UNIT · AMD · GPU
8 GB VRAMentryReviewed November 2026

AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB

No editorial image yet — generic vendor mark shown. Credentials in spec table below.

RDNA 1 entry. 8 GB GDDR6 at 224 GB/s. AMD does not list RDNA 1 cards as supported for ROCm — Vulkan via llama.cpp is the only operator-grade path. Buy this card for AI? No. Have one already and want to tinker? Yes, with limits.

Released 2019·Launch MSRP $199 (2019) · Now sells well below its launch price on the used market.·224 GB/s memory bandwidth
RUNLOCALAI SCORE
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167/ 1000
DD-tier
Estimated
Throughput
65/ 500
VRAM-fit
80/ 200
Ecosystem
80/ 200
Efficiency
14/ 100

Sub-scores sum to 239 / 1000. Headline = 239 × 0.70 (Estimated-confidence discount) = 167. This is an algorithmic performance-tier score — distinct from, and often lower than, the editorial “Our verdict” below, which weighs value and real-world fit (especially for hardware we haven’t measured yet). How scoring works →

Extrapolated from 224 GB/s bandwidth — 22.4 tok/s estimated. No measured benchmarks yet.

WORKLOAD FIT
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Plain-English: Edge-of-fit for 7B; expect compromises.

7B chat~
Tight
14B chat✗
Doesn't fit
32B chat✗
Doesn't fit
70B chat✗
Doesn't fit
Coding agent✗
Doesn't fit
Vision (≤8B VLM)△
Marginal
Long context (32K)✗
Doesn't fit
✓Comfortable — fits with headroom
~Tight — works, no slack
△Marginal — needs aggressive quant
✗Doesn't fit usefully

Verdicts extrapolated from catalog VRAM + bandwidth + ecosystem flags. Hover any chip for the rationale. Want measured numbers? Submit your own run with runlocalai-bench --submit.

BLK · OVERVIEW

Overview

RDNA 1 entry. 8 GB GDDR6 at 224 GB/s. AMD does not list RDNA 1 cards as supported for ROCm — Vulkan via llama.cpp is the only operator-grade path. Buy this card for AI? No. Have one already and want to tinker? Yes, with limits.

Retailers we'd check:Amazon

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BLK · SPECS

Specs

VRAM8 GB
Power draw (peak)130 W
Released2019
MSRP$199
Backends
Vulkan

Models that fit

Open-weight models small enough to run on AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB with usable context.

all-MiniLM-L6-v2
0.022B · other · fits by VRAM, no benchmark yet
Nomic Embed Text v1.5
0.137B · other · fits by VRAM, no benchmark yet
Kokoro 82M
0.082B · other · fits by VRAM, no benchmark yet
BGE Large EN v1.5
0.335B · other · fits by VRAM, no benchmark yet
Qwen 3 0.6B
0.6B · qwen · fits by VRAM, no benchmark yet
all-mpnet-base-v2
0.109B · other · fits by VRAM, no benchmark yet
XTTS v2
0.46B · other · fits by VRAM, no benchmark yet
BGE Reranker v2 M3
0.57B · other · fits by VRAM, no benchmark yet

Frequently asked

What models can AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB run?

With 8GB VRAM, the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB runs 7B models comfortably in Q4 quantization. See the model list below for tested combinations.

Does AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB support CUDA?

AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB does not support CUDA. Use Vulkan-compatible tools (llama.cpp Vulkan backend) or check vendor-specific runtimes.

How much does AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB cost?

The AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB launched at an MSRP of $199 in 2019. Now sells well below its launch price on the used market. Retail prices change often, so check the current price with a retailer before you buy.

Where next?

Buyer guides
Troubleshooting

Reviewed by RunLocalAI Editorial. See our editorial policy for how we research and verify hardware specifications.