The AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Review, Feat. Sapphire Pulse: A New Challenger For Mainstream Gaming
by Ryan Smith on January 21, 2020 9:01 AM ESTThe Test
As is usually the case for launches without reference hardware, we’ve had to dial down our Sapphire cards slightly to meet AMD’s reference specifications. In this case, Sapphire’s secondary (quiet) BIOS offers reference power and memory settings, so for our reference-spec testing, we’re using that BIOS, with the GPU underclocked by 85Mhz to meet AMD’s official specs.
Finally, as the RX 5600 series is focused on 1080p gaming, this is what our benchmark results will focus on. Though I have also tested the card at our 1440p settings to see just how well it might do as a 1440p card – the lack of VRAM admittedly not doing it any big favors there – and these are posted below our 1080p results.
Finally, we’re using the latest drivers from AMD and NVIDIA.
CPU: | Intel Core i9-9900K @ 5.0GHz |
Motherboard: | ASRock Z390 Taichi |
Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
Hard Disk: | Phison E12 PCIe NVMe SSD (960GB) |
Memory: | G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4-3600 2 x 16GB (17-18-18-38) |
Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
Video Cards: | AMD Radeon RX 5700 Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB AMD Radeon RX 590 AMD Radeon RX 580 AMD Radeon R9 390X NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB |
Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 441.87 AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.1.1 |
OS: | Windows 10 Pro (1903) |
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Rudde - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
"Radeon RX 5600 XT needs to be fast enough to justify its price premium over the GTX 1660 Ti, and close enough to the RTX 2060 to overcome [snip]"Shouldn't this read "price premium over the GTX 1660 super?"
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Yes. Thanks!Dragonstongue - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
if they would have set at $279 "concrete" would be great, sadly they seemed to have not chose to do so.Fine if you are USD not so much if anywhere else.Life is pricey enough T_T
GreenMeters - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Great article, really looking forward to this card for a moderately powerful but very quiet Linux work & gaming box. Though apparently I need to wait a little bit, as the vBIOS flash has messed up something with HW acceleration on Linux.On the Power, Temperature & Noise page, there's a "quitter" that s/b "quieter". There's also an "Unaspiringly" there that potentially makes sense and is what was intended, but perhaps was meant to be an "Unsurprisingly" or similar.
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Thanks!eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
@ Ryan, Thanks, and good for Team Red! Any rumors about NVIDIA trying that trick, too, by pushing the 2060 a bit harder with a "BIOS update" over the next days and weeks? Thermally, there seems to be some room there, too.jabber - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
So go from 8GB to 6GB? Nope. I'll wait till September...sorten - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Impressive showing for AMD here. I bought the 1660Ti a year ago and I'm very happy with it, but if I were shopping today I would probably go with the 5600XT.It uses a bit more power to deliver the better performance, but not as much as I was expecting.
DanNeely - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
RE the compute problems, with the 20.1.1 driver SETI's most recent beta application is being reported to work. Einstien@Home's Fermi (telescope) application is working with that driver without needing any application updates; so AMD is finally making some progress with getting OpenCL working again.https://einsteinathome.org/content/all-things-navi...
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Very interesting.Though given all the other OpenCL software that still falls flat on its face, I would still caution against trusting AMD's current OpenCL drivers for any kind of production use, even if it appeared to be working in that one application.