Radeon RX 5500 XT vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 590, which has a clock frequency of 1469 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 12 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 XT		130 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 590 should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon RX 5500 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 32768 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 will be a lot (more or less 40%) more effective at AF than the Radeon RX 5500 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60440 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7936 (17%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.