The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT Review, Feat. Sapphire Pulse: Navi For 1080p
by Ryan Smith on December 12, 2019 9:00 AM ESTCompute
While I’m including compute performance for the sake of completeness here, the compute situation on Navi has not substantially changed since the launch of the Radeon RX 5700 series over 5 months ago. AMD’s Adrenaline 2020 software has improved the state of their OpenCL drivers slightly – there are fewer hard crashes and performance is up in some cases – but their drivers are still dysfunctional and not fit for production use. In particular, Folding@Home and parts of CompuBench are still unable to run (and SETI@Home users will want to stay clear too).
AMD is aware of the issue, unfortunately they don’t have any updates to offer on the situation. I am of the distinct impression that AMD has made OpenCL on Windows a low priority for now, and has opted to focus their software efforts on bringing up additional Navi GPUs, as well as improving Navi gaming performance and continuing to develop their ROCm platform for Linux. So anyone looking to do GPU compute on AMD’s GPUs would best be served by using Vega or Polaris cards if they’re using to Windows, or switching to Linux for these matters.
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skizlock - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Should be fine.TheSkullCaveIsADarkPlace - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
The 5500XT should be alright. But, you didn't say what you are doing, you just said what you are not doing (no gaming). So, i assume you care only about 2D. In which case you could probably select an even more inexpensive GPU that does 4K/60Hz. But then again, it's you who is calling the shots about the things you want to purchase. I am not daring to further step into the line of fire there... ;-)PixyMisa - Friday, December 13, 2019 - link
I have a 580 driving two 4K monitors for work, and it's great.Ranguvar - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Hey Ryan, thank you for the excellent reviews...July 7th, you posted on the 5700 (XT) review that you had "15 pages of notes" on deeper RDNA details that you'd be posting later.
Is this ever coming to fruition? Holding out hope!
Cheers.
TEAMSWITCHER - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
I seriously question your motives in this review... Excluding all 1440p results, but then including the Radeon 5700 (a card priced well above this range) just to ensure that AMD has the top position in all the graphs. And your conclusion page make ZERO reference to the GTX 1660 Super card, which can be had for a very good price - $230. I'm seeing this trend all over .. tilting reviews to benefit AMD. I get it.. everyone loves an underdog... but these GPU's are just dogs.Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
The Radeon 5700 is the next card up in AMD's current-generation stack. It's important to include it to show where the 5500 XT ends, and where the next card picks up.Fataliity - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Ryan - Have you tried AMD's new performance boost on the 5500XT to see how it performs? The resolution scaling when moving screen etc? I imagine the Algo feature was built for this card, considering its release and drivers release were in sync. So I'm just wondering how it helps for a budget card?Thank you!
Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
I've tried it. I don't care for it. But I'll give AMD tons of credit for trying new ideas.But I'll save that for once I can write up something proper.
Zoomer - Saturday, December 21, 2019 - link
Overclocking?Hrel - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Nah, its pretty bs you didn't include 4k results. The ONLY reason to buy the 8gb version is 4k and now I gotta go elsewhere to find out how the gpu uses that extra vram. Very dumb not to include 4k.