If you’re building a PC in the Rs. 50,000 to 60,000 budget range ($600-800), then you’ll find our AMD 5500 XT and 5600 XT review quite useful. While gathering components for your gaming PC, you’ll likely choose a 1080p monitor, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, a 650-watt power supply (considering future upgrades in mind), and a GPU capable of seamless 1080p gaming.
You’re in luck because AMD 5500 XT and 5600 XT are two great options for budget PC gamers in 2020. If you’re looking to buy these cards, then here’s all that you need to know about them.
AMD 5500 XT Review And Specifications
The AMD 5500 XT is a budget graphics card under Rs. 20,000 price point in India. Currently, it retails between Rs. 15,000 to 20,000 price range, both online and offline. It competes against the Nvidia GTX 1650 Super, which surprisingly costs less, but delivers around 10% less performance. The unit I reviewed is Powercolor AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT; it is a dual-fan GPU, and here are its complete specs.
Graphics Card |
AXRX 5500 XT 8GBD6-DHR/OC |
| Video Memory | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Stream Processor | 1408 units |
| Engine Clock | 1737MHz(Game)/up to 1685MHz (Base)/up to 1845MHz(Boost) |
| Memory Clock | 14.0 Gbps |
| Memory Interface | 128-bit |
| Bus Standard | PCI-E 4.0 |
| Standard Display Connectors | SL DVI-D/ HDMI / DisplayPort |
| Minimum System Power Requirement (W) | 450W |
A few important things to note in the PowerColor AMD 5500 XT GPU is the addition of a vertical fin design, which allows the GPU to run quieter and smoother. We did the testing in an AC room, and it remained at a temperature between 50-60 degrees Celsius.
AMD 5500 XT Review Benchmarks
| Resolution | Graphics Setting | FPS AVG | DSD11 | LOW 1% | |
| ASSASSIN’S CREED ODYSSEY | 1080p | High | 51 | 60 | 27 |
| Call of Duty Warzone | 1080p | High | 89 | 98 | 49 |
| Counter Strike Global Offensive | 1080p | Medium | 248 | 248 | 110 |
| FORTNITE | 1080p | Epic | 75 | 82 | 23 |
| GTA V | 1080p | Very High | 68 | 70 | 60 |
| PUBG | 1080p | Ultra | 69 | 73 | 39 |
| Rainbow Six Siege | 1080p | Ultra | 134 | 119 | 111 |
To give you a reference, we tested it on our gaming rig which has the following specs
– 16GB DDR4 RAM
– AMD Ryzen 3200G
– 512GB Nvme SSD
– Corsair 650-watt power supply
– MSI A320M- A PRO Motherboard
and here are the results.
As we can see, this card is particularly impressive in GPU bound games like Call of Duty Warzone and Rainbow Six Siege. Meanwhile, CPU-bound games like GTA V and Assassins’ Creed Odyssey held up almost 60 FPS in high settings. GTA V did better than AC: Odyssey because the latter is poorly optimized.
Even the Nvidia RTX 2080 Super, a card capable of playing games at 4K 60FPS, is unable to run the AC: Odyssey smoothly at that resolution.
Overall, you can easily expect 60-70 FPS from AMD Radeon 5500 XT in almost all open-world games, particularly those requiring a long draw distance. And around 100-120 FPS in games like Call of Duty Warzone, CS GO, Rainbow Six Siege, etc.
Since you’ll be gaming on a 1080p monitor, I really believe that 8GB of memory remains underutilized. A better option would have been 6GB of GDDR6 memory, it’d have made the card a bit more affordable. And it is almost 10% faster than Nvidia GTX 1650 Super in almost every game mentioned above, excluding AC Odyssey. A card like this will easily last you for at least 3 years if you continue to play games at 1080p resolution.
AMD 5600 XT Review And Specifications
The AMD Radeon 5600 XT sits at the premium price tag of the budget segment graphics cards. At Rs. 25,000-30,000 price range, the AMD Radeon 5600 XT is a card that competes with the likes of Nvidia GTX 1660 Super and the relatively old RTX 2060. The 1660 Super from Nvidia can be bought for almost Rs. 25,000 and you can find RTX 2060 for around Rs. 30,000. The AMD 5600 XT is also a dual fan unit and here are its complete specs.
Graphics Card |
AXRX 5600 XT 6GBD6-3DHR/OC |
| Video Memory | 6GB GDDR6 |
| Stream Processor | 2304 |
| Engine Clock | 1560MHz(Game)/up to 1620MHz(Boost) |
| Memory Clock | 14.0 Gbps |
| Memory Interface | 192-bit |
| Bus Standard | PCI-E 4.0 |
| Standard Display Connectors | HDMI/ DisplayPort x3 |
| Minimum System Power requirement (W) | 500W |
Unlike the 5500 XT, which runs at a higher clock speed, the 5600 XT runs at a much lower base and boost-clock while delivering around 50-60% more performance than the former. Here’s an analysis chart. Do note that the gaming rig is the same as before.
AMD 5500 XT Review Benchmarks
| Resolution | Graphics Setting | FPS AVG | DSD11 | LOW 1% | |
| ASSASSIN’S CREED ODYSSEY | 1080p | High | 76 | 80 | 61 |
| Call of Duty Warzone | 1080p | High | 125 | 136 | 92 |
| Counter Strike Global Offensive | 1080p | High | 232 | 200 | 129 |
| FORTNITE | 1080p | Epic | 129 | 110 | 53 |
| GTA V | 1080p | Very High | 108 | 108 | 96 |
| PUBG | 1080p | Ultra | 112 | 107 | 74 |
| Rainbow Six Siege | 1080p | Ultra | 156 | 152 | 145 |
Our AMD 5600 XT review found that AC: Odyssey still struggles in 5600 XT; kudos to the team at Ubisoft. Meanwhile, Rainbow Six Siege is amazingly optimized for both these cards. The 1% low is above 100 FPS on both cards in Rainbow Six Siege. Another game that holds up really well in terms of frame drops is GTA 5. On 5500 XT, the game runs at a solid 60 FPS; meanwhile, on 5600 XT, it easily maintains 96 FPS.
5600 XT also trumps over its green opponent, the 1660 Super, by averaging around 10-15 FPS more in the aforementioned games. Due to a higher core count and a brand new heat sink on the 5600 XT, it stays cool while pushing around 100 FPS in almost every new game at 1080p. The price difference between both of these cards is around Rs. 3,000, with the 5600 XT being the costlier one.
Suffice it to say that both, the 5500 XT OC and the 5600 XT are meant for 1080p gaming. Personally, I’d prefer the 5600 XT and pair it up with a 144 Hz monitor to experience the best possible HD gaming in 2020.
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