5500 XT? For older Skylake build

[Cerberus73]

Hi folks, Am stuck on sierra at the moment as it hardly seemed worthwhile to go to high sierra as I have a pair of Nvidia 970 GTX's. But i use this machine daily for photoshop, illustrator etc, it has a 4k screen on it and dual boots into win 10, full spec is gigabyte 170 UD5 TH mobo, 32 gb DDR 4, 2 x 4tb hybrid hdd and a pair of Samsung 256 gb SSD, proper apple broadcomm based ac wi-fi card. the board does have a M.2 slot but i haven't filled this yet. and a Skylake 6600k CPU. right now i cant afford to start a new build from scratch and its running fine anyway, still fast enough in day to day performance, but i do want to switch to Catalina just so i can update my adobe apps to the latest version and have the current stable version of the os.

So onto the cards, i really cannot afford to go buying a 5700 XT, but i see that in the next couple of days that the 5500 XT is due out, and im over from the UK to the US for new year, so i was planning on ordering a card when over, for example the same gigabyte 5700 XT is £80 cheaper on amazon.com than it is on amazon.co.uk thats a hefty saving (about $110 difference) the mentioned launch price of a 5500 XT is around $219 for a 8gb card, thats about £180 here, so a signifigant diff compared to the £398 it is on uk site for the 5700 XT, I rarely game, and when i do its older titles such as skyrim, elite etc on the win 10 partition. Hopefully a 5500 XT will at least be in the same ballpark as the pair of 970 GTX's considering they are 5yo now gpu's. I know apple are ussing a mobile variant of the 5500 gpu, so hopefully it will be compatible, and i did look for a 590 XT, but thats at the same $219 price point as the 5500 XT, i thought it be a false investment using older hardware. and for the price diff between the 5700 xt and the 5500 xt, i can go buy 2 new 1tb ssd's. and help keep my machine usable for a couple of years yet. or is my thinking completely wrong? Hopefully someone will get one of these cards before i go placing my order to ensure its compatible.

 

[scottkendall]

Spend the money on the video card SSD prices are dropping rather dramatically month after month. I think you mean RX590 and the performance of the 5700xt is better since the RX590 is pretty much a rebranding of the RX580.I think you could be fairly happy with an RX580 and would have less install issues. The navi cards are only supported in the latest version of Catalina 10.15.1 not 10.15.0 and it requires some tricks to install the OS with the card installed. See the GPU forums for those tricks. Outside of bulk storage I think your 500gb of SSD should be able to continue to help you till you can save a few more bucks for buying the NVME m.2 drive.

 

[Cerberus73]

Ah but id be doing a clean install of Catalina, i wont be jumping from sierra, to say Mojave then Catalina, hence why i wanted a new SSD, so i can simply unplug my current drives, fit a new ssd and then take a few days to work through getting Catalina installed and stable. I will be going straight to 10.15.1, or even 10.15.2 as i wont be back from the usa until 10th jan 2020, by then I'm sure it will be bumped up a point release by then. and the 5500 XT cards will be out for a month. I know thats a short time but usually the hackintosh community find the workarounds and fixes pretty sharpish. The main reason i looked at the 5500 over the 580/90 is simply the price is currently the same or rumoured to be. and it seems insane to invest in already semi obsolete tech when the newest thing and more future proof is exactly the same price. and the performance will be better. the brands i was considering are gigabyte, like my current nvidia cards and mobo, or a sapphire. as I've used them in the past. i believe certain brands have vbios issues? with a hackintosh.

 

[scottkendall]

Ah but id be doing a clean install of Catalina, i wont be jumping from sierra, to say Mojave then Catalina, hence why i wanted a new SSD, so i can simply unplug my current drives, fit a new ssd and then take a few days to work through getting Catalina installed and stable. I will be going straight to 10.15.1, or even 10.15.2 as i wont be back from the usa until 10th jan 2020, by then I'm sure it will be bumped up a point release by then. and the 5500 XT cards will be out for a month. I know thats a short time but usually the hackintosh community find the workarounds and fixes pretty sharpish. The main reason i looked at the 5500 over the 580/90 is simply the price is currently the same or rumoured to be. and it seems insane to invest in already semi obsolete tech when the newest thing and more future proof is exactly the same price. and the performance will be better. the brands i was considering are gigabyte, like my current nvidia cards and mobo, or a sapphire. as I've used them in the past. i believe certain brands have vbios issues? with a hackintosh.

5500 may not be as fast at the 580 or maybe just the same maybe it is marginally faster no one knows for sure yet. Maybe @Gigamaxx could enlighten you more than I since they are more on-top of the video cards.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Ah but id be doing a clean install of Catalina, i wont be jumping from sierra, to say Mojave then Catalina, hence why i wanted a new SSD, so i can simply unplug my current drives, fit a new ssd and then take a few days to work through getting Catalina installed and stable. I will be going straight to 10.15.1, or even 10.15.2 as i wont be back from the usa until 10th jan 2020, by then I'm sure it will be bumped up a point release by then. and the 5500 XT cards will be out for a month. I know thats a short time but usually the hackintosh community find the workarounds and fixes pretty sharpish. The main reason i looked at the 5500 over the 580/90 is simply the price is currently the same or rumoured to be. and it seems insane to invest in already semi obsolete tech when the newest thing and more future proof is exactly the same price. and the performance will be better. the brands i was considering are gigabyte, like my current nvidia cards and mobo, or a sapphire. as I've used them in the past. i believe certain brands have vbios issues? with a hackintosh.

I can understand you desire to go with a new card rather than an older card, but I recommend you wait and see whether the RX 5500 series will be supported in MacOS Catalina before purchasing. I agree that a RX 580 will be a safer option as it is known to be well supported in MacOS High Sierra / Mojave / Catalina.

 

[Gigamaxx]

5500 may not be as fast at the 580 or maybe just the same maybe it is marginally faster no one knows for sure yet. Maybe @Gigamaxx could enlighten you more than I since they are more on-top of the video cards.

The MSI RX 5500XT works like the 5700xt with WEG and agdpmod=pikera, it has a similar performance to the RX 470-570 as of now.

 

[scottkendall]

The MSI RX 5500XT works like the 5700xt with WEG and agdpmod=pikera, it has a similar performance to the RX 470-570 as of now.

So then the op would likely be better off getting a 580 8gig? Rather then a 5500XT at the same price point?

 

[Gigamaxx]

So then the op would likely be better off getting a 580 8gig? Rather then a 5500XT at the same price point?

Performance wise yes. 5500 is a 130watt card and it’s quiet uses 50watt less power for similar performance but is not as powerful as RX 580.
The RX 580 also works in Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina vs just Catalina for the 5500.

I will run some windows benches tonight to compare, it seems to be much better in windows than OSX which is normally the case. I’ll have to update the drivers to the latest.

 

[zzmadd]

The MSI RX 5500XT works like the 5700xt with WEG and agdpmod=pikera, it has a similar performance to the RX 470-570 as of now.

View attachment 440097

Those benches unluckily mean nothing. It has to be seen how well it renders in FCPX, Da Vinci, Premiere compared to the old RX 580/590

 

[scottkendall]

Those benches unluckily mean nothing. It has to be seen how well it renders in FCPX, Da Vinci, Premiere compared to the old RX 580/590

PC world says it is a Turd and over priced the gaming bench marks show it edging a few FPS over the 580. Techspot said the card was underwhelming. For being a new card that is bleeding edge but only getting 1% improvement over the 580 I would stick with the card that is used in mass currently.