model to pull ahead, sometimes by as much as 9 per cent, as was the case in Tomb Raider. Both of these are newer games, so it stands to reason that you should probably shell out a bit more for the 8GB version if you're worried about future-proofing.

You can save a bit of money and get the 4GB model, and you'd probably be okay with most games today, but it may not be the best long-term plan.

When compared to competing cards from NVIDIA, such as the US$229 GeForce GTX 1660 Super, the Radeon RX 5500 XT can be up to 20 per cent slower. It also doesn't quite beat the GeForce GTX 1660, which came out way back in March last year. And while we weren't able to get a GeForce GTX 1650 Super in for testing, it's been said that the Radeon RX 5500 XT performs very similarly to it. The GeForce GTX 1650 Super costs just US$159 though, so even the Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB is slightly more expensive.

Ultimately, the Radeon RX 5500 XT doesn't quite shake up the mainstream GPU market in any big way. They hold their own against NVIDIA's cards, but they don't stand out, serving mostly to give you more options if you're in the market for a budget card. That said, if you're not bent on getting an AMD card, I'd check out the GeForce GTX 1660 Super instead.

	Performance	Features	Value	Overall
ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 5500 XT O8G Gaming	7.5	8.0	8.5
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB	7.0	7.5	8.0

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