AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT Review: Navi Targets 1080P Gamers

3DMark Time Spy is a synthetic DirectX benchmark test from Futuremark. It features a DirectX 12 engine built from the ground up to support bleeding-edge features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multithreading. Time Spy is designed to test the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards using a variety of techniques and varied visual sequences. This benchmark was developed with input from AMD, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and the other members of the Futuremark Benchmark Development Program, to showcase the performance and visual potential of graphics cards and other system resources driven by close-to-the-metal, low-overhead APIs.

3DMark Time Spy Direct X 12 Performance

In the DX12-based 3DMark Time Spy test, the new Radeon RX 5500 XT cards once gain finished just behind the Radeon RX 590, but ahead of the GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1650. It's worth noting, however, that the Radeon RX 5500 XTs were actually faster than the RX 590 in Game Test 2, but they trailed in Game Test 1, which dragged down their overall score to finish behind the Polaris-based RX 590.

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike has multiple benchmark modes: Normal mode runs at 1920x1080, Extreme mode targets 2560x1440, and Ultra mode runs at a 4K resolution. GPU target frame buffer utilization for normal mode is 1GB and the benchmark uses tessellation, ambient occlusion, volume illumination, and a medium-quality depth of field filter. The more taxing Extreme mode targets 1.5GB of frame buffer memory and increases detail levels across the board. Ultra mode is explicitly designed for high-end and CrossFire / SLI systems and cranks up the quality even further. GT 1 focuses on geometry and illumination, with over 100 shadow casting spot lights, 140 non-shadow casting point lights, and 3.9 million vertices calculated for tessellation per frame. GT2 emphasizes particles and GPU simulations.

3DMark Fire Strike

In the DX11-based Fire Strike benchmark, the Radeon RX 5500 XT put up much stronger relatively numbers and finish about in the middle of the pack. The Radeon RX 5500 XTs still trail the Radeon RX 590 by a small margin, but they end up outpacing the GeForce GTX 1660 cards here, and continue to outrun the GTX 1060 and GTX 1650.