AMD has announced the Radeon RX 5500 Series, a new lineup of desktop and mobile graphics cards designed specifically for 1080p gaming.
The Radeon RX 5500 features the same AMD Navi 7-nanometre architecture as the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT graphics cards, but with less powerful specs and a likely more affordable price.
AMD claims the RX 5500 will offer 60fps and beyond for AAA video games, and 90fps plus for esports games, putting it as a direct challenger to Nvidia’s GTX 1650 GPU.
AMD also confirmed we’ll start to see gaming laptops featuring the new RX 5500M GPU, with the MSI Alpha 15 set to be the world’s first notebook to have the honour.
Related: Best Graphics Cards 2019
AMD Radeon RX 5500 release date – When will it come out?
The AMD Radeon RX 5500 is set to be available in the Q4 2019 release window. AMD did not provide a specific date, but did promise more information regarding price will arrive “shortly”.
AMD Radeon RX 5500 price – How much will it cost?
AMD did not mention a price for the Radeon RX 5500, iterating that it will be up to OEMs to set a figure. That said, AMD did say it will be looking to compete with Nvidia’s GTX 1650 graphics card which costs around £150, so expect to see a very competitive price.
AMD listed several OEMs – including ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock and Sapphire – that will be releasing third-party models of the graphics card. It doesn’t seem like AMD will be releasing their own “pure” version.
AMD Radeon RX 5500 specs
AMD revealed the specs for the RX 5500 graphics card, as well as the specifications for the RX 5500M which is the mobile edition of AMD’s new Full HD GPU.
| AMD Radeon RX 5500 | AMD Radeon RX 5500M | |
| GPU architecture | AMD Navi | AMD Navi |
| Compute Units | 22 | 22 |
| Stream Processors | 1408 | 1408 |
| TFLOPS (up to) | 5.2 | 4.6 |
| Game Clock (up to) | 1717 MHz | 1448 MHz |
| Boost Clock (up to) | 1845 MHz | 1645 MHz |
| GDDR6 (up to) | 8GB | 4GB |
| Memory Interface | 128-BIT | 128-BIT |
AMD Radeon RX 5500 performance – How powerful is it?
AMD claims the Radeon RX 5500 Series is capable of up to 60 FPS for AAA games (Monster Hunter: World, Borderlands 3 and The Division 2 provided as examples) and up to 90+ for eSports gaming (Apex Legends, Fortnite and World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth) when playing at Full HD resolution.
AMD also boasted its GPU sees up to a 37% faster performance than the Nvidia GTX 1650, with a significant performance advantage for modern AAA titles such as Gears of War 5 and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
Rather strangely, AMD did not compare performance results with other Nvidia GeForce 16 Series GPUs such as the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti. This suggests the latter too may be more powerful, but will also likely demand a higher price.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
