AMD Radeon RX 5500M, RX 5300M Navi Mobile GPUs With GDDR6 Rumored For Laptops
AMD is rumored to be bringing its Navi GPU architecture over to mid-range gaming laptops by way of a pair of two new GPUs, the Radeon RX 5500M and Radeon RX 5300M. If the leaked specifications and benchmarks are legit, these could end up being compelling GPU options in the mobile space, offering gamers somewhat powerful alternatives to NVIDIA's mobile product stack.
These types of things should always be taken with a pinch of salt, though it does make sense for AMD to port its Radeon DNA (RDNA) architecture to the mobile side of the tracks. As things currently stand, Navi is available in exactly three consumer desktop products—Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition, Radeon RX 5700 XT, and Radeon RX 5700.
So, how reliable is this rumor? That is tough to answer. WCCFTech says a source shared a bunch of details about the new parts, including specs and even benchmarks. The site also mentions seeing slides. That would suggest the source shared parts of an official press deck, but who really knows.
Radeon RX 5500M Specifications (As Rumored)
Disclaimer out of the way, here are the rumored specs for the Radeon RX 5500M...
- 7nm Navi
- 1,408 cores
- GDDR6 memory at 14Gbps (unknown capacity)
- 1,645MHz boost clock
There is obviously a bunch of missing information there, such as amount of memory, base clockspeed, the number of texture units and ROPs, power draw, and so forth. Nevertheless, there is just enough there to indicate the Radeon RX 5500M would be competitive with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1650 in mobile form. For reference, the mobile version of the GeForce GTX 1650 is a 12nm GPU with 1,024 CUDA cores, 1,395MHz (base) to 1,560MHz (boost) clockspeed, and 4GB of GDDR5 memory at 8Gbps.
No specs were given for the Radeon RX 5300M, other than it being based on Navi and using GDDR6 memory. We can assume fewer cores, and potentially lower clockspeeds as well.
Radeon RX 5500M And 5300M Performance
Interestingly, the supposedly leaked benchmarks show both the Radeon RX 5500M and Radeon RX 5300M being faster than a GeForce GTX 1650 in mobile form, and much peppier than a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti GPU.
Click to Enlarge (Source: WCCFTech)
We can't vouch for these benchmarks and would caution against reading too much into them. Even if accurate, we are looking at a single, older benchmark (3DMark 11). As the story goes, these were obtained in a laptop with a Ryzen 7 processor inside.
In this set of supposed benchmarks, we see the Radeon RX 5500M sandwiched between full-fledged and Max-Q variants of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. The Radeon RX 5300M is not far behind the latter—it trails the Max-Q GPU by 1,000 points.
Final Word
Whether any of this is real or all made up, we have no way of knowing at the moment. One thing we can say is the information is at least plausible—it's only a matter of time before Navi debuts in mobile form, and the specifications seem reasonable to us.
If any of this is real, it will be interesting to see how pricing shakes out. The idea of a laptop with a third-gen Ryzen processor and a reasonably powerful Navi GPU is enticing, especially if AMD and its OEM partners can flip these for around a grand, or even less.
