AMD’s new Radeon RX 5500 graphics are coming, and this includes a new mobile version for
laptops, the 5500M, so let’s get into the details and find out what you can expect from
this next gen GPU.
When I first heard this news, my first thought was that there might finally be some more
competition for GPUs on the laptop side. On the desktop side, AMD has been doing well
with their new 5700 and 5700 XT graphics, which have been offering a good combination
of price and performance. This seemed to cause Nvidia to launch their refreshed Super graphics
cards to try and compete. You may have noticed that we don’t have Super graphics for laptops
at the moment, as the same level of competition just doesn’t exist when it comes to laptop
graphics.
AMD are marketing the new 5500 series graphics for 1080p 60 FPS gaming, and that goes for
the 5500M too, where presumably the M stands for mobile. The 5500 is based on their new
7nm RDNA architecture, just like the 5700 series, and AMD are claiming that on the desktop
side, this results in 20% more performance than an RX 480, but with 27% less power draw,
or 1.6 times more performance per watt.
This improved 7nm process should be good for laptops where energy efficiency is arguably
more important due to battery limits.
Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of specs, I’ve got the desktop 5500 listed
too so we can see how much the mobile version is cut down in comparison. Both have the same
number of compute units and stream processors, though the desktop one has higher clock speeds,
most likely due to a higher power limit as that’s typically more of a limitation for
a laptop. The mobile version is also listed as having 4GB of GDDR6 memory, which likely
ok for 1080p gaming today it’ll be interesting to see if this is a limitation in future.
As for how the 5500M stacks up to the competition, AMD are claiming that it’s up to 30% faster
when compared to the Nvidia GTX 1650. These numbers are provided by AMD, so take them
with a grain of salt until we can test it out for ourselves.
Based on my own testing for comparison, I found Nvidia’s 1660 Ti to perform around
47% faster than their own 1650, so there’s quite a huge gap in this space. I said in
that comparison video that I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a 1650 Ti or regular
1660 for laptops to fill it in future, but that still hasn’t come from Nvidia yet,
so the 5500M might be a good option for this gap.
At the time of recording, I’m only aware of one laptop that will feature the 5500M,
MSI’s Alpha 15, however there will be others announced. The Alpha 15 will also be using
the AMD Ryzen 7 3750H CPU, so it’s an all AMD laptop, and I honestly can’t recall
MSI doing this before, but let me know if I’m forgetting a model. I’ve asked MSI
when I can get my hands on one for testing, but unfortunately there’s no ETA at this
time, it’s meant to be available by the end of October.
Anyway it’s pretty interesting, up until now I’ve only really had AMD laptops featuring
the 560X, which seems to perform close to the GTX 1050, so having the 5500M potentially
beating the GTX 1650 by 30% would make an AMD gaming laptop a nice option.
I asked AMD if we could expect to see the 5500M paired with an Intel CPU in other laptops,
just like how we have laptops with an AMD CPU but Nvidia graphics. I was told that although
the first instance, the MSI Alpha 15, was all AMD, they expect there to be laptops pairing
the 5500M with an Intel CPU as well. Basically we just have to wait for other companies to
do this and release products with that combination.
AMD also advised that the power limit of the 5500M is configurable by the company creating
the laptop, so we could see thinner laptops with lower power limits but less performance
or higher power limits with thicker machines that have better cooling to deal with the
extra power. This is the same deal with Nvidia graphics, for example I’ve tested the 2070
Max-Q with 80, 90 and 100 watt power limits in different machines, so performance of a
5500M would vary on a case by case basis like we’re seeing with Nvidia based laptops already.
I also asked it overclocking would be allowed, and was advised that it would, but it would
depend on the individual OEM configuration as to whether or not they allow software like
Wattman.
The 5500M also supports PCIe 4, but given the CPUs it’ll be paired with for now don’t
support this there’s not really any benefit at the moment.
Hopefully I can get one of these in for testing soon, unfortunately for now it’s too soon
for pricing. Let me know your thoughts on AMD’s new RX 5500M laptop graphics down
in the comments, and if you’re new to the channel consider getting subscribed for those
test results and for future tech videos like this one.