Radeon RX 5500 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which features a core clock speed of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 580 should be 14% faster than the Radeon RX 5500 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 32768 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be quite a bit (more or less 23%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon RX 5500. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34048 (23%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13216 (33%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.