This afternoon AMD announced that it has introduced the Radeon RX 5500 series of graphics processors. The Radeon RX 5500 and RX 5500M are based upon 7nm Navi 14 GPUs and aim to bring RDNA gaming architecture to the mainstream 1080p gaming market on desktop and mobile, respectively. While AMD hasn’t got a reference card to hard launch today, it has announced a raft of partners who will be producing graphics cards and incorporating them in pre-build PCs, and various other partners who will be incorporating the mobile version of this GPU into their laptop designs.
AMD says that the new Radeon RX 5500 series deliver up to 1.6X better gaming performance per watt than the current range of Radeon graphics cards based upon GCN GPUs. While the RX 5700 targeted 1400p high fidelity gaming the new RX 5500 GPUs aim to work their magic at gaming friendly frame rates at 1080p in both AAA (60fps+) and eSports (90fps+) titles.
Talking performance, the Radeon RX 5500 graphics card provides up to 37 per cent faster performance on average than the competitive product in select titles at 1080p. In a laptop with the RX 5500M, a 30 per cent performance advantage was observed. The competitive product is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 (in desktop and laptop versions).
AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 GPUs utilise a 158mm2 Navi 14 GPU with 22 CUs, which is paired with either 4GB or 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus. The desktop variant is configured with a 1717MHz game clock which can boost to 1845MHz. The mobile version has a game clock of 1448MHz and can boost up to 1645MHz.
|
Model |
Compute Units |
Stream Processors |
TFLOPS |
GDDR6 (GB) |
Game Clock11 (MHz) |
Boost Clock12 (MHz) |
Memory Interface |
|
Radeon RX 5500 series (Desktop) |
22 |
1,408 |
Up to 5.2 |
Up to 8GB |
Up to 1,717 |
Up to 1,845 |
128-bit |
|
Radeon RX 5500M GPU (Mobile) |
22 |
1,408 |
Up to 4.6 |
4GB |
Up to 1,448 |
Up to 1,645 |
128-bit |
In addition to the welcome performance against previous gen parts and competitor products, the Radeon RX 5500 series comes with the newest Radeon technologies such as RIS, AMD Fidelity FX, Radeon Anti-Lag, plus compatibility with lots of FreeSync and FreeSync 2 HDR monitors.
Unfortunately, availability and pricing is still a little hazy after today’s paper launch. Reading between the lines pricing should be under $US200 for the add-in-card. Meanwhile shiny new desktops / laptops from the likes of Acer, HP, MSI and Lenovo will start to ship with Radeon RX 5500 GPUs inside starting next month.
The new cards and systems packing them will qualify for AMD’s ongoing Raise the Game bundle.
