Asus ROG Strix RX 5500 XT O8G Gaming Review: Premium Card, but Worth the Price?

JarredWaltonGPU said:

Seriously, the new budget GPUs are very hard to recommend on any level right now. 1660 / 1660 Super and the old RX 570 / 580 make for weird rankings.

Especially given some of the price dips we see in the RX 570, and more recently the RX 580 (that Gigabyte deal for $134.99 was nuts!)

King_V said:

Especially given some of the price dips we see in the RX 570, and more recently the RX 580 (that Gigabyte deal for $134.99 was nuts!)

Yes I got that RX 580 8gb from Newegg's Ebay store (thanks again Avram!) for $139 including tax shipped (ebay very nicely had a $5 off coupon). I was in the sub-$180 market and wasn't fully sold on a 1650 super. Very happy with the card.

larkspur said:

Yes I got that RX 580 8gb from Newegg's Ebay store (thanks again Avram!) for $139 including tax shipped (ebay very nicely had a $5 off coupon). I was in the sub-$180 market and wasn't fully sold on a 1650 super. Very happy with the card.

I'd missed it . . and did NOT NEED IT, but, if it hadn't sold out by the time I saw the offer, I would've been hard pressed to resist. That whole "well, I did have a budget machine idea in mind that I totally don't need anyway..." kind of thing.

King_V said:

Just did a quick check on PCPartPicker.com, and least expensive of:
4GB RX 5500 XT models start at $163.98
8GB RX 5500 XT models start at $183.98
1650 Super is $159.99 (Zotac Twin fan, though the next two at $164 and $165 are single-fan models)
1660 is $179.99 (admittedly, a single-fan EVGA model)
1660 Super is $225.99 (and 4 other models are $229.99)Honestly, that particular EVGA 1660 makes just about any 1650 Super or RX 5500 XT a really tough sell.

We live in weird times when it comes to budget level GPUs.

I agree, although based on past experience of AMD cards gradually gaining performance on competing nvidia cards with driver updates, etc, I wouldn't be surprised if the 5500XT 8gb gradually gains on and passes the GTX 1660, and eventually becomes competitive with the GTX 1660 super.

The GTX1060 was once 5% or so faster than the RX480/580, but now it's 4-5% slower. Even since the launch of the 5500XT, it seems like it's benchmarks have slowly crept up on the RX590 and GTX1660. It's a bit of a hard sell at MSRP, but $179 for an 8GB 5500XT would be pretty competitive.

dawgfan6 said:

I agree, although based on past experience of AMD cards gradually gaining performance on competing nvidia cards with driver updates, etc, I wouldn't be surprised if the 5500XT 8gb gradually gains on and passes the GTX 1660, and eventually becomes competitive with the GTX 1660 super.

The GTX1060 was once 5% or so faster than the RX480/580, but now it's 4-5% slower. Even since the launch of the 5500XT, it seems like it's benchmarks have slowly crept up on the RX590 and GTX1660. It's a bit of a hard sell at MSRP, but $179 for an 8GB 5500XT would be pretty competitive.

This is one of those conspiracy theories that I've never seen 'proven' to any reasonable degree. I just did a bunch of retesting for the updated GPU hierarchy. The RX 580 8GB is about 7% faster than a GTX 1060 6GB (though that's using a factory OC 580 against a reference 1060 6GB). Digging back into my old articles, I find this:
https://www.pcgamer.com/radeon-rx-580-review/
In that review, the 580 and 1060 were tied at 1080p ultra, 580 was 1% faster at 1080p medium, tied at 1440p ultra, and 580 was 2% faster at 4K ultra. That was with both cards being factory overclocked, though -- which is usually about a 5% difference. So, three years later, the overall rating of the two GPUs appears to still be within 2%.

I can point to things that have gone the other way as well. 570 4GB vs. 1060 3GB, here's the RX 590 review. GTX 1060 3GB was 11% faster at 1080p medium, 3% faster at 1080p ultra, 2% slower at 1440p ultra, and 15% slower at 4K ultra. My latest data (albeit with different games): 1060 3GB is 10% faster overall, including 4K results. Or if you want, 9% faster at 1080p medium, 8% faster at 1080p ultra, 9% faster at 1440p ultra, and 10% faster at 4K ultra. So the AMD GPU got comparatively worse at ultra settings, despite having 33% more VRAM.

Overall, though, nearly all of the data I've accumulated suggests that the long-term change in performance from both companies, after driver and game updates, is less than 5% -- and probably less than 3%. Individual cases vary, but if you look at a larger swath of games and settings things are pretty consistent.

JarredWaltonGPU said:

Overall, though, nearly all of the data I've accumulated suggests that the long-term change in performance from both companies, after driver and game updates, is less than 5% -- and probably less than 3%. Individual cases vary, but if you look at a larger swath of games and settings things are pretty consistent.

Very interesting, thank you. I'm guessing this theory goes back to the HD 7970 and 670/680/760/770 days? I seem to recall the early GCN chips having some significant driver-related performance improvements, no? I read your old RX 580 review... takeaway:

Jarred doesn't play games, he runs benchmarks. If you want to know about the inner workings of CPUs, GPUs, or SSDs, he's your man. He subsists off a steady diet of crunchy silicon chips and may actually be a robot.

LOL! :ROFLMAO: