GTX 1650 Super vs. RX 5500 XT vs. Polaris

Best mainstream card for 2020 and beyond.

  • GTX 1650 Super

  • RX 5500 xt 4gb

  • RX 5500 xt 8gb

  • RX 580

  • RX 590

  • GTX 1060 6gb

  • 5500 xt 8gb vote count as 4 gb votes; can't remove


Results are only viewable after voting.

Nightfire

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With reviews coming soon for the 5500 XT, I thought it would be good to have a battleground thread for one of the most important price ranges ($150-$180).

1650 Super - So far looks to be neck and neck with the RX 590, so long as you avoid uber textures.

RX 5500xt - Early reviews of the standard RX 5500showed it to a bit behind the RX580. The XT model shares the same core count with only a clock boost. 8GB models may be pricey.

RX 580/590 - Looking like it will still be the value champs, power consumption be damned.

GTX 1060 - Just to be fair
 
Really people? I put the GTX 1060 in there as a joke. In the last couple of years, it has gone from RX580 performance to RX570 performance due to driver neglect. Furthermore, price has always been higher than the RX580 in most retailers.
 
https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-rx-5500-xt-to-launch-at-169-usd-4gb-and-199-usd-8gb
"We have confirmed that the 4GB model will retail at around 169 USD and an 8GB variant will cost at least 199 USD."

If that is the case, the 8GB version is flat out disqualified from the poll. That is too close to 1660 Super prices and fall well short of that cards performance.

The XFX was listed at $230 and Sapphire at $250 which is not a good price point, the performance of the card needs to be at $150-175 for the 8gb for it to be a competitive offering IMO.

So far the benchmarks I've seen leaked (OEM card and blah blah blah) have put it at 580 levels of performance and when you can buy a used 580 for $100-$120 power consumption be damned that's just a better buy.

Unless you can overclock the snot out of the card the 5500/5500xt isn't looking compelling and I truly hope that tomorrow morning the reviews prove me wrong.
 
Yep, ignore the 5500xt (8gb) results altogether. That is in the same price category as the 1660 Super
 
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The 5500xt is trash

1650 super if you care about power consumption, rx590 (lol at Polaris being competitive four yours later) if you don't care about power.

How do you fuck this up AMD

HOW

Die size is itty bitty. If they launched at $149 to $169 they would have cleaned house.
 
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8GB card: 1660/1660 Super (missing from poll)
4GB card: 1650 Super, or 5500 XT when AMD reduces price where it needs to be, and since that hasn't happened yet. 1650 Super wins...
 
The 5500xt is trash

1650 super if you care about power consumption, rx590 (lol at Polaris being competitive four yours later) if you don't care about power.

How do you fuck this up AMD

HOW

Die size is itty bitty. If they launched at $149 to $169 they would have cleaned house.

Yeah, I dont get the pricing here either.
 
AMD really screwed the pooch on this one. This price category has always been AMD's bread and butter.

Part of the problem is that their memory controller is still not quite as efficient as Nvidias. Even with GDDR6, both the 5500 really should have been 192 bit. The 5600 series could have been the same gpu with more cores enabled.
 
If this is the pricing model they are using for the 5500xt (and it's performance or lack there of) then it doesn't bode well for the 5600 series of cards. At this point either AMD has to do a price cut or drop a MIR or game code with the card to make it a compelling purchase for people on the budget market because there is little to no reason to take a 5500xt at $200 when you can get a 1660 for the same price or a 1660S for a small bit more (after MIR/Promo codes).

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this caused the 580 used prices to increase.
 
To add:

Nvidia gives you more up-to-date transcoding hardware too. For potential low-power scenarios such as HTPCs and ultra-SFFs, that means video playback and even video streaming may be done without spinning up fans due to CPU encoding. That's an even bigger deal if you're using Ryzen, which you should be, which does not bring a GPU block at all. H265 roasts any modern CPU.

And yeah, this is pretty disappointing for AMD. They usually rock this segment, where Nvidia usually over-prices and under-delivers.
 
If this is the pricing model they are using for the 5500xt (and it's performance or lack there of) then it doesn't bode well for the 5600 series of cards. At this point either AMD has to do a price cut or drop a MIR or game code with the card to make it a compelling purchase for people on the budget market because there is little to no reason to take a 5500xt at $200 when you can get a 1660 for the same price or a 1660S for a small bit more (after MIR/Promo codes).

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this caused the 580 used prices to increase.

Aren't game codes just about a given thing these days? A code for a $50 game certainly would help but I'm sure Nv can offer the same/similar.
 
Nvidia should discontinue the 1660 (if they haven't already) and release an 8 GB 1650 Super for the budget texture whores.

That would decimate AMDs 5500 line altogether.
 
Nvidia should discontinue the 1660 (if they haven't already) and release an 8 GB 1650 Super for the budget texture whores.

Cards like the regular 1660 can continue to exist, as a pricing psychology game. The 1660 helps convince you to spend more on the 1660 super, since it's clearly a much better deal.
 
The 1660 will be discontinued but it will be a slow thing. It's not like the intentional discontinuing of the GTX 1080 with the 1070 ti (to stop wasting money on GDDR5X).; that was a pretty swift discontinue.

Small improvements in Super just mean the old stock will be bought by idiots (or occasionally discounted in a flash sale). It'a not like they're sitting on as much excess inventory as the old GTX 1060 last year.
 
1650 or 60 Super. I won't buy another AMD card, even though I love the company. They just run too damn hot and loud. My RX 580 in my second machine sounds like a damn hair dryer.
 
Aren't game codes just about a given thing these days? A code for a $50 game certainly would help but I'm sure Nv can offer the same/similar.

For "budget" cards you aren't going to see AAA codes and its usually a skin or some whatever game or such. The argument would be that it would tilt the budget prospect of the card into a bit better value and yes NVIDIA could counter back with a price cut or a code of their own but man AMD has to do something to boost the value of these cards if they want them to move.
 
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1650 or 60 Super. I won't buy another AMD card, even though I love the company. They just run too damn hot and loud. My RX 580 in my second machine sounds like a damn hair dryer.

Finding the right third party cooler's always been the trick with AMD. But Navi appears to be turning this around in a big way: if you don't go with the XT variant that pushes the silicon past its ideal point on the efficiency curve, the RX 5700's not far from Turing any more. As much as people are complaining that the 5500 XT's not pushing the envelope much from the RX 580, which is valid, they're definitely going to run cooler and quieter. I'm debating whether to snag a 5500 XT or just grab a clearance RX 570 and live with the lower performance.
 
Finding the right third party cooler's always been the trick with AMD. But Navi appears to be turning this around in a big way: if you don't go with the XT variant that pushes the silicon past its ideal point on the efficiency curve, the RX 5700's not far from Turing any more. As much as people are complaining that the 5500 XT's not pushing the envelope much from the RX 580, which is valid, they're definitely going to run cooler and quieter. I'm debating whether to snag a 5500 XT or just grab a clearance RX 570 and live with the lower performance.

Yeah, I've never been one to buy a graphics card, only to add a third party cooler. You should definitely go for the 5500XT. Newer tech is always good. Remember that the RX500 series is still the 400 series at its core.
 
1650 or 60 Super. I won't buy another AMD card, even though I love the company. They just run too damn hot and loud. My RX 580 in my second machine sounds like a damn hair dryer.
Yeah you're buying the wrong card or AIB. I always buy the Sapphire cards as they always have the best HSF solutions. My Sapphire Nitro Vega 64 runs about 20 degrees cooler and quieter than my brothers Vega 64 Founders Edition with the blower style.
 
8GB card: 1660/1660 Super (missing from poll)
4GB card: 1650 Super, or 5500 XT when AMD reduces price where it needs to be, and since that hasn't happened yet. 1650 Super wins...

I don't want to add anything $190 and above and I can't remove a choice. We can assume the 5500xt 8gb fans would vote for one of the Polaris twins.
 
I am not sure why AMD is so phobic on with a 192 bit bus. 6 GB of vram would be perfect for this card, and having lower bandwidth than last gen is a pretty crappy deal.

Nvidia just does more with lower vram and lower bandwidth:

Screenshot_20191212-171923_YouTube.jpg
 
Yeah you're buying the wrong card or AIB. I always buy the Sapphire cards as they always have the best HSF solutions. My Sapphire Nitro Vega 64 runs about 20 degrees cooler and quieter than my brothers Vega 64 Founders Edition with the blower style.

Well yeah, those blowers are junk. The one I have is a PowerColor RX580 Red Devil. Good construction, metal backplate, good cooling heatsink & larg fans. Its a well made card, still though, the chip runs too hot.
 
AMD has never been good at blowers -- their best efforts fell well short of what Nvidia could do, and Nvidia's were still louder than cards with two or three fans.

Of course, if a GPU actually puts out some heat, I'm an AIO convert. Max boost and minimum noise 24/7.
 
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The 1650 Super can overclock better as well, at least on the memory front. Comparing cards at mspr prices:

The 4 gb 5500 managed only 7% core and 6% on the memory for a 6% performance boost.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-5500-xt-pulse-4-gb/33.html

The 1650 Super gets 9% on the core and a whopping 31% on the memory which was good for nearly 16% performance boost.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/evga-geforce-gtx-1650-super-sc-ultra/33.html

So despite a much lower stock memory speed, the 1650 Super could actually max out higher. Make no mistake, these cards are bandwidth limited in many titles, and some AAA games could see even higher gains.

An 8 GB 1650S with higher stock memory speeds would be a budget beast.
 
I retuned it with OLOy 3600Mhz memory (32Gb) kit and got the AGESA 1004 b for MSI B350M Gaming Pro with Ryzen 3600 in auto overclock mode and the RX 580 is using a new auto overclock that the 19.12.2 is doing if you watch gpu clock as 1350 hard lock is stock for that card ,

 
I can see that now that the RX 590 price are climbing.
Frankly, RX 5700 are overpriced and RX 5500 series are super-overpriced. AMD seems not to want to compete with Nvidia on price but their cards have less features (lack RTX, IA and also CUDA/Optix compatibility which still hase more support than OpenCL even if proprietary).
 
I can see that now that the RX 590 price are climbing.
Frankly, RX 5700 are overpriced and RX 5500 series are super-overpriced. AMD seems not to want to compete with Nvidia on price but their cards have less features (lack RTX, IA and also CUDA/Optix compatibility which still hase more support than OpenCL even if proprietary).

580 prices increased as well on the used market.
 
I can see that now that the RX 590 price are climbing.
Frankly, RX 5700 are overpriced and RX 5500 series are super-overpriced. AMD seems not to want to compete with Nvidia on price but their cards have less features (lack RTX, IA and also CUDA/Optix compatibility which still hase more support than OpenCL even if proprietary).

I would think that opening up new features with in the driver would mean that the cards are programable for new features as they come along and maybe why RX 570 @ $109 still sales new with free games .. but I get the idea AMD wants someone owning Polaris to think more about upgrading your platform to a new Ryzen as your performance boost .
 
Best mainstream new card, Zotac 1660 Super $199 plus a number of other sells for the 1660 Super:
https://www.newegg.com/zotac-geforce-gtx-1660-zt-t16600k-10m/p/N82E16814500480?Description=GTX 1660 super&cm_re=GTX_1660_super-_-14-500-480-_-Product

The 1650 Super which for the most part gets beaten by the 5500XT at stock (not by much) needs to come down in price as well as the 5500 XT - Just too many cards are in the $150 to $200 range. 5500 XT, subtract $30 because it is stupid to buy one when one can have a 1660 Super for virtually the same cost as a 8gb 5500XT. I also think the pricing on all these level of cards are about $50 too high. The 2060 should be less than $300.
 
I mean, none of these cards are particularly amazing, the 1650 is fine I guess, all others can take a hike, The RX570 is still awesome though.
 
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