Compare any two graphics cards:

Radeon RX 480 4GB vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

The Radeon RX 480 4GB makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1120 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this particular model. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon RX 5500, which has clock speeds of 1670 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR6 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is a bit (more or less 10%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon RX 5500. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14320 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (49%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

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Radeon RX 480 4GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon RX 5500

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model	Radeon RX 480 4GB	Radeon RX 5500
Manufacturer	AMD	AMD
Year	June 2016	October 2019
Code Name	Polaris 10	Navi 14 XT
Memory	4096 MB	4096 MB
Core Speed	1120 MHz	1670 MHz
Memory Speed	7000 MHz	3500 GB/s
Power (Max TDP)	150 watts	150 watts
Bandwidth	229376 MB/sec	229376 MB/sec
Texel Rate	161280 Mtexels/sec	146960 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	35840 Mpixels/sec	53440 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	2304	1408
Texture Mapping Units	144	88
Render Output Units	32	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR6
Bus Width	256-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	14 nm	7 nm
Transistors	5700 million	6400 million
Bus	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 ×16
DirectX Version	DirectX 12.0	DirectX 12
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.5	OpenGL 4.6

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

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