Radeon RX 5600 XT Launch Review Round Up

Schro

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The embargo has been lifted on the Radeon RX 5600 XT, AMD's so-called "Ultimate" 1080p gaming card. There are no reference cards this time around, so you'll see offerings from a variety of manufacturers around the web today. I'll keep adding them here as I see them.

This has been getting a bit more interesting with the whole performance upgrade upon card launch thing

Update: 4/10/2020 - XFX is rebooting its line up to differentiate between the memory speeds with separate SKUs.

The FPS Review - XFX

The FPS Review (BIOS Update) - XFX

The FPS Review (Overclocking) - XFX

Guru3d - Sapphire

Guru3d - Gigabyte

Guru3d - Asus

Guru3d - MSI

PCPer - Sapphire

AnandTech - Sapphire

Tom's Hardware - Sapphire

Kitguru - Sapphire

Phoronix - Sapphire

ThinkComputers - MSI

ExtremeTech - Sapphire

PCGamer - Sapphire

TechSpot - MSI

TechPowerUp - Sapphire

Bluesnews - Roundup

PCGamesN - Sapphire

Hexus - Sapphire

VideoCardz - Roundup
 
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Looks like a Vega 64 equivalent, which is quite good. Lower power draw, newer tech, custom cooling and so on makes this a good buy, in my opinion. However, I already have a Vega 56 and a 64 so I will not be picking on up, myself. It does make a good RX580 upgrade though.
 
Seems like with the higher clocks it's even/slightly quicker than the rtx 2060.

Unfortunately the price is too close. I think at $249 this would be a real winner but at $279 rtx is enticing for $20 more.

The 5700 and 5700xt are close to $100 cheaper than the 60 super and 70 super.
 
if only they can encode/decode/transcode as good as nvidia cards..
 
The biggest competition for this card is the vanilla 5700 on sale. If the price gets to around $239 this will be a much better value. I mean the RX 590 launched at $279 also, but wasn't a serious consideration until it was closer to $200 where it belonged.

I met with AMD at CES a couple weeks ago and asked them this specific question. They more or less said that the 5700 deals over Christmas/Black Friday in the upper $200s were temporary and they expect the 5700 pricing to return to the $350 ballpark (if it hasn't already). Quite frankly, this IS a 5700 GPU with a 25% haircut memory/memory bus and slower clocks.


Seems like with the higher clocks it's even/slightly quicker than the rtx 2060.

Unfortunately the price is too close. I think at $249 this would be a real winner but at $279 rtx is enticing for $20 more.

The 5700 and 5700xt are close to $100 cheaper than the 60 super and 70 super.

At CES, AMD made a big deal about comparing this card to the 1660Ti and factory OC'ed 1660 SUPER cards. They didn't have much to say on the price drop for the 2060's, but apparently their response is the updated BIOS - we'll have more on this tomorrow as it was airdropped very last minute.
 

All told, it reminds me a bit of the Radeon R9 290 and the GTX 460; both cards used last minute tweaks and factory overclocks to try to close a performance gap with the next tier.

These kinds of actions certainly make a mess of consumer messaging, but as we’ve seen before, they can be quite effective in very close fights.
 
I'll keep adding them here as I see them.

Interestingly Extremetech reviewed using AMD CPUs, (amd GPUs in general see an improvement with intel CPUs unlike Nvidia which mostly have same performance with both CPUs)

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/305069-amd-radeon-rx-5600-xt-review-testing-third-gen-ryzen

Given their respective present positions, the RTX 2060 is about 5 percent faster than the RX 5600 XT [Saphire with latest overclocked bios]
and roughly 3-4 percent more expensive.

That’s not the worst position to be in, but it’s a weaker one than the 5700 and 5700 XT occupied at launch, when both AMD cards offered uplifts against their Nvidia counterparts as well as cheaper prices.

...

Now that we know that both consoles will feature at least some level of ray tracing, as will Navi 20, we can assume that the capability will start to be adopted more widely. Practically, however, that could still mean widespread use is 2-3 years away — and that may mean that the RTX 2060 won’t have the oomph to use ray tracing effectively by the time the feature becomes useful.
 
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Interestingly Extremetech reviewed using AMD CPUs

We did at The FPS Review as well (Ryzen 2700X).

If you're speaking of the 5500 XT differences between PCIe 3 and 4, those are more related to swapping of GPU memory back to system memory that should only occur in some games that are aggressive on memory use...
 
I'll keep adding them here as I see them

PC gamer wishes AMD had launched this card an year ago ...

https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-radeon-rx-5600-xt-review/#comment-jump

My biggest complaint with the RX 5600 XT is something AMD has struggled with repeatedly over the past several years: timeliness.

A year ago, this would have been an amazing GPU, and it could have provided Nvidia's RTX 20-series cards with some much needed competition. 12 months later, it's no surprise that Nvidia was able to steal some of AMD's thunder by cutting the price on the RTX 2060.

if AMD was trying to get Nvidia to show its hand with the early announcement of specs, only to sort of change things by launching with significantly faster factory overclocked cards, the fact is Nvidia's RTX 2060 is still a competitive card, despite having launched almost exactly one year ago
 
2641202E-AAFB-4D63-B4EF-949442B103F7.png
Reference model;
 
Well, this doesn't help (much) my upgrade dithering :/
I really need to replace my RX 580 but I only game at 1080p and can't/won't replace my monitor for another year or so.

So... the 5600 XT would do fine for 1080p today - but the 5700 has more memory (and flashability)... and the 5700 XT is slightly more future-ready for when I get a 2k monitor, eventually.
So.... I suppose I'll just keep waiting for a good sale
 
NE has 15 cards up, some are still pre-order till later this week. Only 3 of them are at $279. Some 3 fan versions are hitting $299-$309 and Asus as usual has a $339 Strix version.
 
No mention of the memory speed increase with new bios

Does this mean XFX cheaped out with a 12ghz memory clock ?

Is that why they are selling at $279 & not $289 like Saphire !?
i think/thought its listed in the other "amd baits" thread
 
So how much OC room is left on the souped up 5600XT?

If not much then the 2060 should be able to clock past it no?
 
So how much OC room is left on the souped up 5600XT?

If not much then the 2060 should be able to clock past it no?
FPS's review show it(xfx version) boosting to 1725 with the new bios. so maybe not much.

anyone know anywhere that is actually selling them though?!
 
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So how much OC room is left on the souped up 5600XT?

If not much then the 2060 should be able to clock past it no?


It's topped-out. The Tech Power-up gets barely 2fps difference with OC on the Sapphire Pulse (all options maxed on that model).

They see a similar top-end clock for all four models that tested (listed on the same page).

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-5600-xt-pulse/33.html

The RTX 2060 is a much better value at 6GB ram (assuming we see an official price cut on more models than just the EVGA KO).

The Factory-overclocked EVGA KO card has identical performance to the factory-overclocked RX 5600 XT.

relative-performance_3840-2160.png


It's ten bucks extra for RTX support, plus better drivers.
 
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i think/thought its listed in the other "amd baits" thread

Can you point to a link which lists memory overclock by bios / card / board partner ?

To quote Anandtech:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15422/the-amd-radeon-rx-5600-xt-review/2

Furthermore it’s not clear right now whether similar BIOS updates are going to be issued for lower-end cards. The Sapphire Pulse is a (or at least was a) mildly factory overclocked card, with overbuilt cooling and power delivery. So AMD and its partners may not even want to issue a BIOS update to baseline models, where power and thermals would be more restricted

...

The bulk of the performance uplift we see comes from the memory clock increases, not the power limit + clockspeed increases. This underscores the importance of memory bandwidth to this part, and furthermore the significance of this last-minute BIOS change.
 
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Can you point to a link which lists memory overclock by bios / card / board partner ?

To quote Anandtech:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15422/the-amd-radeon-rx-5600-xt-review/2

Furthermore it’s not clear right now whether similar BIOS updates are going to be issued for lower-end cards. The Sapphire Pulse is a (or at least was a) mildly factory overclocked card, with overbuilt cooling and power delivery. So AMD and its partners may not even want to issue a BIOS update to baseline models, where power and thermals would be more restricted

...

The bulk of the performance uplift we see comes from the memory clock increases, not the power limit + clockspeed increases. This underscores the importance of memory bandwidth to this part, and furthermore the significance of this last-minute BIOS change.

Yeah, this is a smart move for high-end cards only. AMD doesn't want to repeat their PCIe spec-breaking RX 480 on single 6-pin debacle :D

The OC bios jumps power consumption form 125w to 160w!

But the default BIOS is kinda overpriced for the performance you get - only 10% more performance than a $230 1660 Super for $50 more is not great value. The RX 5700 is $100 more than the 1660 Super, and beats it by almost 40%. The OC is a lot better value!
 
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Yeah, this is a smart move for high-end cards only.

Slightly confusing that, on day 1 of launch, we don't have list of official specs that users can expect for the custom cards by different board partners

Techarp has a partial list but not clear if all cards will get the memory overclock like Saphire pulse card :(

https://www.techarp.com/computer/radeon-rx-5600-xt-bios-guide/

please note that AMD is leaving it up to their AIB partners to determine the final clock speeds, so your card may not see such high boosts.
 
You know what?

Good on AMD GPU division, the card is better than I gave it credit for and the pricing is on par with what I'd expect for that performance.

I'm pleasantly surprised.
 
Can you point to a link which lists memory overclock by bios / card / board partner ?

To quote Anandtech:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15422/the-amd-radeon-rx-5600-xt-review/2

Furthermore it’s not clear right now whether similar BIOS updates are going to be issued for lower-end cards. The Sapphire Pulse is a (or at least was a) mildly factory overclocked card, with overbuilt cooling and power delivery. So AMD and its partners may not even want to issue a BIOS update to baseline models, where power and thermals would be more restricted

...

The bulk of the performance uplift we see comes from the memory clock increases, not the power limit + clockspeed increases. This underscores the importance of memory bandwidth to this part, and furthermore the significance of this last-minute BIOS change.
nope, no idea. maybe the chart above this post?!
 
Videocardz confirms in the comments that XFX cards seem to be hardware limited to 12 ghz

Our XFX contact says that they're consulting with their engineering group to find out the answer on 12 vs 14. That's the update we got in the past hour - honestly wouldn't put faith in the XFX memory speed quite yet....
 
NE has 15 cards up, some are still pre-order till later this week. Only 3 of them are at $279. Some 3 fan versions are hitting $299-$309 and Asus as usual has a $339 Strix version.
I know I saw that. $60 Strix tax is insane. Come on Asus thats just a rip off, even the terrible TUF card was at least $40 over msrp.
 
Soooo.... instead of letting people like us just flash the bios a la 5700 to 5700xt, AMD provided the path themselves, officially, minutes before launch.

That’s how I’m looking at it.

Pretty close to 5700 level performance.
 
A few titles under 60fps at 1080p is hardly a game changer.
Drivers is debateable. Plenty of users have no issues, and Nvidia is not immune to problems either.

navi definitely has more driver issues than AMD has had in the past, gamers nexus discusses it in their 5600xt review and it prevents them from recommending the product.

That said, the 5600xt is very MEH imo. It competes well with the 2060 in straight performance, but it's only $20 less, has more driver issues, and no rtx.

The 5700xt is 10-15% faster than the similarly priced 2060 super.

the 5700 was 10% faster than the similarly priced 2060

It's not the value/bang for buck product AMD has been known for. IMO to really be competitive they should have dropped priced to $249 AND update the bios. This would have given them the clear win.
 
A few titles under 60fps at 1080p is hardly a game changer.
Drivers is debateable. Plenty of users have no issues, and Nvidia is not immune to problems either.

This is AMDs problem right here. You shouldn’t have to bend over backwards to explain why Nvidia's feature advantage doesn’t matter.

AMD needs to give people a reason to buy AMD. It’s not enough to try to discredit the other guy.

If price and performance are equal AMD still loses. They have to be killing it on at least one of those for people to take notice.
 
This is AMDs problem right here. You shouldn’t have to bend over backwards to explain why Nvidia's feature advantage doesn’t matter.

AMD needs to give people a reason to buy AMD. It’s not enough to try to discredit the other guy.

If price and performance are equal AMD still loses. They have to be killing it on at least one of those for people to take notice.

yep, or they need some sort of feature Nvidia doesn't offer. In GPU they don't have the position of parity/superiority that they do in CPU.
 
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