MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT Gaming X 8 GB GDDR6 Graphics Card Review – Navi 14 With High End Cooling For $225 US

Conclusion - A Heavy Price To Pay For 8 GB and Better Cooling

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is the first true replacement to the Polaris based Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series family in 3 years. It has some big shoes to fill as the Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series have been the real disruptor of the sub $200 US segment over the recent years given the heavily discounted prices and some really impressive game bundles that AMD had to offer with them.

Featuring the Navi 14 design, AMD doesn't take away anything from the Radeon RX 5500 series whereas NVIDIA took most of what made Turing RTX series that good of a deal in terms of overall features, away from the GeForce GTX 16 series cards. The Radeon RX 5500 XT has strong driver support which is made even better with the recent release of the AMD Adrenaline 2020 edition software suite and a whole range of other features that you get with Navi such as Freesync and Anti-Lag technologies. All of these are well-added features in the 1080p HD gaming and more importantly, the eSports gaming segment.

Although the Radeon RX 5500 XT is one card, it comes in two different memory configurations offering two vastly different price points and also performance numbers. The Radeon RX 5500 XT 4 GB is priced at $169 US while the Radeon RX 5500 XT is priced at $199 US. Both of these cards are more expensive than the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB with the 8 GB variant coming in close to the GeForce GTX 1660 which has recently started getting price drops in the retail channel and many custom variants can be found for around $199 - $209 US. The card I got to test today is MSI's top RX 5500 XT design and one that has a $25 US premium attached to it. This is dangerously close to the GTX 1660 SUPER.

In terms of performance, the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8 GB graphics card is consistently ahead of the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB graphics card with the card coming in close to a GTX 1660 6 GB but that's a very rare occasion. The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is still surprisingly ahead of the card while being the same price as the custom RX 5500 XT Gaming X. There are also titles where vendor-specific optimizations come into play and there we can see the gap between the GTX 1650 4 GB and the RX 5500 XT getting very small. This means that the RX 5500 XT, a $199 ($225 for the MSI Gaming X variant), performs just slightly better than the $159 US GTX 1650 SUPER.

While browsing Newegg, I was surprised to find the MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT 8 GB MECH OC, listed for a price of $199.99 US. Now, this here is a more impressive deal to be honest with the MECH OC offering a dual-fan cooling system too. The MECH OC variant has a smaller overall design and does has a better price to performance value attached to it but it lacks the better PCB design, the great cooling system, and the PCB support plate that the Gaming X has to offer. The MSI Gaming X also offers a much higher overclock of 1685 MHz base and 1737 MHz game clock compared to 1674 MHz base and 1733 MHz game clock on the MECH OC.

The extra costs also go into the behemoth shroud design that comes with a solid metal backplate, and a dual-fan cooling system fitted with MSI's most advanced TORX 3.0 technology. A solid PCB with an 8 phase design keeps this card fed with lots of power which would be useful in getting that extra juice out with manual overclocks. I even saw some nice gains in AAA titles with a small overclock which just shows it is waiting to be pushed even more. The temperatures on the card are also impressive, sitting at 62C at its peak while power consumption numbers see a major drop from the older Polaris architecture while delivering better performance.

The card is also beautiful on its own, a stunning brushed aluminum design that covers the front and backplate along with MSI's Mystic Aura RGB technology which provides a spectacular light show on the side 'Gaming' logo.

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is a great card but the price makes it a really hard buy compared to the GeForce GTX 16 SUPER range from NVIDIA. The Radeon RX 5500 XT does manage to come close to the GeForce GTX 1660 while consistently outperforming the GTX 1650 SUPER in many titles but the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER for $20-$30 US more is a much better deal compared to the 8 GB 5500 XT variant. I guess that's the price you have to pay for offering both 7nm and GDDR6 on a budget / mainstream tier graphics card. AMD does have a promo deal on their RX 5500 XT cards which add up to $90 US worth of value and include a copy of Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and a 3-month Xbox Game Pass to sweeten the deal. What I think is that in the next several months, we can see prices on these GPUs fall significantly but till then, $199 US and above is what you'll have to dish out for the 8 GB model.

However, if you are willing to go team red for their absolute great driver support and to run a Freesync display, the MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT Gaming X is a really cool card with premium design aesthetics that you cannot ignore for a $25 US premium. If you want something even better, the MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT MECH OC should deliver the same amount of performance for an even better price of $199 US, same as the MSRP.

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The MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT Gaming X graphics card for just a $25 US premium over the MSRP gives you an absolute beast of a cooler with fantastic aesthetics, cool & quiet operation, a custom PCB with a factory overclock and 8 GB of GDDR6 memory for under $250 US while delivering performance on par or even better in some cases than the GTX 1660.

Pros

• A true replacement for Radeon RX 400/500 series
• Faster Than GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB Graphics Card
• Massive 8 GB GDDR6 memory under $250 US
• Huge efficiency increase over Polaris cards
• Runs very cool and quiet with 0db fan technology
• Great factory overclock out of the box
• Amazing Shroud design with Twin Frozr 7
• Performance and Silent Mode Options in Dragon Center App
• TORX 3.0 cooling system with finned aluminum heatsink
• First GPUs Built Entirely on 7nm Process node
• PCI-e Gen 4.0 Support
• Good I/O (DSC 1.2a for 8K 60 Hz, Triple Display Ports 1.4 HDR, HDMI 2.0)

Cons

• Very High Price ($224.99 US)
• No dedicated hardware for Ray Tracing
• Not a lot of overclocking headroom left
• Power consumption still not on par with NVIDIA's 12nm

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