ASRock RX 5500 XT Phantom Gaming D Review: Inexpensive, Well-performing

Inexpensive, cool running and performs well

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Staying at 1080p resolution but lowering the image quality settings to medium allowed all the games to reach over 60 fps. The ASRock Phantom Gaming D averaged 102 fps along with the Asus. The Gigabyte Gaming OC averaged 101 fps—all are within 1% of each other, which is basically the margin of error for our testing and wouldn’t be noticeable in gaming.

At these settings, the Sapphire Pulse didn’t choke on its 4GB of VRAM with medium settings and ended up only 4% behind. Most games were over 80 fps with a few (The Division 2, Strange Brigade, Final Fantasy XIV, Forza Horizon 4 and Battlefield V) averaging well over 100 fps. Dropping down to the medium settings shows a significant performance increase over ultra.

Performance differences between the ASRock Phantom Gaming D and the Nvidia cards are similar to the 1080p ultra results, with the GTX 1650 Super about 5% slower and the GTX 1660 almost 4% faster. This is a more CPU bound setting so the performance gaps tend to shrink at these settings compared to higher resolutions and image quality. 

The Divison 2

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Borderlands 3

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Gears of War 5

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Strange Brigade

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider

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Far Cry 5

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Metro: Exodus

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Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

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Forza Horizon 4

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Battlefield V

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Joe Shields
Joe Shields
Motherboard Reviewer

Joe Shields is a Freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US. He reviews motherboards.

12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • NightHawkRMX
    What's with the pulse 5500xt being so far behind the other models? It runs at the same clocks according to your test but performs worse.
    Reply
  • EndEffeKt_24
    NightHawkRMX said:
    What's with the pulse 5500xt being so far behind the other models? It runs at the same clocks according to your test but performs worse.
    Its the only 4GB model and the test uses ultra settings.
    Reply
  • NightHawkRMX
    EndEffeKt_24 said:
    Its the only 4GB model and the test uses ultra settings.
    Somehow overlooked that. Thanks
    Reply
  • King_V
    The table on the first page of the review, with the specs for the 4 cards has the wrong information for the Asus ROG Strix 5600 XT for memory capacity, bus, and bandwidth.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    King_V said:
    The table on the first page of the review, with the specs for the 4 cards has the wrong information for the Asus ROG Strix 5600 XT for memory capacity, bus, and bandwidth.
    Sorry, I've corrected this. It was the name: it's supposed to be the Asus ROG Strix RX 5500 XT O8G Gaming (not the Asus ROG Strix RX 5600 XT O8G Gaming, which isn't even a real product given there aren't 8GB 5600 XT cards). The specs were correct, the name was not.
    Reply
  • King_V
    LOL, I didn't even look fully at the name, I just zoomed in on 5600XT and, when I got to the memory specs, my brain did the record-scratching noise and said "wait, what??"
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    King_V said:
    LOL, I didn't even look fully at the name, I just zoomed in on 5600XT and, when I got to the memory specs, my brain did the record-scratching noise and said "wait, what??"
    I actually googled the name for the Asus specs page and got the 5600 XT O6G page. I started editing, and thought, "How did we get these specs SO WRONG!?" Then I realized it was actually the product name that was an error. I was about to redo the whole table, thinking I was somehow looking at the 5600 XT review (which I edited a few weeks back). LOL
    Reply
  • King_V
    Sort of reminds me of when the RTX cards first came out. It got really funny trying to remember whether to type RTX, RX, or GTX...
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    King_V said:
    Sort of reminds me of when the RTX cards first came out. It got really funny trying to remember whether to type RTX, RX, or GTX...
    It's still bad! Muscle memory for typing is a harsh mistress. I've had some very odd 'typos' crop up over the years, including just stupid stuff like writing "their" instead of "there" or "they're". Like, I know the difference, but sometimes in my brain I think "they're" and my fingers receive "their" and I look like an idiot. I have typed GTX 2080 more times than I can count, though now it's starting to go the other way -- I've typed RTX 1660 quite a few times now.
    Reply
  • King_V
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    It's still bad! Muscle memory for typing is a harsh mistress. I've had some very odd 'typos' crop up over the years, including just stupid stuff like writing "their" instead of "there" or "they're". Like, I know the difference, but sometimes in my brain I think "they're" and my fingers receive "their" and I look like an idiot. I have typed GTX 2080 more times than I can count, though now it's starting to go the other way -- I've typed RTX 1660 quite a few times now.

    That happens to me a lot as well - oh, on a cellphone, I can blame it on autocorrect. But I know EXACTLY what you mean! My brain says ONE version of their/they're/there, and my hands just on their own type one of the others out. And I'm someone who generally cringes when I see other people mix those up, so it's particularly strange and embarrassing for me!
    Reply