FRONTPAGE Sapphire Pulse RX 5500 XT Review: Is 4 GB VRAM Enough?

[Overclockers.com]

We'll be taking a slight detour in our testing today to help shed some light on this. Instead of comparing similar cards performance which we typically do. We'll be testing a Sapphire Pulse 4 GB and comparing it to a Gigabyte Gaming OC 8 GB RX 5500 XT to see what impact, if any, having only 4 GB of VRAM may have on gaming. Since these cards are physically wired at PCIe x8 We'll also testing PCIe 4.0 against PCIe 3.0 performance to see if opening up the PCIe bandwidth has any impact on the results.

Click here to view the article.

 

[trents]

I found this interesting in that most people have generally discounted the impact of PCIe gen 4 on video card performance:

"Overall, the performance from the Pulse RX 5500 XT was right where it should be slipping into the upper end of 1080p gaming. Despite the fact that it has half the VRAM of the Gigabyte Gaming it still performed on par in many titles. Also, as we took advantage of AMD’s PCIe 4.0 availability, the performance variations between the two narrowed considerably. We have to keep in mind here that this is the lowest cost GPU in AMD’s bargain segment and was still capable of running our tests using ‘ultra’ settings."

I think this is especially significant in view of the fact that this is not an upper tier video card which would seem to dictate less advantage with PCIe gen 4 over hungrier upper tier cards.

 

[EarthDog]

This happens because the card runs out of VRAM and it pages out to system RAM. The data travels through the PCIe bus to get there. To many, this could be considered a design flaw considering the big hits the card takes on several titles. It forces it to a 1080p medium 60 (res/settings/fps) card instead of 1080p ultra 60 . If they would have simply used an x16 connection, the difference would be a lot less pronounced.

Basically, if you do not run out of VRAM and have a gimped x8 interface on your GPU, the significant differences are minimized to a few percent.

 

[freakdiablo]

I'm actually surprised that 4GB is now showing signs of strain at 1080, as shown by double digit gains with 8GB VRAM in certain titles. But I guess it had to happen at some point. Guess it's another reason to upgrade my laptop, which is running a 970 with "4" GB.

I figure $150-$200 is probably the "Sweet Spot" for the average Joe. Just grab a mid-range card to slap in a cheap Dell, and BAM! "Gaming" PC. At least that's how a lot of friends did it back in HS. So I guess it comes down to if that $30 difference is worth the extra frames and some future proofing, or if the 1-2 games you play runs well enough with 4GB.

 

[EarthDog]

I'm actually surprised that 4GB is now showing signs of strain at 1080, as shown by double digit gains with 8GB VRAM in certain titles. But I guess it had to happen at some point. Guess it's another reason to upgrade my laptop, which is running a 970 with "4" GB.

I figure $150-$200 is probably the "Sweet Spot" for the average Joe. Just grab a mid-range card to slap in a cheap Dell, and BAM! "Gaming" PC. At least that's how a lot of friends did it back in HS. So I guess it comes down to if that $30 difference is worth the extra frames and some future proofing, or if the 1-2 games you play runs well enough with 4GB.

Unless one just simply can't afford it, you need the 8GB card here IMO. That or look at the GTX 1660 Super which is way faster and priced the same as the high end 5500 XTs 8GBs.