News Is AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 XT Hamstrung by VRAM and PCIe Bandwidth?

[cryoburner]

"Most demanding games (with everything maxed out)" haven't been associated with $200 GPUs since the 3dfx days.

That's not really true, at least if we're talking about their ability to run games at decent frame rates at the most common resolution, currently 1080p. Cards like the RX 480 and 580 were doing that quite well a few years back, and while games have been becoming more demanding since, they are still holding up pretty well considering how long they have been on the market. After 3+ years the minimal performance gains of the 5500XT are just not enough though, especially considering a new generation of consoles is coming that will undoubtedly increase demands further. The 4GB of VRAM is already getting a bit questionable for a $170+ card at this point, but halving the PCIe bandwidth on most systems only makes that worse.

 

[InvalidError]

The 4GB of VRAM is already getting a bit questionable for a $170+ card at this point, but halving the PCIe bandwidth on most systems only makes that worse.

Well, HWUB benchmarked 3.0x8 vs 4.0x8 and for the most part found that once settings have been lowered enough for an RX5500 to hit 1080p60 or better, it makes little difference.

VRAM-wise, we're at at about the same price per GB as we were eight years ago, which makes it difficult to increase the amount of VRAM on GPUs without significantly raising prices, especially at a time where AMD is getting greedy by increasing its gross profit margin targets across the board. Got to love duopolies, focusing on providing similar products at similar prices for maximum profit instead of better ones at cheaper prices to acquire market share and influence as you would with real competition.

 

[nofanneeded]

Most sites recommend the 4GB model over the 8GB one simply because by the time most games run out of VRAM on 4GB, the RX5500's 1% lows are already well under 60fps (starting to get noticeably stuttery) and you will probably want to reduce details anyway.

30 fps is still okay to play with ... I dont like this 4GB recommendation over 8GB one at all.

Plus , the extra VRAM are useful in apps if one uses the PC for both gaming and Apps.

 

[ron baker]

The real truth is that AMD have taken a chance at using the "halo" from their CPU's to sell overpriced GPU's . MY suggestion is that these will taper off the prices to more in the £130 /£155 mark in the coming months .. and remember it was ultra settings not high or medium . SO send em back now while the chance is still there.. better <Mod Edit> is coming soon

 

[cryoburner]

Well, HWUB benchmarked 3.0x8 vs 4.0x8 and for the most part found that once settings have been lowered enough for an RX5500 to hit 1080p60 or better, it makes little difference.

I watched that video too, but that's not really what I got out of it. The PCIe bandwidth didn't make that much of a difference for the 8GB version of the card in most of the games tested (aside from Battlefield V, where it caused a 17% difference to minimums and a 6% difference to average performance), but it did cause a notable impact on performance in half of the games they tested with the 4GB version, where the VRAM deficiency means more data needs to be transferred to and from system RAM over the PCIe bus. They repeated multiple times that they agreed with that site's results, just not with some people's interpretation that testing on a PCIe 4.0 X570 system would make the cards perform substantially better than what was shown in reviews, since the slightly better memory performance on an Intel test system would have countered some of those loses in VRAM-limited scenarios anyway.

It looks like Ryzen systems with PCIe 3.0 might actually see a bit more of a hit to performance with the 4GB card than what reviews showed though. Of course, all of this could have been avoided if AMD didn't gimp the cards with an x8 connection, which arguably has no place on graphics cards in this price range at a time when nearly all systems still have PCIe 3.0. The RX 580 doesn't suffer from that, nor does the 1650 SUPER, making their performance a bit more stable as a result.

I dont like this 4GB recommendation over 8GB one at all.

I think it's more a matter the 8GB version of this card being even more questionably priced than the 4GB version. Once you get into the $200+ range, the 5500 XT is competing with the GTX 1660, and that's simply a faster card in most games. For either version of the 5500 XT to have been positively received, they should have been priced around $30 lower at launch.

 

[nofanneeded]

I think that AMD needs to develop their own Thunderbolt like port .. with the PCIe 4.0 Advantage , four lanes external would give the same bandwidth of 8 lanes PCIe 3.0 , and this would open the door for high end external GPU ...

 

[epobirs]

One aspect that people may be missing here is that somebody buying a low end card may want those PCIe lanes free for other purposes, like high speed storage. If AMD had GPU onboard most processors and not just APUs, those machines might settle for that in a use case where having a lot of fast storage is the target and graphic performance is a lesser need. This card using 8x lanes seems like a good compromise.

 

[epobirs]

I think that AMD needs to develop their own Thunderbolt like port .. with the PCIe 4.0 Advantage , four lanes external would give the same bandwidth of 8 lanes PCIe 3.0 , and this would open the door for high end external GPU ...

There isn't really any point as USB 4.0 incorporates the Thunderbolt 3.0 IP from Intel and gets that onto non-Intel systems without branding issues. You can bet ASMedia is well underway at making a chip family to add this to systems, while AMD itself likely already has a roadmap for when native USB 4.0 will be in their chipsets for Ryzen.

 

[InvalidError]

One aspect that people may be missing here is that somebody buying a low end card may want those PCIe lanes free for other purposes, like high speed storage.

You do not need an x8 GPU to do that, any motherboard that supports splitting PCIe from the GPU can do x8x8, you only need to plug something into the 2nd x16 (x8 electrical) slot.

If AMD had GPUs into most CPUs, that makes them APUs by definition and AMD's tradition with APUs is to cut them down to x8 in the main PCIe slot department, so no gain in spare PCIe lanes there.

 

[msroadkill612]

"I’m left wondering why AMD chose to configure the card in this manner? Cost perhaps? Increasing the performance of both cards can only help the optics, especially on the 4GB card, which is the most affected. This could have been spun as a reason to buy into the AMD Ryzen 3000 X570 ecosystem as a bright spot for PCIe 4.0. But instead, we are left wondering, why? "

Doh - of course it is cost. 8 lanes reduces the BOM a lot.

Its a curios twist - the expense of a newer gen cpu w/ pcie4, is more than compensated for by it offering a cheaper (x8 lane) viable GPU option (the dearer of the 2 components)