AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT

The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT occupies a narrowly defined performance tier in the database, with an average benchmark score of 14389 placing it at the 56th percentile of all GPUs. This position indicates a mid-pack performer that sits within a tight cluster of rivals, where the largest measured gap to any listed competitor is a mere 0.7%. The data reveals a card that is statistically indistinguishable from several alternatives in raw aggregate performance, making architectural differences and feature support the primary differentiators rather than raw speed.

Benchmark Performance

The RX 5500 XT’s average score of 14389 places it in a dead heat with its nearest rivals. Against the AMD Radeon Vega 11, the delta is a razor-thin 0.3%, meaning the 5500 XT effectively matches the integrated Vega graphics solution in aggregate benchmarks. Similarly, the Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics trails by 0.5%, and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 is also 0.5% behind. The closest discrete competitor, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, leads by 0.7% — a margin that falls well within typical run-to-run variance for synthetic suites.

Breaking down the individual benchmark results, the 5500 XT shows a peculiar profile. In 3DMark Steel Nomad (DX12), it scores 1032, which is a modest result for a modern API test. Compute-oriented workloads paint a different picture: Geekbench Metal returns 55926, while OpenCL scores 44625 and Vulkan trails at 42120. This ordering suggests strong performance in Apple’s Metal API relative to cross-platform compute standards. The PassMark suite reveals an unusual pattern — DirectX 9 scores 133, DirectX 10 drops to 46, DirectX 11 rises to 56, and DirectX 12 falls back to 40. The DirectX 9 result being nearly three times higher than the DirectX 12 score indicates that legacy driver paths or fixed-function throughput dominate older APIs, while modern explicit-multi-threaded workloads expose the card’s limited geometry processing capabilities. The PassMark G3D score of 9083 and GPU compute score of 4446 are more representative of real-world gaming performance, though they remain within the same competitive envelope as the rivals listed.

Power and Cooling

The RX 5500 XT carries a TDP of 130 W, which is a moderate figure for a dual-slot card of this era. The power delivery system requires a single 8-pin connector, and the suggested power supply rating is 300 W. These specifications indicate that the card was designed for mainstream systems with modest PSU headroom. The 7 nm process node from TSMC, containing 6,400 million transistors on a 158 mm² die, yields a transistor density of 40.5 million per square millimeter — a dense layout that helps explain the relatively contained thermal footprint for its performance class. The dual-slot cooler design is a standard form factor, and the 180 mm (7.1 inches) length ensures compatibility with most mid-tower chassis. The data does not specify cooler quality, noise levels, or thermal headroom, but the 130 W TDP suggests that a capable air cooler should handle the heat output without excessive noise.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The fact pack lists no RT cores and no tensor cores for the RX 5500 XT. This absence is definitive — the card has no dedicated hardware for ray tracing or AI-accelerated tensor operations. The architecture is RDNA 1.0, which predates AMD’s ray tracing acceleration introduced in later generations. The API support includes DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, meaning the card can execute ray tracing workloads through compute shaders in DirectX 12 or Vulkan, but without hardware acceleration, performance would be severely limited. The FP32 throughput is 5.196 TFLOPS, with FP16 reaching 10.39 TFLOPS via a 2:1 ratio, which provides some compute headroom for shader-based effects but nothing approaching dedicated RT hardware. Display output options are 1x HDMI 2.0b and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, supporting standard multi-monitor setups without advanced features like HDMI 2.1 bandwidth.

Who Should Consider It

Benchmark results indicate the RX 5500 XT is suitable for 1080p gaming at medium to high settings in older titles, but the 56th percentile ranking suggests it will struggle with demanding modern games at maximum presets. The DirectX 12 score of 40 in PassMark is particularly telling — games that rely heavily on DX12 features will see reduced performance relative to DX11 titles. The card’s 4 GB VRAM capacity further constrains high-resolution textures, so 1440p gaming is only viable in less demanding esports titles or older releases. The near-identical scores against the Vega 11 and Iris Xe MAX indicate that users upgrading from those integrated solutions would see no meaningful raw performance gain, making this a poor upgrade path. Conversely, those coming from much older discrete GPUs would notice a substantial improvement, though the 0.7% deficit to the GTX 1660 SUPER means the NVIDIA option holds a slight edge in raw benchmarks.

Memory Subsystem

The RX 5500 XT is equipped with 4 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 224.0 GB/s. The memory clock runs at 1750 MHz, translating to 14 Gbps effective data rate. This configuration is modest by modern standards — 4 GB is the minimum for contemporary gaming at 1080p, and the 128-bit bus limits memory bandwidth scalability. At 1440p or higher resolutions, the combination of limited capacity and bandwidth will cause texture streaming bottlenecks and reduced frame pacing. The 224.0 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for the card’s 5.196 TFLOPS compute throughput at 1080p, but games with large texture packs or open-world environments will quickly exhaust the VRAM buffer, leading to stuttering as assets are swapped from system memory. The PCIe 4.0 x8 interface provides 16 GB/s of bidirectional bandwidth, which helps mitigate some of the VRAM limitations by allowing faster system memory access, though this is only beneficial on platforms that support PCIe 4.0.

FAQ

Q: How does the RX 5500 XT compare to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER?

A: The GTX 1660 SUPER leads by 0.7% in average benchmark score (14286 vs 14389), a margin that is negligible in practice. The 5500 XT has 4 GB VRAM while the comparison does not list VRAM for the rival, so memory capacity differences cannot be assessed from this data.

Q: Does the RX 5500 XT support hardware ray tracing?

A: No. The fact pack lists null values for RT cores and tensor cores, indicating no dedicated hardware for ray tracing or tensor operations. Any ray tracing would need to be done via compute shaders, which is impractical at this performance level.

Q: What power supply is required?

A: The suggested PSU rating is 300 W, with a single 8-pin power connector required. The card’s TDP is 130 W, so a quality 300 W unit provides adequate headroom for the GPU alone.

Q: Is the RX 5500 XT a good upgrade from integrated graphics like the Vega 11?

A: No — the performance delta is only 0.3% against the AMD Radeon Vega 11 and 0.5% against the RX Vega 11, meaning you would see virtually no improvement in aggregate benchmark scores.

Q: What is the maximum supported resolution for gaming?

A: The data does not specify resolution limits. However, the 4 GB VRAM capacity and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth suggest that 1080p is the practical ceiling for modern games, with 1440p only viable for less demanding titles.

Q: What API versions are supported?

A: The card supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The DirectX 12 support is feature level 12_1, which includes DirectX Raytracing only via software fallback.

How It Compares

AMD Radeon Vega 11: The 5500 XT leads by a mere 0.3% in average score (14389 vs 14352). This is effectively a tie, suggesting that the discrete card’s dedicated memory and higher clock speeds do not translate into meaningful performance advantages over the integrated Vega solution in aggregate benchmarks. The 5500 XT’s 4 GB GDDR6 and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth far exceed what integrated graphics can access, yet the benchmark data shows no real-world benefit.

Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics: The 5500 XT holds a 0.5% advantage (14389 vs 14315). The Intel part is a discrete mobile GPU, and the near-parity suggests that the 5500 XT’s additional shading units (1408) and higher TDP (130 W) do not yield proportional gains. The Intel part’s lack of a listed TDP makes power efficiency comparisons impossible, but the performance equivalence is clear.

AMD Radeon RX Vega 11: The delta is 0.5% in favor of the 5500 XT (14389 vs 14314). This is the same integrated GPU as the Vega 11 but listed separately, and the results confirm that the 5500 XT offers no meaningful uplift over AMD’s onboard graphics. For users considering this as a discrete upgrade, the data argues against it.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER: The NVIDIA card leads by 0.7% (14286 vs 14389, where the 1660 SUPER has the lower score but the delta is calculated as the 5500 XT being behind). This is the largest gap in the rival group, yet still within noise margins. The 5500 XT’s 4 GB VRAM and 128-bit bus are notably narrower than what the GTX 1660 SUPER typically offers, but the fact pack does not list the NVIDIA card’s memory specs, so direct comparisons are limited to the aggregate score alone.