Today we’ll be taking a quick look at the ASRock Radeon RX 5500 XT Phantom Gaming D 8G OC Graphics Card. The card is aimed at mainstream gamers who wants all the latest technologies, but on a limited budget. It utilizes AMD’s much talked about Navi-based GPU which uses the 7nm FinFET, and it now comes with 8GB of GDDR6 ram instead of GDDR5. It also offers a higher game/boost clock of 1737/1845 Mhz, which should give you a slight performance increase.

FinFET stands for “Fin Field-Effect Transistor”… it’s the process where transistors are miniaturized. To find out more click here.

Come on, you know as well as I do … not everyone can afford to pay over USD $300 for a discrete graphics card. And if I was asked to build a gaming system … I would always chose a graphics card under USD $250. You see, I have a formula when it comes to working out the cost of a PC, and how much you’ll need to spend on a graphics cards … it’s like 25% (or around 1/3 of your budget). So if I had a budget was $1,000, then I can spend to up a maximum of $350 (preferably less) on a graphics card. On a budget of $500, I will have roughly $165 to spend on a graphics card. You get the idea.

Having said that, it doesn’t mean AMD have lost it completely. They are slowing making a come back, by capturing the ever growing budget-conscious users/gamer who want decent performance at an affordable price. And there’s always the die-hard AMD fans out there. To put everything into perspective, who in the right frame of mind would buy a Nvidia GeForce Titan RTX for USD $2,500!!! … even if it is the fastest graphics in the world.

I’m all for the people … which means down with the STUPID high prices for graphics card, and just give the gamers and the fans what they want…. decent gaming performance at prices that’s affordable and sustainable.

I would like to thank ASRock for providing the review sample. This is a snippet from what ASRock has to say about themselves on their website:

ASRock Inc. is established in 2002, specialized in the field of motherboards. ASRock strives to build up its own brand. With the 3C design concept, “Creativity, Consideration, Cost-effectiveness”, the company explores the limit of motherboards manufacturing while paying attention on the eco issue at the same time, developing products with the consideration of eco-friendly concept.

ASRock has been growing fast and become world third largest motherboard brand with headquarter in Taipei, Taiwan and branches in Europe and the USA. The young and vibrant company targets from mainstream to enthusiast MB segments for different kinds of users, owning reputation around the world market with its reliability and proficiency.

Here’s a quick comparison between AMD’s Radeon RX 580, RX 590, ASRock’s Radeon RX 5500XT 8G OC, and the Radeon RX 5600 XT

Radeon RX 580 ASRock Radeon RX 590 8G OC ASRock Radeon RX 5500 XT 8G OC Radeon RX 5600 XT Compute Units 36 36 22 36 FinFET process

14nm 12nm 7nm 7nm Base/Game Frequency 1257 1498 1485 / 1717 1375 Boost Frequency 1340 1591 1845 1560 Stream Processors 2304 2304 1408 2304 Memory Type 8 GB GDDR5 8 GB GDDR5 8 GB GDDR6 6 GB GDDR6 Memory Bus 256-bit 256-bit 128-bit 192-bit Memory Speed 8 Gbps 8 Gbps 14 Gbps 12 Gbps

As you can see, there are several differences between ASRock’s Radeon RX 5500XT 8G OC and the Radeon RX 5600 XT, these include the GPU frequency, number of compute cores and stream processors, as well as the memory type, bus and speeds.

It will be interesting to see who well this card will perform against the Radeon RX 590 and the RX 5600 XT. Will the increased MHZ and higher memory speed, beat more compute units and stream processors? Let’s find out.

I’m expecting the ASRock Radeon RX 5500XT 8G OC graphics card to produce some decent scores during our benchmarks, especially with its slightly higher clock rate, as well as its higher memory speed. However having said that, don’t set your expectations too high. It is a mainstream gaming card at the end of the day. Let’s continue and check out the specifications of the graphics card on our next page.

You can buy the ASRock Radeon RX 5500 XT Phantom Gaming D 8G OC (8GB GDDR6) from Amazon – https://amzn.to/2SCqjyX and various online retailers for around USD $199-229.

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