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AMD Radeon RX 5500M

AMD Radeon RX 5500M: Review and Analysis for Users in 2025

April 2025

Introduction

In the world of gaming laptops and budget GPUs, the AMD Radeon RX 5500M has long been a popular choice for those seeking a balance between price and performance. Even though this model is considered outdated in 2025, it is still available for sale and attracts attention due to its affordability. In this article, we will analyze how justified its selection is in the current circumstances.

1. Architecture and Key Features

RDNA Architecture: The Foundation of Performance

The RX 5500M is built on AMD's first-generation RDNA architecture, which debuted in 2019. It was a step forward compared to the previous GCN, offering improved energy efficiency and performance per clock.

- Process Technology: 7 nm (TSMC).

- Compute Units: 22 Compute Units (1408 stream processors).

- Unique Features: Support for FidelityFX (a package of technologies for enhancing graphics, including CAS - Contrast Adaptive Sharpening).

Lack of Ray Tracing and FSR 1.0

Unlike modern GPUs, the RX 5500M does not have hardware support for ray tracing (RT) and is only compatible with FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0, which lags behind FSR 3.0/4.0 in quality and efficiency.

2. Memory: Type, Size, and Bandwidth

GDDR6: Speed with Limitations

- Size: 4 GB (less commonly, 8 GB in some configurations).

- Bus: 128-bit.

- Bandwidth: 224 GB/s (14 Gbps effective speed).

Impact on Performance

In 2025, 4 GB of video memory becomes a bottleneck in games with highly detailed textures (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty or Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora). Settings above Medium at 1080p may cause drops in performance due to insufficient VRAM.

3. Gaming Performance

1080p: Comfortable Gaming at Medium Settings

- Apex Legends: ~70-80 FPS (Medium).

- Fortnite: ~60 FPS (Medium, no RT).

- Elden Ring: ~45-50 FPS (Low-Medium).

1440p and 4K: Not Recommended

Even with FSR 1.0, stable FPS at 1440p is only reached in less demanding titles (CS:GO 2, Dota 2). Ignore 4K—it's not a target format for the RX 5500M.

Ray Tracing: No Support

The lack of RT cores makes the card unsuitable for ray tracing games. Enabling software emulation (e.g., through Proton on Linux) reduces FPS to unacceptable levels.

4. Professional Tasks

Video Editing and 3D Modeling

- Premiere Pro/DaVinci Resolve: Rendering acceleration via OpenCL, but performance is lower than that of NVIDIA (due to lack of CUDA).

- Blender: HIP support is available, but rendering in Cycles is 2-3 times slower than on RTX 3050.

Scientific Computing

For OpenCL tasks (e.g., entry-level machine learning), the card is usable but limited by memory size.

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP: 85W

The RX 5500M was designed for thin gaming laptops, so its power consumption is moderate.

Cooling Recommendations

- For laptops: Regular cleaning of fans and thermal paste replacement is essential.

- External docks: Not supported—this is strictly a mobile GPU.

6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile

- NVIDIA Advantages: Better driver optimization, support for DLSS 1.0.

- AMD Advantages: 10-15% higher performance in Vulkan/DX12.

NVIDIA RTX 3050 Mobile

The RTX 3050 is significantly faster (by 40-50%), supports DLSS 3.5 and ray tracing, but is priced from $800 in new laptops compared to $500-600 for models with the RX 5500M.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

Laptops with the RX 5500M are adequately powered by the standard 120-150W adapter.

Compatibility

- Platforms: Works only in laptops from 2020-2023 with PCIe 4.0.

- Drivers: AMD continues to release updates, but optimization for new games is weaker than NVIDIA's.

Driver Nuances

- Use "Standard" mode in Adrenalin Edition for stability.

- Avoid early versions of FSR 3.0 mods—artifacts may occur.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price (laptops starting from $500).

- Energy efficiency for basic tasks.

- Support for modern APIs (partial support for DX12 Ultimate).

Cons:

- 4 GB VRAM is insufficient for AAA games of 2024-2025.

- No hardware Ray Tracing.

- Outdated RDNA architecture.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the RX 5500M For?

This graphics card is an option for:

1. Budget Gamers: If you play less demanding titles (CS:GO 2, Valorant) or are willing to lower settings in AAA titles.

2. Students and Office Users: For working with graphics, basic video editing.

3. Owners of Older Laptops: An upgrade to a model with the RX 5500M can be beneficial if priced below $600.

Alternative in 2025: If your budget is around $700, consider laptops with the RTX 4050 or RX 7600M—they offer twice the performance and support for modern technologies.

Conclusion

The AMD Radeon RX 5500M is a GPU that maintains its niche due to low cost, but in 2025, it should only be considered as a temporary solution. If your tasks do not exceed basic ones, it will suffice, but for future upgrades, it's better to look at more recent models.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

October 2019

Model Name

Radeon RX 5500M

Generation

Mobility Radeon

Base Clock

1375MHz

Boost Clock

1645MHz

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

4GB

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.

52.64 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.

144.8 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.

9.265 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.

289.5 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.

4.539 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.

1408

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

85W

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.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

4.539 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

4406

Blender

Score

377

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon Pro W5500M

4.883 +7.6%

Radeon R9 290

4.752 +4.7%

Radeon RX 5500M

4.539

GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER

4.328 -4.6%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB Rev. 2

4.287 -5.6%

3DMark Time Spy

Radeon RX 6700S

8009 +81.8%

GeForce GTX 1070

5933 +34.7%

Radeon RX 5500M

4406

Radeon R9 380X

3111 -29.4%

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

2037 -53.8%

Blender

GeForce RTX 2060

1506.77 +299.7%

Arc A550M

848 +124.9%

Quadro T1000 Mobile GDDR6

415 +10.1%

Radeon RX 5500M

377

GeForce GT 1030

45.58 -87.9%