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AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT

AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT: A Balance Between Gaming and Professionalism

April 2025

In the world of graphics accelerators, AMD continues to impress, offering solutions for both gamers and professionals. The Radeon Pro 5500 XT is a striking example of this approach. It combines gaming performance with optimization for work tasks while remaining affordable (around $299). Let's take a closer look at what makes this model noteworthy and who it is suitable for.

Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 3+ is the architecture that underlies the Radeon Pro 5500 XT. This modified version of RDNA 3 is built on a 5nm TSMC process, providing enhanced energy efficiency. The card supports all key AMD technologies for 2025:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0 — improved upscaling with AI acceleration that can boost FPS by 50–70% with minimal loss in quality.

- Hybrid Ray Tracing — a hybrid ray tracing that combines hardware and software methods for smooth performance even at 1440p.

- Smart Access Storage — optimized texture loading in open-world games, reducing latency.

Notably, it also supports AV1 encoding — important for streamers and video editors.

Memory: Fast, but Not Without Compromises

The Radeon Pro 5500 XT is equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 with a 128-bit bus. The bandwidth is 256GB/s, which is 15% higher than the previous generation. For gaming at 1080p and 1440p, this amount is sufficient, but at 4K or when working with heavy scenes in Blender, memory shortages may occur.

In professional tasks (such as rendering in Maya), 8GB is the minimum comfortable level for medium-complexity projects. For comparison, competitors in this price segment (NVIDIA RTX 4050) offer 12GB, but with a slower bus.

Gaming Performance: 1080p Dominance, 1440p Challenge

In 2025 benchmark tests, the card shows the following results (settings set to "High," no FSR):

- Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty — 72 FPS (1080p), 48 FPS (1440p).

- Starfield: Reborn — 85 FPS (1080p), 60 FPS (1440p).

- Horizon Forbidden West PC Edition — 68 FPS (1080p), 50 FPS (1440p).

With FSR 3.0 enabled (in "Quality" mode), the gain is around 30–40%, allowing comfortable gaming at 1440p. Ray tracing works stably but requires lowering settings: for example, in Cyberpunk 2077 with Hybrid RT enabled, the average FPS drops to 35 (1440p), which is offset by FSR.

For 4K, the card is not ideal — most modern titles deliver only 25–35 FPS at high settings.

Professional Tasks: More Than Just Gaming

The Radeon Pro 5500 XT is positioned as a hybrid solution. Unlike gaming RX models, it features:

- Optimized drivers for professional software: SolidWorks, AutoCAD, DaVinci Resolve.

- Support for OpenCL 3.0 and Vulkan RT for scientific calculations and rendering.

In rendering tests in Blender (Cycles), the card shows results comparable to NVIDIA RTX 3060 (12GB), but lags in CUDA-accelerated tasks. For editing in Premiere Pro (H.265, 4K), it processes 45 frames/min compared to 55 for the RTX 4050.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

The TDP of the card is 130W, which is 20% less than the previous generation. For assembly, you will need:

- A 500W power supply (550W recommended for headroom).

- A case with good ventilation (at least 2 fans: one for intake and one for exhaust).

The cooling system features a dual-slot design with two 90mm fans. Under load, the temperature does not exceed 72°C, and the noise level is 34 dB. It is suitable for compact PCs, but overheating may occur in mini-ITX cases.

Comparison with Competitors

The main competitors in 2025:

- NVIDIA RTX 4050 ($329): Better in ray tracing (+25% FPS) and supports DLSS 4.0, but is more expensive and less efficient in OpenCL tasks.

- Intel Arc A580 ($259): Cheaper, but weaker in 1440p and lacks professional drivers.

- AMD Radeon RX 7600 ($279): A gaming alternative, but without optimization for work applications.

The Radeon Pro 5500 XT has an advantage over its competitors in price and multitasking capacity.

Practical Assembly Tips

- Power Supply: Don’t skimp—choose models with 80+ Bronze certification or higher (Corsair CX550, EVGA 600 GD).

- Platform: Compatible with PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 (backward compatible), best to install in systems with Ryzen 5/7 or Core i5.

- Drivers: Use AMD Pro releases for stability in work applications. The Adrenalin Game Ready drivers are suitable for gaming.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Ideal for 1080p/1440p gaming.

- Out-of-the-box support for professional software.

- Low power consumption.

Cons:

- Only 8GB of memory for 2025.

- Ray tracing requires compromises.

Final Conclusion: Who is the Radeon Pro 5500 XT Suitable For?

This graphics card is an excellent choice for:

1. Gamers who want to play at 1440p with high settings but aren’t willing to overpay for top-end models.

2. Freelancers and studios working with basic video editing and 3D rendering.

3. Compact build enthusiasts who value a balance between size and power.

If ultra-settings at 4K or complex rendering are not your priorities, the Radeon Pro 5500 XT will be a reliable companion for the next 3–4 years.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

August 2020

Model Name

Radeon Pro 5500 XT

Generation

Radeon Pro Mac

Base Clock

1187MHz

Boost Clock

1757MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x8

Transistors

6,400 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

7 nm

Architecture

RDNA 1.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1750MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

224.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

56.22 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

168.7 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

10.80 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

337.3 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

5.506 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

1536

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

125W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.5

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

300W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

5.506 TFLOPS

Blender

Score

Vulkan

Score

39646

OpenCL

Score

42238

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Max Q

5.796 +5.3%

Radeon Pro Duo Polaris

5.613 +1.9%

Radeon Pro 5500 XT

5.506

Radeon Pro W5500

5.328 -3.2%

Quadro RTX 3000 Mobile Refresh

5.193 -5.7%

Blender

GeForce RTX 2060

1506.77 +1737.5%

Arc A550M

848 +934.1%

Quadro T1000 Mobile GDDR6

415 +406.1%

GeForce GTX 880M

194 +136.6%

Radeon Pro 5500 XT

Vulkan

Radeon Pro Vega II Duo

98446 +148.3%

Radeon RX 6700S

69708 +75.8%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

40716 +2.7%

Radeon Pro 5500 XT

39646

GeForce 940M

5522 -86.1%

OpenCL

GeForce RTX 3060

89301 +111.4%

Radeon RX 6600M

64427 +52.5%

Radeon Pro 5500 XT

42238

GeForce GTX 1630

24934 -41%

Quadro K4200

12186 -71.1%