XFX RX 5500 XT Thicc II Pro 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card RX-55XT8DFD6 review
XFX RX 5500 XT Thicc II Pro 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card RX-55XT8DFD6 review
Graphics Processor
GPU NameNavi 14GPU VariantNavi 14 XTX
(215-0932396)ArchitectureRDNA 1.0FoundryTSMCProcess Size7 nmTransistors6,400 millionDie Size158 mm²
Graphics Card
Release DateDec 12th, 2019GenerationNavi
(RX Navi)PredecessorVegaProductionActiveBus InterfacePCIe 4.0 x8
Clock Speeds
Base Clock1607 MHzGame Clock1717 MHzBoost Clock1845 MHzMemory Clock1750 MHz
14000 MHz effective
Theoretical Performance
Pixel Rate59.04 GPixel/sTexture Rate162.4 GTexel/sFP16 (half) performance10.39 TFLOPS (2:1)FP32 (float) performance5.196 TFLOPSFP64 (double) performance324.7 GFLOPS (1:16)
Render Config
Shading Units1408TMUs88ROPs32Compute Units22L2 Cache2 MB
Memory
Memory Size4 GB
8 GBMemory TypeGDDR6Memory Bus128 bitBandwidth224.0 GB/s
Graphics Features
DirectX12 (12_1)OpenGL4.6OpenCL2.0Vulkan1.2.131Shader Model6.5
Board Design
Slot WidthDual-slotLength7.09 inches
11.06 inches
180 mm
281 mmTDP130 WSuggested PSU350 WOutputs1x HDMI
3x DisplayPortPower Connectors1x 8-pinBoard NumberD332.
making it about 4 millimeters wider than the MSI evoke OC and 3 millimeters wider than the power color red devil so it is wider than the recently reviewed 5700 XTS here at harbor unboxed but only by a bee's wiener lengthwise it measures 290 millimeters long while it stands 115 millimeters tall so again nothing outrageous here the card weighs in at eleven hundred and fifty three grams which is up there certainly much heavier than the 889 gram of oak but a little
bit lighter than the twelve hundred and fifty-four gram red devil as for the design I rather like the look of it on the front we have a pair of 95 millimeter fans and I like the chrome detailing found around the edge of the fan housing it's quite an elegant design you'll find no RGB lighting here in fact the only LEDs to speak of are some blue LEDs on the PCIe power connectors the fan shroud has been made from plastic but on the back side we do find an
aluminium backplate the backplate features a number of cutouts which look visually impressive and they'll no doubt help vent some built-up heat from the backside of the PCB also next to the PCIe power connectors we find a small cutout which provides access to a little switch on the PCB XFX says this allows users to switch between the default UC profile and then a silent profile however I found virtually no difference between the two modes in terms of temperature
and fan speed moving on around at the i/o panel we have a pretty standard configuration I think it's fair to say three display ports and a single HDMI port so at this point I think it's time we rip the cooler off for a better look at the PCB as well as the cooler itself okay so let's start with the cooler the heatsink alone weighs 511 grams and that makes it 44% heavier than the piddly little heatsink we find on the MSI evoke that said it is still 26 percent lighter than the
heatsink found on the power color red devil so while it is reasonably beefy there are bigger heavier options available one of the reasons the red devil cooler is so much heavier is down to that large nickel plated copper base plate which covers not just the GPU but also the GDD our six memory chips XFX on the other hand have included a smaller copper base plate and then used an aluminium heat spreader to cool the memory so this shouldn't impact GPU thermals all that much but it will be interesting to see if there is any difference when it comes to memory
temperatures as for the vrm we have another aluminium heat spreader here and this one attaches directly to the primary heatsink speaking of which there are three fin arrays all of which are connected via four six millimeter thick copper heat pipes moving over to the fan shroud we find two first D yes the company is called first D anyway we have two DC brushless fans and these are the same models used by most of the XFX graphics cards and that's good
news as they are very easy to replace at a warranty you're only looking to replace them then over on the PCB we find a standard seven plus two phase vrm and this is the same configuration used by AMD's reference card given the 5700 xt is very limited overclocking headroom the power delivery here is more than adequate so there's no need to make any upgrades so now that we've gone over the thick twos design let's see how it
performed in our test system starting with the f1 2019 stress test out of the box after an hour-long loop the card peaked at just 66 degrees in a 21 degree room inside the corsair crystal 570 X fully populated with 120-millimeter fans this is a huge 18 degree drop in peak operating temperature and compare the a reference card which peaked 84 degrees under the exact same conditions at this temperature the thick to maintain an average core clock frequency of roughly
1980 megahertz there is quite a lot of variance in clock speed with these 500 series GPUs but this was about the same frequency we saw from the reference model it is worth noting the fans spun at around 2100 RPM and that does make the thick - quite a bit louder than the red devil which typically saw a fan speed of just 1,400 rpm and I'll compare the temperature and operating volume data directly in a moment just quickly for those of you wondering flicking the thick - over to the silent bias or no real change in operating temperature or volume and this was
of course after a full system reset the card still peaked at 66 degrees the fans still spun at around 2100 rpm but the average boost clock did seem to drop down to around 1900 megahertz so although the card was slightly down clocked we saw no reduction in fan speed before moving on to overclocking let's talk about the fans stop feature of this graphics card when the GPU is idle or under very light load the fans don't spin you can see here that the fan speed is reported
as 65535 rpm but obviously it's not spinning almost as fast as a turbos turbine the software just isn't reporting zero rpm correctly any way that that's not the issue what is the issue here is what happens when you go from an idle state to load oddly the fans don't activate until the GPU temperature hits 100 degrees and this causes a few problems firstly the card gets unnecessarily hot the back plate becomes scorching hot and you definitely receive a good burn if you touched
it secondly the GPU clock speed drops right down below one gigahertz in fact I saw a clock as low as 300 megahertz at times and this is when gaming this means when you fire up a game for the first time the card will begin to throttle after roughly a minute and a half then for about another minute the car will throttle quite badly resulting in loss performance as the GPU temperatures climb then a little over two minutes into your game the fan begins to spin up
problem with that being it cranks up to 3200 where it makes a real racket I recorded an operating volume of 62 decibels the fan continued to spin it around 3200 rpm for the next 40 seconds before very slowly winding back down to a sustained 2100 rpm all certain done this process took six minutes from start to finish this obviously is a big problem but thankfully it doesn't happen all that often when gaming in fact it'll only happen when going from a long idle
period to heavy load so once it happens once when gaming it won't happen again still this really isn't good enough and XFX really do need to fix it as for overclocking we're still looking at a voltage cap of 1200 millivolts and a frequency cap of 2150 megahertz which aimed applies at the bias level with the limits reached we saw a peak operating temperature of 73 degrees but unfortunately this did see the fans cranked up to 2800 rpm and that did make the card quite
loud although we're targeting 2150 mega Hertz the card maintained a core clock speed of around 2 gigahertz so that's just a mere 8% increase in frequency from stock the GDD r6 memory also doesn't respond to that Walder overclocking and for our sample even increasing the memory to just 900 megahertz caused artifacting so I just decided to leave the memory alone ok so let's move into a few quick benchmark graphs as usual we're testing with our core
our 999 or ok GPU test rig the CPU has been overclocked to 5 gigahertz we have 16 gigabytes of ddr4 3400 memory the latest drivers available at the time of testing have been used and for this one we just have a few select games to look at I'm just going to blast through these game benchmarks as they don't really tell us much other than the fact that the XFX thick - performs like any other 5700 xt and we see that here in Assassin's Creed Odyssey the same thing can be
seen when testing with falls on horizon for the Red Devil was a little punchier out of the box but we're only talking about 2 to 3 FPS here finally we have shut off the Tomb Raider this time we see the thick - it's just a frame down on the Red Devil making it 2 FPS faster than the Evoque OC now when it comes to power consumption I was surprised to find the thick - consuming slightly more power than the Red Devil it's not exactly a big increase but given the performance
I was expecting to find it somewhere the Evoque OC and red devil that said we're looking at total system draw it basically matched the other two 5700 XD graphics cards here is a direct temperature comparison with the other cards tested after our thick to match the MSI our TX 2070 superdome a next Rio with a peak operating temperature of 67 degrees which sounds rather impressive and it would be if it weren't for the fact that the fans were spinning more
than twice as fast this also means that while the thick too was 3 degrees cooler than the red devil it was also quite a bit louder and we'll look at operating volume now so despite matching the thermal performance of the MSI our TX 2070 gaming extra oh the thick too was 6 decibels louder in our test making it just a single decibel quieter than the Evoque OC and true decibels quieter than Amy's reference design still it was a few degrees cooler than the Evoque and
slightly quieter so it's not exactly a bad result but it's also not better than the Red Devil perhaps with some fan shooting you could get a similar balance between performance and operating volume but sadly for now at least the silent BIOS doesn't achieve that balance okay so that's how the XFX Radeon RX 5700 xt 2 performs and I have to say bar a single quirk with the fan stop feature it is quite a nice graphics card if anything I feel it is tuned a little too aggressively
towards thermal performance I would like to say XFX reduce the fan speed just a bit and I'll make the card run a little bit hotter but it will be a few decibels quieter and for me that would be an optimal scenario for this graphics card the fans stop issue where the GPU hits 100 degrees before the fans actually turn on which causes long periods of throttling followed by a long period of excessive fan noise really isn't acceptable but it won't be difficult to address
either XFX just needs to change the temperature threshold from 100 degrees down to 60 degrees for example existing models will need a BIOS update though if they are to implement this kind of fix and I suppose while they're at it they might as well fix the silent mode so that it actually does something but as far as looks go the thick too is one of the best-looking graphics cards I've ever seen so that goes just be on 5700 XTS I think it really is one of the best looking
graphics cards I've seen I really like the design and it should fit riding with pretty much any build and I'm also happy to see no RGB lighting on this model is I don't think it really needs it but if you do like a graphics card to put on a bit of a light show then this model may leave you a bit disappointed finally as for whether or not you should buy this thing really comes down to the price the red devil is priced at four hundred and forty dollars u.s. which I feel is a really
reasonable price for a 5700 XT of that caliber the thick two on the other hand and that'll really need to come in at no more than, and this is currently what MSI is asking for their evoke receive the thick is a much better graphics card than the evoke but not quite as good as the Red Devil at least not until a few of those issues we spoke of get fixed up so the price really will determine just how desirable this graphics card is right now
availability of AIB 5700 XT graphics cards is a bit sketchy but I'm hoping that situation will improve over the next few weeks anyway that's gonna do it for this one actually before I wrap this up you may have noticed I'm wearing on you embroidered Hardware unboxed hoodie you can grab that over at our merch store Tim's been doing a good job of pushing the merch lately so I've got my hoodie in and it's my term I thought I'll do it in this review .
XFX RX 5500 XT Thicc II Pro 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card RX-55XT8DFD6 review
all right so this is a GPU that a lot of you have been waiting for this is AMD's new RX 5500 xt that launches today we'll talk about that in a moment and right in time for the holiday season now at that price performance is going to be seriously interesting because it's going up against so many already great value options actually it does feel like forever since AMD launched a GPU in this price range that wasn't just a refresh of
something else so the 5500 xt is a highly anticipated GPU and if the 5700 xt was anything to go off performance here should be really impressive so let's not waste any more time let's take a quick look at the specs and then see how the same performs in games , one thing that I'll mention right off the bat is that the 5500 XD will be available in both an 8 gigabyte model and a lower-priced 4 gigabyte model that has a base MSRP thankfully there's no
trickery or sneaky tactics going on between these two models like we've seen before both the 4 gigabyte and a gigabyte 5500 XTS will have the same number of compute units and other wise processing power it's just the video memory capacity that will be different so if bumping up your in-game textures to ultra in demanding titles is something that you are after the 8 gigabyte model is likely a good idea but if you play mostly mainstream or eSports titles with moderate to high ish textures then the 4 gigabyte model will offer the better value here's a quick look at
what we're working with the 5500 XD has 22 compute units compared to the 36 and 40 on the 50 750 700 xt respectively so quite a significant cut that's fair enough though given the also massive cut in price the 5500 XT also gets a narrower memory interface in comparison but still thankfully fast GDD are 6 in fact Nvidia didn't want to miss out on this G DDR 6 memory party so they invited themselves with the recent gtx 1650 super and 1660 super GPUs both are considered competitors to the 5500 XT the 1650 super unfortunately we do not have on hand
for testing it just yet also worth noting as far as I know AMD are not producing their own reference our cooler design like they have with the 50 750 700 XD so your choice will be limited to a Dinn board partner cards only now the one that I've got here is Emma size at gaming X and as usual they have sampled me with the more premium model despite this being a budget oriented card and as usual you can expect to pay a premium for a cooler design like this given
that the 5500 XT only has a 130 watt TDP though I'd say you're going to be more than fine with one of the more affordable models out there with a more conservative cooler design in terms of thermal performance the gaming X topped out at 74 degrees C on the GPU 84 C for the hotspot and 70s six degrees C for the memory hotspot this is with the fan speed set to auto on an open Testament with a 22 C room ambient overall acceptable thermals with a fairly conservative and
near silent fan speed all right now let's jump into the gaming benchmarks and starting with far cry 5 we're seeing overall some pretty decent gaming performance again we are looking at the gigabyte model today but given that it's just a video memory capacity difference between this and the 4 gigabyte model the numbers should be very very close we're vrm isn't maxed out here the 5500 XT is a little over 5% faster than the rx 590 in overwatch the margin
is a bit closer between those two cards and for reference the RX 590 can currently be bought even so really these performance numbers are looking ok so far for the 5500 XT Rainbow six siege played decently for the new AMD card with strong lowest 1% of FPS performance and averages about on par with the rx 590 apex legend showed promising performance for the 5500 XD again specifically when it comes to the overall stability of the
framerate in game he we're 7.8 percent faster than the RX 590 on average and within 6 percent of the GTX 1660 and a similar story in Doom running the Vulkan API within just a few percent of the gtx 1660 in comparison to the 1660 super in this title you'll need to spend an additional dollars for a boost of around 11 percent over the 5500 XT again the four gigabyte model should perform very similarly in most titles now in comparison to the
previous budget Radeon cards running on the polaris architecture performance is quite strong overall in project cars - were 24% faster than the rx 570 12 percent faster than the rx 580 and 5% faster than the rx 590 one thing that I'll mention is that it's quite hard to outright recommend a card between one of the better value performers here because in some cases we are just talking about a price difference we will compare overall value directly in just a minute though fortnight chapter 2 showed a very consistent result with what we've seen
up until this point a slight performance just over the rx5 90 and within an arm's length of the gtx 1660 this is a title where you most likely won't see a performance difference between the gigabyte 5500 XT and the gigabyte model there are a couple of titles that I tested though that did show some outlier results and despite reinstalling the drivers and retesting shut off the Tomb Raider persisted with some slightly lower performance than the rx
590 in fact a little worse overall to the rx 580 so obviously some driver optimizations need to be done here otherwise it could just be my test bench we saw a similar thing with the rx 5700 series launch - similar thing in World War Z again performance isn't necessarily bad but it's just not in line with everything else as we would expect I did notice some periodic frame time spikes in this title - while playing on the 5,500 XT so good chances are this is a driver issue so although
performance on average is slightly above the rx 590 power consumption is much lower thanks to the seven nanometer architecture it's more comparable to the low performing rx 570 still though navi's performance per watt is a bit worse than what NVIDIA has to offer here the much faster 1660 Supah pulls almost the same amount of power all right now the chart that we've all been waiting for the average value directly compared for each GPU so here we're
looking at the amount of money spent per FPS so the lower value and the higher ranked each card is on this list the better value it offers I will note that this is while including those last two games with the driver issues for the lower 5,500 XT performance but still we have it towards the top of the stack in terms of value for most of you I would actually advise the much better value for gigabyte model unless you're playing with ultra textures in demanding games like
shadow of the Tomb Raider and Far Cry 5 also there's no point in buying the rx 580 or 590 now given the 5500 XTS release unless you can get them for a ridiculous price but the RX 574 129 and sometimes is somewhat in its own price bracket and still deserves a recommendation for those on a really tight budget I've yet to test the GTX 1650 super against the 5,500 XT but given what I've seen online expect performance to be pretty much neck and neck between these two GPUs overall a really solid card from AMD and I think most people
should probably go for the 4k you might model juice the better value there and because most people probably don't use aq bytes of video memory and will play more mainstream titles if you were expecting some overwhelmingly excellent value like we saw with the 50 750 700 XT that's not really what we have here instead the hype s would have been dampened by the severe price cuts of the rx 500 series which I don't know how those cards are still available on the market
today but they are and also of course the release of the GTX Super Series from Nvidia so really you've got a ton of great options now when it comes to choosing a budget GPU and that's how the market should be with plenty of competition so at the absolute bottom end of the price tag RX 570 is what I'd personally go for I'd bet either the 4 key you buy rx
5500 XT or gtx 1650 super would be a great choice and beyond that i would jump straight to at gtx 1660 super .
are you looking for a gaming mouse the moto speed v70 gaming mouse comes in two different colors black or silver it also features resolutions from 500 DPI up to 12,000 dpi that can be adjusted by the lower button on top of the mouse there is also a function button as well located right below the scroll wheel and you also get to standard click buttons on top and two more on the side just like most gaming mice the v70 also has RGB lighting that looks pretty cool in the
black version but looks even cooler on the silver model the braid at one point eight millimeter cable is long enough to reach the back of your PC and there are two different models available and will have both those links down below so check it out chances are that if you're a gamer you're always trying to find a graphic card that will play all your games the best resolutions for you and also be well cost-efficient right well AMD has answered the call on their answer that call is the RX 5600 XT now strange things about this card to me because honestly this card is
like a hundred dollars less than a 5700 XT but in some games it actually scores better so I'm kind of thinking what at AMD like shoot themselves in the foot with this and another kind of weird thing about this is that AMD first released these cards to compete with the 1660 then all of a sudden changed their mind and won to compete with the 2060 and a lot of the cards that got shipped out did not have the proper BIOS on them to actually accomplish this so there's a
chance slim although it may be that you may buy one of these XFX cards so we're gonna be showing you today and it might need a BIOS flash luckily the cards that I got I have the thick - and the thick three through versions of these cards say that a bunch of times thick too thick 3/8 thick they have things done get them tied so yeah but I got the thick - and the thick three variants and pretty much really the only difference between the two cards is one has three fans one has two fans so one runs a slight bit cooler now when XFX released the 3700 XT card some
reviewers out there kind of gave them a swift kick in the balls kicking the teeth as well and a lot of those things have actually been addressed in the way the card is now being made there's been some serious changes so Before we jump in and actually just take a closer look at both these cards I want to talk about what those changes are now right now you're gonna get a hundred percent copper GPU and memory heat sink both in 100% copper you're going to get four six
millimeter these are composite copper heat pipes zero so these things are gonna be keeping your card really cool and they've also changed the design so that it has a lot of more air flow coming away from the card to help dissipate that heat away from the card and keep the card running cooler now one thing I also want to say is that because AMD at the last moment decided to increase the wattage on these cards like to 270 watts these cards actually run hotter then at
5,700 XD I know you're going what the heck is going on with that Oracle yep that's just how it is now with that said though let's jump in let's just take a closer look at these cards let's jump in and let's test these bad boys that's really what matters and see at the end of the day if these cards are worth your money now the thick two card is going to come to the market and three fan variant is going to come to the market at more
with that said though let's just take a closer look at the cards now checking out the thick - like I said before this is gonna have two fans on top these are the hundred millimeter fan stop fans they feature zero DB noise when you're not using your system they are totally silent now underneath the hood you really can't see this but there are 2,304 stream processors 192 bit memory bus the memory clock on this card is actually 14 gigabits per second now this card also has six gigabytes of gddr5 teen hundred and sixty megahertz and a boost clock of sixteen
hundred and twenty megahertz now take a look at the output of the card you can see there are three display ports a single HDMI port this is the standard on all the cards pretty much that AMD is putting out these days not even many of the card manufacturers are changing this one so ever now we flip it around at the back you guys didn't see this card has a really cool back plate it's all solid and everything else you have to worry about touching it damaging your card
scratching your card actually if you're a person who does a lot of testing or you change a bunch of cards in and out of your card having a really good back plate can honestly be a lifesaver now the thick to card its size in at twenty eight by fourteen point eight by four point four centimeters and it's also a dual slot card like most of them out there one difference between the thick two and the thick three is actually the power requirements the thick two has a single eight
pen power connection the thick three requires a single eight pen and a single six pin connector and it's recommended that you use a minimum of four hundred fifty watt but it's probably better to use XFX is recommended five hundred watt power supply and this is actually the same on both cards now another thing that both the cards have in common is they both feature a dual BIOS and the dual BIOS which is located on top and it's really good to have a dual BIOS card because if you're flashing a BIOS and something goes wrong it's always good to have a
backup so you can keep your card up and going and flash other BIOS back to where it's working perfectly now checking out the thick three obviously this card has three fans whoo it's going to be also a little bit larger than the other card as well this card sizes in at thirty two point six by fourteen point eight by four point four centimeters and it's a dual slot design and it's a pretty long card now as far as the clock speeds in the thick three as a game clock speed of sixteen hundred and fifty megahertz a boost clock of seventeen hundred and fifty nine
megahertz and the only real difference like I said is the memory clock speed on this is twelve gigabits per second instead of fourteen like we saw on the thick to the Bach content for both cards is pretty basic you get the cards themselves you do get the power adapter so in case you know the proper power supply you can hook your card up and then you get the warranty card which is pretty much all you need anyways because you can download all your drivers online both cards are actually really solidly built there's not a whole lot of flair in the design you're not
a bunch of RGB lights flashing around or anything like that it's just a solid card both cards are completely black the only real difference you're getting is this kind of this copper cooler copper cooler copper color right here which is probably just trying to say hey both of our GPU and our heatsink our copper cooled completely cut or cooled that's right so both cards look pretty cool now if you guys haven't ever seen our test system before it's kind of an older system we're using
the i7 8700 K it's just what we feel a lot more people have out there we have 32 gigabytes of RAM we have a really nice a zu smother board we have all the latest Windows updates all the latest drivers from the time of this release and that's pretty much it as far as our test system goes now with that said though let's jump into the benchmarks and let's see how these two cards actually do ,now as far as the temperatures go we're seeing the thick too coming in with an edge
temperature of 72 degrees and a junction temperature of 87 now the thick 3-card is a little bit cooler the edge temperature is 71 and the junction temperature is 84 all right so there you guys have it now as far as the cooling goes these cards are just running a little bit lower than the Red Devil from power color power colors known for their cards running really cool there Fitness 600 XD is running at 73 Celsius so it's just a little bit hotter on that particular temperature but beyond that these cards are really solid the only thing that's just really strange is that these
cards do run really hot they're all the way up like you know into the Nvidia zone up there so they're actually running hot so pretty much anybody's cards kind of you know right around that same temperature if you're looking at the same price point um the design of these cards like I said is pretty straightforward there's not a lot of glitz like some cards out there have flashing this flashing that there were a couple of things in the Red Devil liked about the lighted back you know back plate I thought that was pretty cool for your for all of your output that's
pretty nice to have this card's a little simpler than that so if you're not looking for something that has a bunch of flash something that runs cool and plus a lot of these cards are gonna be pre flashed if your card isn't flashed they actually have a very easy BIOS update tool it's not like some others and like I'm a genie names but some people's BIOS updates are just not as good as X FX as X FX this is really easy to do so if you get a card and you're reading it and you're like
oh my god and these aren't the right scores I'm seeing you know ah you might need to flash your bios and do that .
XFX RX 5500 XT Thicc II Pro 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card RX-55XT8DFD6 review
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