SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB – A Solid Card In A Tough Place

The Radeon RX 5500 XT uplifts AMD by bringing a modern architecture design and moving away from its GCN design featured on the Polaris GPUs. This allows AMD to bring more streamlined graphics performance in modern workloads and gaming titles. AMD was already ahead of the curve in utilizing new techs such as HBM and smaller process nodes and Navi is no exception. Aside from the new graphics architecture, AMD has also introduced GDDR6 memory and a smaller 7nm process node for their mainstream lineup which is a big update from the 14nm process on Polaris and Vega series cards.

 

While the Radeon RX 5500 series cards bring new technologies and features to the segment, the tech itself doesn't come cheap. The Radeon RX 5500 XT is hence available in two flavors, directly competing against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 16 SUPER graphics cards. The Radeon RX 5500 XT 4 GB has an MSRP of $169 US which is $10 US more than the reference MSRP of the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER which costs $159 US. The Radeon RX 5500 XT 8 GB has an MSRP of $199 US which is $30 US less than the reference MSRP of the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER which costs $229 US.

AMD Radeon GPU Segment/Tier Prices

Graphics Segment	2015-2016	2016-2017	2017-2018	2018-2019	2019-2020
Ultra Enthusiast Tier	Radeon R9 Fury X Radeon R9 Fury Radeon R9 Nano	Radeon R9 Fury X Radeon R9 Fury Radeon R9 Nano	Radeon RX Vega 64	Radeon RX Vega 64	Radeon VII
Price	$649 US $549 US $649 US	$649 US $549 US $649 US	$499 US	$499 US	$699 US
Enthusiast Tier	Radeon R9 390X	Radeon R9 390X	Radeon RX Vega 56	Radeon RX Vega 56	Radeon RX 5700 XT
Price	$429 US	$429 US	$399 US	$399 US	$399 US
High-End Tier	Radeon R9 390	Radeon R9 390	N/A	Radeon RX 590	Radeon RX 5700
Price	$329 US	$329 US	N/A	$279 US	$349 US
Mainstream Tier	Radeon R9 380X Radeon R9 380 Radeon R9 370X Radeon R9 370	Radeon RX 480 Radeon RX 470	Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 570	Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 570	Radeon RX 5600 XT
Price	$229 US $199 US $199 US $179 US	$229 US $179 US	$229 US $169 US	$229 US $169 US	$279 US
Entry Tier	Radeon R7 360	Radeon RX 460	Radeon RX 560	Radeon RX 560	Radeon RX 5500 XT Radeon RX 5500 XT
Price	$109 US	$129 US	$99 US	$99 US	$199 US $169 US

Well, in terms of performance the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 4 GB is supposed to be much faster than the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER at about 10-13% average. The Radeon RX 5500 XT 8 GB is said to be about 20% faster than the 4 GB variant. This should put the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8 GB models close to the GeForce GTX 1660 (non-SUPER). The higher memory buffer that the 8 GB model comes with should definitely help in high-resolution and modern AAA titles but again, these are marketing numbers and I will see how the card actually performs in my own set of benchmarks.

 

 

Unlike the GeForce RTX cards which had some feature advantage over the Radeon RX 5700 series cards, the GeForce GTX cards don't feature RTX/DLSS support. This puts them just on par with the Radeon RX 5500 series in feature set with the exception of the Turing NVENC encoder which does an exceptional job for gamers on a budget. The Radeon RX 5500 is supported by the latest AMD Adrenaline 2020 Edition bringing features such as Radeon Boost, Integer Scaling, Radeon Image Sharpening, Radeon Anti-Lag, and Freesync support. These are an impressive list of features on their own and something to really consider when comparing AMD's and NVIDIA's budget tier range of cards.

So for this review, I will be taking a look at the SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB. This is SAPPHIRE's more cost effective custom design for the Navi 14 GPU that features dual replaceable fans. The card has an MSRP of $179.99 US which is spot on compared to the reference MSRP.

The AMD Radeon RX 5500 Series Family

The AMD Radeon RX 5500 series lineup is made up of several variants which include desktop and mobile parts but there are only two desktop variants with one of them making their way to the DIY market and the other one aiming the OEM market. The Radeon RX 5500 XT is the DIY variant while the Radeon RX 5500 is the OEM variant. We will only be focusing on the Radeon RX 5500 XT as that is the one we received for our review and is the only card that you can actually buy in the market.

AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 4 GB / 8 GB Official Specifications ($169-199 US)

The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT is a very important graphics card that is placed in a super competitive segment. Taking up the battle with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, the RX 5500 XT will not only compete against the upgraded Turing offering, but also the Radeon RX 590 which is currently being sold at discounted prices and has a really good price to performance value. Still, the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT packs a lot of crunch for a little beast that it is.

The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT features 1408 stream processors which means that there are 22 CUs or compute units featured on the card. It also packs 88 TMUs and 32 ROPs with clock speeds rated at 1670 MHz base, 1717 MHz game, and 1845 MHz boost clocks. The card manages to deliver up to 5.20 TFLOPs of compute performance at 130W. The card comes in 8 GB and 4 GB GDDR6 memory options. The memory featured on the card runs across a 128-bit bus interface, delivering 224 GB/s bandwidth.

The 8 GB model is launching at an MSRP of $199 US which is close to the $229 US of the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER while the 4 GB model is launching at an MSRP of $169 US which is $10 US higher than the $159 US GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER (4 GB). In terms of performance, the 4 GB variant has performance that matches the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER while sipping in more power. The 8 GB model should offer slightly better performance than the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER with its higher frame buffer uplifting the performance in games with high-res textures.

AMD Radeon RX 5000 '7nm Navi RDNA' GPU Lineup Specs:

Graphics Card	Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary	Radeon RX 5700 XT	Radeon RX 5700	Radeon RX 5600 XT	Radeon RX 5500 XT	Radeon RX 5300
GPU Architecture	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)
Stream Processors	2560 SPs	2560 SPs	2304 SPs	2304 SPs	1408 SPs	1408 SPs
TMUs / ROPs	160 / 64	160 / 64	144 / 64	144 / 64	88 / 32	88 / 32
Base Clock	1680 MHz	1605 MHz	1465 MHz	1130 MHz	1670 MHz	TBD
Boost Clock	1980 MHz	1905 MHz	1725 MHz	1560 MHz	1845 MHz	1645 MHz
Game Clock	1830 MHz	1755 MHz	1625 MHz	1375 MHz	1717 MHz	1448 MHz
Compute Power	10.14 TFLOPs	9.75 TFLOPs	7.95 TFLOPs	7.19 TFLOPs	5.19 TFLOPs	4.63 TFLOPs
VRAM	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	6 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6 4 GB GDDR6	3 GB GDDR6
Bus Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit	96-bit
Bandwidth	448 GB/s	448 GB/s	448 GB/s	288 GB/s	224 GB/s	168 GB/s
TBP	235W	225W	180W	150W	130W	100W
Price	$449 US	$399 US	$349 US	$279 US	$169 US (4 GB) $199 US (8 GB)	$129 US?
Launch	7th July 2019	7th July 2019	7th July 2019	21st January, 2020	7th October 2019	28th August, 2020

Radeon RX 5500 "7nm Navi RDNA GPU" Feature Set and A Word on HW-Enabled Ray Tracing

While we would share a few tidbits of the RDNA architecture itself below, there are also some highlights we should mention for the Navi GPU. According to AMD themselves, the Navi 14 GPU will be 12% faster at the same power and should consume 30% lower power at the same clock speeds as Polaris GPU. The AMD Navi 14 GPU has a die size of 158mm2 and delivers 1.7x perf per area over the Polaris 10 GPU. The chip packs 6.4 Billion transistors while the Polaris 10 GPU packed 5.7 Billion transistors on a die that was almost 70% bigger.

Also, when it comes to ray tracing, AMD is indeed developing their own suite around it. According to their vision, current GCN and RDNA architecture will be able to perform ray tracing on shaders which will be used through ProRender for creators and Radeon Rays for developers. In next-gen RDNA which is supposed to launch in 2020 on 7nm+ node, AMD will be bringing hardware-enabled ray tracing with select lighting effects for real-time gaming. AMD will also enable full-scene ray tracing which would be leveraged through cloud computing.

New Compute Unit Design
Great Compute Efficiency For Diverse Workloads

• 2x Instruction Rate (enabled by 2x Scalar Units and 2x Schedulers)
• Single Cycle Issue (enabled by Executing Wwave32 on SIMD32)
• Dual Mode Execution (Wave 32 and Wave 64 Modes Adapt for Workloads)
• Resource Pooling (2 CUs Coordinate as a Work Group Processor)

As you can tell, AMD is changing a lot in terms of architecture with RDNA (Radeon DNA) compared to GCN. There's a new Compute unity design, a more streamlined Graphics pipeline & a multi-level cache hierarchy. Aside from the GPU architecture, support for GDDR6 memory is another major change that brings AMD's graphics cards on par with NVIDIA in utilizing modern memory designs for higher bandwidth.

The SAPPHIRE Pulse lineup is their more cost effective lineup when compared to their Nitro+ line and while that brings some cuts to design and delivery it doesn't mean it falls short on delivering a well made product. The SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB comes with features that give it the much more premium look and feel than it's price tag would suggest.

Borrowing design language from its big brother, the SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5700 XT, but in a more muted tone. Gone are the metal mesh and red accents on the fan shroud itself and now it's replaced by a mute solid black design. The back is adorned by an aluminum backplate with vent cutouts to allow the oversized heatsink to breathe better and carries the classic pulse design cues. There's also a cutout for the dual BIOS switch that is not a common feature on cards in this class and very welcome for those tinkerers out there.

Card

The SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT features their Dual X cooler sporting a pair of large 95mm fans that are removable thanks to SAPPHIRE's Fan Quick Connect technology that lets you replace a failing fan or simply clean the heatsink easily. I/O is handled by triple Display Ports 1.4 HDR (DSC 1.2a for 8K 60 Hz) and a single HDMI 2.0. While the PCIe slot is wired and pinned in a x16 fashion the RX 5500 Series of cards only function on a PCIe x8 connection, whether than be PCIe Gen.4 or Gen.3.

The heasink on the SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB is fairly substantial running the length of the 9" card. The heatsink is arranged in a front to back orientation meaning while some heat will exhaust out of the back of your case through the I/O some of it will still pour back into the case and will need to be aided by case airflow to be removed from the system. This is typically not an issue on lower power draw cards like this.

The 3 heatpipes that carry the heat away from the Navi 14 die are situated on the PCIe slot side of the graphics card so you won't be seeing them once it is mounted in your case but that leaves a rather clean appearance. The rear of the card is fully open to allow for as much airflow as possible for dispelling heat from under the shroud.

Since this card will remain in our lineup for future testing as games are released and will be replacing the Radeon RX 570 in our standard 1080p preset scaling we got the opportunity to break the card open and look at the PCB layout as well. Separating the card was fairly simple as it only took the 4 screws around the GPU itself and 4 more screws around the rest of the card for a total of 8 screws to dismantle the cooler from the card.

Once separated we can see that the tiny Navi 14 GPU core is mating directly to a copper core that the heatpipes terminate into while the memory is handled by the aluminum plate surrounding the core. The massive 6 phase GPU and single phase Memory VRMs are cooled by the primary heatsink by way of an aluminum contact point near the I/O of the card. This power delivery is very solid and clearly built to take the most advantage of the 8-pin power adapter.

 

All of the testings were done on our Intel Z370 test bench powered by a 5GHz Core i9-9900K. We ran all tests involving DX11 through 3 paces and averaged the results of all metrics to come to the final numbers. For DX12 and Vulkan we used the latest release of FrameView at the time.  I took the average of average frame rates as well as the 99th percentile results from the run.  I had been using 1% and .1% results but while working on an upcoming review, before starting this one, I had decided to move to a 99th percentile to represent the bottom end of the framerates for a more simple method of charting and reading for our readers.  For those uncertain of what the 99th percentile is representing is easily explained as showing only 1 frame out of 100 is slower than this frame rate. Put another way, 99% of the frames will achieve at least this frame rate. The representation of the 99th percentile is much more consistent in experience than the 1% and .1% lows, and this was ultimately done as a way to deliver better metrics to the audience.

Test System

Components	Z370
CPU	Intel Core i9-9900k @ 5GHz
Memory	16GB G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3200
Motherboard	EVGA Z370 Classified K
Storage	Kingston KC2000 1TB NVMe SSD
PSU	Cooler Master V1200 Platinum
Windows Version	1903 with latest security patches

Graphics Cards Tested

GPU	Architecture	Core Count	Clock Speed	Memory Capacity	Memory Speed
SAPPHIRE Pulse RX 5500 XT	Navi 14	1408	1685/1737/1845	4GB GDDR6	14Gbps
Zotac GTX 1650 SUPER	Turing	1280	1530/1725	4GB GDDR6	12Gbps
NVIDIA GTX 1060 FE 6GB	Pascal	1280	1506/1708	6GB GDDR5	8Gbps
MSI RX 580 Armor 8GB	Polaris 20	2304	1366	8GB GDDR5	8Gbps
Sapphire Nitro+ RX 570 4GB	Polaris 20	2048	1340	4GB GDDR5	7Gbps
Zotac GTX 1650 OC	Turing	896	1485/1665	4GB GDDR5	8Gbps

Drivers Used

Drivers
Radeon Settings	20.2.1
GeForce	442.19

The SAPPHIRE Pulse RX 5500 XT 4GB is rated for a base clock of 1685MHz, a game clock of 1737MHz, and a boost clock of 1845MHz. Through all of our testing, we found the GPU core to sit at roughly 1800-1825MHz at all times regardless of the game while using MSI Afterburner to monitor it on screen and verifying using GPU-z after a session had ended. This test was done separately from gathering performance data as no other utilities other than Frameview are running while gathering results.

I did work on overclocking this card a bit just to see how much was in the tank, and unfortunately, I seem to have lost the silicon lottery in the worst way. I was able to push the core to near 2000MHz for a brief time but it was unable to finish any one test, the best I could get the core stable at was between 1875-1900Mhz which did very little to move the needle in performance. Memory overclocking faired a bit worse with crashing within moments, if not immediately, from trying to increase frequency.

Firestrike

Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance, in this test we ran the regular version of Firestrike which runs at 1080p and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined are not pertinent to this review.

Time Spy

Time Spy is running the DX12 API and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme where we only recorded the Graphics Score as the Physics score is recording the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.

Thermals

Thermals were measured from our open test bench after running the Time Spy graphics test 2 on loop for 30 minutes recording the highest temperatures reported. The room was climate controlled and kept at a constant 22c throughout the testing.

Power Draw

Power draw numbers were taken from the total system power draw by measuring with a Kill-A-Watt. We ran Unigine Valley for 30 minutes and observed the highest sustained load. Something to keep in mind when observing total system power draw is that there are times where a GPU simply being faster and requiring more from the CPU can cause the total system power draw to increase with the like of the Core i9-9900K. That said, the total system power draw is still important as it is how much power it is taking to run the system.

Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series.  The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games.  We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title and because of that, we test this title in DX12.  I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy.

Rainbow 6 Siege

Rainbow 6 Siege has maintained a massive following since its launch and it consistently in Steams Top Ten highest player count game.  In a title where the higher the framerate the better in a tactical yet fast-paced competitive landscape is essential, we include this title despite its ludicrously high framerates.  We use the Ultra preset with the High Defenition Texture Pack as well and gather our results from the built-in benchmarking tool.

Far Cry New Dawn

Far Cry New Dawn brings the DX11 powered Dunia 2 engine back for another beating in Hope County.  We test this game using the Ultra Preset and follow the built-in benchmarking tool for consistency's sake.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the biggest release titles of the year on PC and we simply have to include results here. Running on the Vulkan version of the Rockstar Advanced Graphics Engine we manually set all of the graphics settings and sliders to the Medium setting and left anti-aliasing disabled. We took our results from the final 2 minute section of the built-in benchmark tool.

Metro Exodus

The Metro series is no stranger to being difficult to run and Metro Exodus is no different.  This time it was built with DX12 in mind first and foremost. We take our readings from the Volga mission from one side of where the train is stopped, make a stroll next to the train and down the opposite embankment as we started from.  We did disable all GameWorks features for this test but had Tesselation enabled.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019)

Call of Duty Modern Warfare is back and this time on a new engine running DX12 to allow for some sick DXR Ray Traced Shadows, but we're not testing that here since this card isn't designed for that level of rendering. We tested in the 'Fog of War' mission where we tested our RT performance run. At 1080p we set the settings all to High.

Resident Evil 2

The Resident Evil 2 Remake more than delivered on the promises it made as a game.  While it does have DX12 support the DX11 implementation is far superior and because of that, we will be sticking to DX11 for this title.  We take our performance measurements from when Leo and Claire are first separated and as Leon, we have to make our way through the burning street, down an alleyway, and across to the Police Station gates.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 has made its way into the test lineup thanks to strong demand by gamers and simply delivering MORE Borderlands. This game is rather intensive after the Medium preset and since this is a budget-focused 1080p card Medium it is. We tested using the built-in benchmark utility

The SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB delivers exactly as it was designed to. Performance is solid, thermals and acoustics are more than acceptable. The biggest challenge that the SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB faces is that it comes at a pretty sizeable price premium over its competition with the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, but more importantly the aging Radeon RX 580 8GB. After running through the performance numbers there's no denying that the lower core count, smaller die, more narrow memory bus, RDNA powered card can take on and outperform the aging Radeon RX 580 while running cooler, quieter, and sipping much less power. But, with the price difference and abundance of Radeon RX 580 8GBs still on the market, they make for a really attractive alternative still.

Now, something to take into consideration is that the Radeon RX 580 8GB will not be long for the new market once stock dries up. Another thing to note is ongoing game bundles that come with the SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB could offer up a compelling value if you're in the market for a card in the $180 price range and also want the games that are included at the time.

The SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB is a well built, solid card but it exists in a crowded segment that makes it harder than most to nail down just which card is for you. You're going to want to pay attention closely to performance results for the games you care most about here. You'll be getting a well built and well cooled card that delivers one of the most fuss-free experiences from Radeon recently. It's not likely to blow your socks off, but at least this one doesn't come with any marketing confusion and you don't have to worry about getting the right BIOS, the only concern you'll have is what game you'll want to play first.

 

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