AMD has announced its third SKU in the Navi range, the RX 5500. It sits below the 5700 and 5700 XT, which offer performance comparable to the RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070, with power that's more comparable to the RX 590, which should mean it can stomp all over cards like the GTX 1650 and 1650 Ti. AMD itself claims that the 5500 is as much as 37 percent faster than the GTX 1650.
The official specifications peg the RX 5500 as having 22 Compute units, with 1,408 stream processors. That's a noticeable dip below the RX 5700, which has 36 and 2,304, respectively. Clock speeds are however, however, with a Game Clock of 1,717MHz, and a boost clock of 1,845MHz -- better cooling may open up some more clock speed headroom there.
There will also be options for both 4GB and 8GB GDDR6 variants, each with a 128-bit memory interface, and a TDP of 150w, as per Eurogamer. The mobile version will have a slightly reduced clock speed and a TDP of just 85w.
Set to debut sometime in the next couple of months with a price tag of just $150, this represents a sizeable cut in price over the RX 590, dipping by around 20 percent. If performance is indeed comparable, this will be a very exciting card for entry-level gamers who are looking to upgrade. We're told that when it does launch it will do so with an AMD blower version, as well as several third-party cooler options from the likes of Sapphire, Asus, XFX, and MSI.
We've already learned that an RX 5500 M laptop is just around the corner: the MSI Alpha 15. With a 1080p, 144Hz screen, an AMD Ryzen 3750H CPU, and this GPU on board, it should be a great entry-level gaming laptop.
