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daventus
Adept I

GPU dilemma

I'm not sure if I should buy the "ASRock Radeon RX 5500 XT Challenger ITX 8G" or "ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Challenger D 6G OC"
I mainly need a GPU for rendering models and scenes (static and animated) and therefore RX 5500 poked my interest cause of its 8GB VRAM, however my friend who has a better understanding of GPU's recommends me the RX 5600. I have no clue what "stream processors" do or how big of a difference will 2gb memory speed make. And that's why I'm here.
So, which one would you recommend me to buy.

FYI, the RX 5600 is the tippy top of my budget, i can't go for anything more expensive.

7 Replies
fyrel
Miniboss

If you can afford the time you should wait till the end of the month.

With the new AMD cards being announced on the 28th the prices of the last generation cards are likely to drop.

There will also be a lot of second hand cards being sold as people upgrade.

If your lucky there even might be newer models of those cards with better performance to price ratios.

Which programs are you using for your rendering work btw?

You can probably find benchmarks of that type of workload to help you compare the different graphics cards.

What does the software or program you are going to be using recommends as a GPU. Many Rendering programs have "Recommended GPU cards"  to use for their software.

If not you can always go the software/program's Forum website and see what other Users are using as a GPU to use the program or post the question there.

daventus
Adept I

Didn't think of benchmark tests, will definitely look up.
I mainly plan to use Blenders Cycles and Eevee engine. Also Arnold for 3DS occasionally.
Initially planed to upgrade by the end of the month anyway, but I can wait some more for the prices to drop.

0 Likes

Found this website that gives the best Hardware (CPU, GPU, RAM, etc) to run Blender Cycles and Eevee engine in Blender: https://www.cgdirector.com/best-computer-for-blender/ 

I did some digging too, but since I'm currently running an all AMD set-up and been using their products for years now, Imma stick with 'em. My budget limit was 400€ max, hopefully waiting a bit longer will make the RX 5700XT somewhere close to that number and if not, RX 5600XT will do just fine. Thanks for the article, very useful.

in 6 months the older cards will be a lot less expensive

leyvin
Miniboss

The ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Challenger D is an expensive card... and ASRock aren't even a "Good" Brand.

I mean I'm not sure what region you're in but on Amazon.co.uk it's going for £365

Now the ASRock Radeon RX 5500 XT Challenger D is only £210., which is a much more sane price... well about as sand as the RX 5000-Series gets anyway.

Honestly speaking here... if you're willing to go up to £365., and we are speaking about specifically for Professional workloads.

Well I'd say you have 3 real options.

RX Vega 56 (assuming you can actually find one for MSRP., which is £359 at present)

2x RX 580 (these tend to be ~£150 - 170 at present for the 8GB Versions)

RTX 2060

Now a key reason is FP64 Support. 

Vega has 1/2 FP64, while Polaris has 1/4 FP64... those are quite good performance figures that do provide better Compute Performance in optimised applications (like say Blender Eevee).

Navi on the other hand has 1/16 FP64. 

Another aspect is Memory., Vega uses HBM... and is just better in terms of Latency and Bandwidth than GDDR., not to mention depending on the application it can (and most do) treat Multiple GPU as shared resources; this means a Dual GPU setup will behave as if it has 16GB VRAM as opposed to 8GB (on each).

Doing that is much harder for Gaming, but for Compute it everything is handled low level and can operate across the bus as needed.

In terms of the RTX 2060., well it'll just be better supported via CUDA (annoyingly) and does has distinct Core Components that can aid quite well in Professional Applications.

If it's for gaming however... eh, I'd say it's toss up between an RX 5700 and RTX 2060; you might even be able to find an RX 5700 XT for ~£365 (I did; albeit one was on sale); and as the RX 6000-Series launches in the next 2 week (and I have a feeling we'll get the 6700 / 6800 / 6900 released at the same time; as AMD does like echoing their competition) ... well those might be better value for money due to improved performance and features.

As it stands I'm expecting to see them announced next week 

RX 6700 XT - £364.99

RX 6800 XT - £539.99

RX 6900 XT - £799.99 - £899.99 

And yes, I know that's considerable increase in my originally predicted pricing... but based on where their performance will be, the competition pricing and how the Ryzen 5000-Series saw a price increase.

Yeah... I think these are going to be some of the most expensive AMD Cards to date., and NOT due to Production Costs.

It's why I don't think it'll be work waiting.

Same is true in regards to the RTX 3060... I see it being £349.99 - 379.99., in-fact I think NVIDIA is deliberately setting it's announcement event for the day after so it can literally set the price inline with whatever AMD announce for the RX 6700 XT.

I also think NVIDIA will announce an "Adjustment" in the MSRP for the RTX 3070/3080/3090 again as a response., because if I'm right about the pricing; and I'm close on performance estimates... well NVIDIA are going to HAVE to do something.

Mind I think the pricing for both is going to be a mistake., given the on-going lockdowns causing economic turmoil and pushing a recession period; which consider why NVIDIA barely sold any RTX 20-Series Cards.

I mean they sold similar numbers to AMD., but for AMD that's an excellent sale period considering their market share... for NVIDIA it was a disastrous sale period.