AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT vs AMD Radeon HD 7970

The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT is a desktop graphics card that launched in Q4 2019 with a MSRP of $169. It is built on the RDNA 1.0 GPU microarchitecture (codename Navi 14) and is manufactured on a 7 nm process.

Memory

The RX 5500 XT has 4 GB of GDDR6 memory, with a 1,750 MHz memory clock and a 128 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 224 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The RX 5500 XT includes 1,408 stream processors (SPs), the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 1,607 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 1,845 MHz. It usually operates at 1,717 MHz during typical gaming workloads. Complementing the processing units are 88 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 32 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The RX 5500 XT occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.4a display connections. AMD recommends a power supply of at least 300 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 130 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The RX 5500 XT has the 116th best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 18.64% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 19,499 score and $169 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 115.38. This is the 8th best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.