NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 vs AMD Radeon RX 5500

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4 GB vs AMD Radeon RX 5500 4 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 879.85
$ 299.99
$ 579.86 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2494 points
2707 points
8% slightly better overall score

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

52 FPS
60 FPS
8 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

41 FPS
41 FPS
0 FPS slightly higher Electron frame rate

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

36 FPS
51 FPS
15 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

33 FPS
10 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate
23 FPS

Free GPU Benchmark

Want to compare your graphics card against the GeForce GTX 980 and the Radeon RX 5500? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

4376 points
4717 points
7% slightly higher 3DMark Graphics score
Blender score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

367.38 points
8% slightly higher Blender score
339.58 points
Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

33463 points
40204 points
20% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score
Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

41306 points
19% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score
34601 points
Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

15163 points
49159 points
224% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Metal) score
Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

34611 points
44390 points
28% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score
Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

38178 points
54355 points
42% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1126 MHz
1670 MHz
48% significantly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1216 MHz
1845 MHz
51% significantly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB
Identical
4 GiB

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

256 Bit
100% significantly larger memory bus width
128 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

224.4 GB/s
0.18% slightly higher memory bandwidth
224 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

165 W
150 W
10% slightly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

77.82 Gigapixels/s
31% slightly higher pixel rate
59 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

155.6 Gigatexels/s
162.36 Gigatexels/s
4% slightly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

4.98 TFLOPS
5.2 TFLOPS
4% slightly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

2048
45% significantly more shading units
1408

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

128
45% significantly more texture mapping units
88

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

64
100% significantly more render output processors
32

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

177th of 586
166th of 586

Family

The product line

-
Radeon RX 5000 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September
2019 July

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5
GDDR6

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0
12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5
4.6

GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon RX 5500 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Radeon RX 5500 beats the GeForce GTX 980 in gaming performance.

Our database shows that the Radeon RX 5500 has a significantly higher core clock speed. The core clock speed (or base speed) is the frequency at which the GPU core runs. This metric makes sense when comparing GPUs of a similar architecture or generation. In addition, the Radeon RX 5500 also has a significantly higher boost clock speed: the maximum frequency the chip can reach if power delivery and thermals allow.

Next up, in terms of GPU memory, they both have the same amount of memory at 4 GiB. If you're planning at playing games at high resolutions with high-quality textures, you will need a lot of memory.

In addition, the Radeon RX 5500 has a slightly lower TDP at 150 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 980 at 165 W. This is not a measure of performance, but rather the amount of heat generated by the chip when running at its highest speed.

According to the results of the hardwareDB benchmark utility, the Radeon RX 5500 is faster than the GeForce GTX 980.

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