AMD announces the new Radeon RX 5500 cards for desktop and mobile

AMD announces today an expansion of its Radeon RX video card range, with the Radeon RX 5500 family models destined for both desktop and notebook systems. At the base, we find the GPU of the Navi family, able according to the American company to offer an ideal performance level at a Full HD resolution of 1,920×1,080 pixels.

In the following table, we have compared the specifications of the two versions of the Radeon RX 5500 GPU with those of the two other AMD cards based on GPU Navi, Radeon RX 5700XT and Radeon RX 5700 models.

CPU	Radeon RX 5700XT	Radeon RX 5700	Radeon RX 5500	Radeon RX 5500M
Compute Unit	40	36	22	22
Stream Processors	2,560	2,304	1,408	1,408
GPU Clock Base	1,605 MHz	1,465 MHz	n/a	n/a
Game Clock GPU	1,755 MHz	1.625 MHz	1,717 MHz	1,448 MHz
Maximum Clock	1,905 MHz	1.725 MHz	1.845 MHz	1,645 MHz
A memory Architecture	GDDR6	GDDR6	GDDR6	GDDR6
Bandwidth Memory	484 GB/s	484 GB/s	242 GB/s	242 GB/s
Clock Memory	14. Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps
Video memory Quantity	8GB	8GB	8GB	4GB
Supply	8pin + 6pin	8pin + 6pin	n/a	n/a
Board Power	225 W	185 W	n/a	n/a

The transition to the RDNA architecture used in the Navi GPUs has made it possible to obtain, as anticipated by AMD, significant benefits compared to those offered by the American company with the solutions of the previous generation Polaris family.

AMD indicates an increase in performance per Watt consumed by 1.6 volts, with a reduction in the chip surface that drops from the 221 square millimeters of Polaris (Radeon RX 480 cards, Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 590) up to 158 square millimeters of Radeon RX 5500.

This card is positioned by AMD as a direct competitor of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 cards, with respect to which it is able to achieve performances above the reference resolution of 1,920×1,080 pixels up to a peak of 37%.

The second version of the GPU is the Radeon RX 5500M, which we will see at the debut during the quarter that has recently begun in various models. The first available on the market comes from the Taiwanese MSI: this is the Alpha 15 notebook, a model that combines the new AMD card with a Ryzen 7 3750H processor.

The panel with 15-inch Full HD resolution is IPS type, with FreeSync technology support and vertical refresh rate up to 144Hz; there is no shortage of all the typical finishes that characterize laptops destined for gamers.

The speed performance of the Radeon RX 5500M model is similar to what we have just seen for the desktop version. In the internal AMD tests this GPU was able to achieve superior performance up to 30% in comparison with the GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile card.

The debut of desktop video cards based on the Radeon RX 5500 GPU will take place during the fourth quarter of the year, with desktop models offered by AMD’s main partners in this market starting in November and standalone cards from AMD’s AIB partners that will be put up for sale in the coming weeks.

Dynamics similar to the mobile version, with the first products equipped with Radeon RX 5500M GPU that should be commercially available for the Christmas sales season. Specifically, MSI will put its MSI Alpha 15 gaming notebook on the market by the end of October 2019.

AMD has provided some images of its reference board based on the Radeon RX 5500 GPU: very compact dimensions emerge in length, with side space always equal to 2 slots and a large fan that dominates the entire front. From the image, it is not possible to understand if the card requires additional power, in the form of a 6-pin PCI Express connector, or if this is not required.

For the moment, AMD has not provided specific information on the prices of the Radeon RX 5500 card: the debut is a matter of a few weeks and in this time frame NVIDIA, according to rumors that have emerged in recent weeks, should expand its range of GeForce series products. GTX 1600 just to better position itself with respect to AMD news.