MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB Graphics Card Review

The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT launched last week and showed that AMD can offer some interesting competition in the lower end market with their new designs. Now, admittedly, there is some give and take between what Nvidia has to offer and what AMD has to offer. However, on the whole, they trade blows on price and performance pretty well. MSI has sent us their flagship 5500 XT 8GB, which is a tricky thing to explain. This is the high-end version of a low-end version of the current AMD lineup. That means it comes priced about £30-60 more than something like the Sapphire Pulse we reviewed recently. The question we have to answer today is “why?”

MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB

Now, on paper at least, the Sapphire card and the new MSI one are broadly the same specifications. They have the same boost clocks, the same memory speeds. However, the MSI card has twice as much. While the other 5500 XT made do with just 4GB, this one features a more impressive 8GB of memory, and I suspect that’ll make a big difference in higher resolution tests.

Specifications

• Boost Clock / Game Clock / Base Clock / Memory Speed
  Up to 1845 MHz / Up to 1737 MHz / 1685 MHz / 14Gbps
• 8GB GDDR6
• DisplayPort x 3 (v1.4) / HDMI 2.0b x 1

TORX FAN 3.0

• Dispersion fan blade: Steeper curved blade accelerating the airflow.
• Traditional fan blade: Provides steady airflow to massive heat sink below.

RGB Mystic Light

• Customize colours and LED effects with exclusive MSI software and synchronize the look & feel with other components.

Afterburner

• Wireless control through Android / iOS devices.
• Predator: In-game video recording.

Dragon Center

• A consolidated platform that offers all software including MYSTIC LIGHT functionality for your MSI Gaming product.