The news we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. After weeks and months of speculating over every bit of news we can get our hands on, AMD has finally announced their new line of graphics cards, the Radeon RX5500 and the Radeon RX5500m.
We got our first taste of what these cards would include back in September when some of the specifications were leaked in an online benchmark. Although these contained limited information on the cards, they did confirm that these cards were due to be announced soon. Thankfully that time is now.
What do we know?
We now know that the Radeon RX 5500 will be shipped out for desktop and mobile markets. The RX 5500 series is based on a 7nm Navi 14-GPU and will offer 8GB of GDDR6 memory at 14Gbps.
To get a bit more technical, the 7nm Navi 14 GPU has a die size of 158mm2 and has a grand total of 6.4 billion transistors. AMD has stated that this increase in transistor density and die size will offer a 1.6x performance boost compared to their Radeon RX 480. Further details for the RX 5500 and RX5500m can be found on AMD’s listing pages.
AMD has said: “RX 5500 graphics powers the world’s most technologically advanced 1080P gaming laptops. Powered by the groundbreaking 7nm RDNA architecture with Radeon™ Image Sharpening4 and Radeon™ Anti-Lag5 technology, Radeon RX 5500 delivers extremely efficient, ultra-responsive, high-fidelity gaming.”
Another strange bit of news is that the mobile version will be launching at the same time as the desktop version. The RX 5500m will perform slightly lower than the desktop counterpart, one of the limitations is that it will only include 4GB of memory. However, it is still a very impressive card that holds up well to its GeForce GTX 1650 counterpart.
The good news is, this mobile version of the RX 5500 will have the same amount of computing units and stream processors as the desktop version. As well as the reduced amount of VRAM mentioned, the clock speeds will also be slightly lower at around 1,448MHz.
Some comparisons to look at
It’s always good to get a bit of a side-by-side comparison when new cards are announced. Take a quick look below to get a general idea of where this card will sit in the existing market.
| RX 5500 | RX 5500M | RX 5700 | RX 5700 XT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stream Processors | 1408 | 1408 | 2304 | 40 |
| Compute Units | 22 | 22 | 36 | 2560 |
| TFLOPs | 5.2 | 4.6 | 7.95 | 9.75 |
| Boost Clock | 1845MHz | 1645MHz | 1725MHz | 1905MHz |
| Game Clock | 1717MHz | 1448MHz | 1625MHz | 1755MHz |
| Memory | 4GB/8GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Interface | 128-bit | 128-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Thermal Design Power | 150W | 85W | 180W | 225W |
| Bandwidth | 224 GB/s | 224 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s |
We’d have included a price comparison for these cards, but as there aren’t any official price listings for the new Navi cards as of yet, it’d only be a speculative figure. We’ll be sure to keep you updated once we hear the news.
Closing thoughts
AMD says that the Radeon RX 5500 will be available first in desktop PCs and laptops before they are shipped as individual products. This may be frustrating for some people who are waiting to get their hands on the cards, but as there is no firm release date for anything yet, it’s still a waiting game.
From the specification table above it looks like the RX 5500 series will be aimed solely at people looking to play their games at 1080p. This means that the cards will more than likely slot into the mid-range price point for their performance – speculation has it that this may be between the RX580 and RX590. We won’t know for sure until more details surface and we get the chance to see these cards in action.