AMD Radeon RX 5500 benchmarks reveal power-efficient Full HD performance that should appeal to gamers on a budget

The German media site Heise has been testing an OEM variant of the Radeon RX 5500 from AMD. The graphics card was taken from an HP Pavilion TP01-0004NG desktop PC and fitted into a custom test system that featured Intel’s Core i7-8700K and 32 GB RAM. Perhaps somewhat unfairly, Heise chose the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 OC and Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+ for comparison. As a leaked AMD sales guide already pointed out, the Radeon RX 5500 has been designed to take on Nvidia’s less powerful GeForce GTX 1650. Regardless, the OEM Radeon RX 5500 still performed admirably.

The three graphics cards were tested on the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark, which is designed to stress a system’s GPU with DirectX 11 level testing. The Sapphire card topped the trio with 12,744 points, with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 variant coming in second on 12,525. However, the AMD Radeon RX 5500 put up a score of 12,111, which is perfectly respectable when considering the higher-powered competition. The RX 5500 was also measured with load and idle power draws of 133 W and 7 W, respectively. This was similar to the GTX 1660 (128 W, 10 W) but much lower than the RX 580 (207 W, 12 W).

In Full HD gaming, the AMD Radeon RX 5500 finished last in both tests but only by small margins. The card from Team Red managed 59 fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Ultra) and 72 fps in Far Cry 5. The RX 580 Nitro+ churned out 65 fps and 75 fps, respectively, leaving Gigabyte’s GTX 1660 model to top the pack with 69 fps (Shadow of the Tomb Raider) and 85 fps (Far Cry 5). The card from Nvidia beats out AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 here, but it plays in a different division and has more VRAM (6 GB vs. 4 GB for this test, although the RX 5500 XT model has 8 GB). Also, this is an OEM version of AMD’s card being tested, so it hasn’t had an AIB partner’s expert refinements added to it.

The making or breaking of AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 card will be the pricing. It already has enough performance appeal for those who want to game at Full HD resolution without resorting to a power-hungry solution. Its true rival, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650, costs around US$150 whereas the GTX 1660 can be bought for around US$220-230. That gives a reasonable price margin for AMD to place the RX 5500 in – with one estimate putting it at around the US$150 mark, in direct competition with the GTX 1650.