Review AMD RX 5600XT Review Thread

[Hitman928]

Print Media

The AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Review, Feat. Sapphire Pulse: A New Challenger For Mainstream Gaming

www.anandtech.com

AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT im Test

Mit der Radeon RX 5600 XT platziert AMD eine Grafikkarte auf Augenhöhe zur Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060. Die Effizienz ist sehr hoch.

www.computerbase.de

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.computerbase.de/2020-01/radeon-rx-5600-xt-test/ [translated]

AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Review: Look out, RTX 2060

1660 Ti-like pricing and better-than-2060 performance!

www.tomshardware.com

Video Reviews

From early reviews it seems like the 5600XT and Nvidia 2060 are basically tied both in performance and power consumption although GN's 12V rail power numbers and Anandtech's system power numbers don't agree, not sure why that is.

 

[Arkaign]

GN has substantial contacts with a variety of third party mfgs complete with visits to their facilities in and around China. Steve is up to reasonable conversational Mandarin now as well! I doubt he'd make such a firm statement if it weren't true, and on the way already (perhaps for cheaper units with smaller coolers). It's possible that these models were intentionally held back due to the relatively last minute change of plans. I'd also expect that the GPUs used by OEMs for your typical Best Buy/Cyberpower/HP/Dell PCs to be the cheaper versions (I've seen some terrible ones, even including Alienware's ghastly 2080ti joke).

 

[AtenRa]

The 5600 is a decent card but.....
Last time I looked nvidia cards will overclock much better than AMD'S cards in general.
In fact an overclocked rtx2060 vs a overclocked 5700, the 2060 wins.
If AMD already upped the clocks on their 5600 bios,they will surely overclock less and lose to a overclocked 2060.

As an overclocker, I would pick the rtx2060 all day over a 5600 for $25 more.

I believe you have to reevaluate this, RX5700 OC is almost equal to RTX2060 SUPER OC, so plain old 2060 OC will be slower.
Not to mention that 5600XT with the new BIOS has the same clocks as default 5700, thus 5600XT will OC at the same level as 5700 does and not lower.

And to add that currently at newegg the RX5600XT is at $280 and RTX2060 at $320, so its not $25 more but $40 more.
So with all this info, RX5600XT is as fast as 2060 (OC or not) and $40 cheaper, making the RX5600XT the definite buy.

 

[CHADBOGA]

That's pathetic from AMD. Those unfortunate buyers of 5600XT should be eligible for refund or replacement with new version.

I'll never understand why people buy tech products within hours of them being released.

How many times now have we seen problems with motherboards and video cards, that only get fixed up with a new bios, that usually comes out within a month.

It can't be that hard to wait a few weeks in most instances, surely.

 

[insertcarehere]

I believe you have to reevaluate this, RX5700 OC is almost equal to RTX2060 SUPER OC, so plain old 2060 OC will be slower.
Not to mention that 5600XT with the new BIOS has the same clocks as default 5700, thus 5600XT will OC at the same level as 5700 does and not lower.

And to add that currently at newegg the RX5600XT is at $280 and RTX2060 at $320, so its not $25 more but $40 more.
So with all this info, RX5600XT is as fast as 2060 (OC or not) and $40 cheaper, making the RX5600XT the definite buy.

The chip may or may not be able to overclock like a 5700 but that's moot if the software isn't letting it overclock to 5700 OC levels.

With manual overclocking, maximum overclock of our sample is 1860 MHz on the memory (6% overclock), which is limited by the adjustment range in Wattman. I suspect the chips could go even higher, but for some reason, AMD chooses to artificially limit overclocking potential of their cards. GPU overclocking also maxed out the slider range; it seems the overclocking limits were not extended with the new BIOS.

Banking on them lifting these limits in the future would also not be particularly wise.

 

[Dribble]

Guide: How to Flash AMD GPU VBIOS for RX 5600 XT and Navi Video Cards

In today's content , we’re going to help you flash 5600 XT cards to unlock the full performance, assuming your card has made such a VBIOS available. This will also apply to other AMD video cards. -

www.gamersnexus.net

" The update came in the form of a VBIOS flash that can increase performance upwards of 11%, but not all the shipped cards have the VBIOS applied, meaning customers will be buying cards that perform worse than what reviews show. Worse still, some cards will never have that VBIOS available, with some partners splitting their 5600 XT into two SKUs."

Just .. ugh.

And I am not sure we can place this blame on AMD. AIB's are allowed to make whatever BIOS changes they want (This goes for nVidia cards too). This is how we get various OC cards and such.

AMD does another botched release... As I understand it AMD somehow got blindsided by the 2060 price reduction so panic'd and upped the speeds with a new bios to keep their card competitive, but did it too late and when China (where all the cards get made) was on holiday. Hence a lot of the early cards will have the wrong bios on, and no guarantees they will work with the new bios. Anyway the card is now far to close to the 5700 for AMD's liking but they had no choice.

Suits us as consumers as we got a near 5700 card for $280 and a 2060 for $300 - competition is great!

 

[Glo.]

About the only potential issue are any models with coolers designed for the low power original BIOS. I'm not aware of any, though. The Sapphire Pulse looks to have the same cooler as the 5700, for example, and easily handles the higher power.

All of the coolers look like designed from the get go for the higher power heat dissipation, than RX 5600 XT's is.

 

[Glo.]

That's pathetic from AMD. Those unfortunate buyers of 5600XT should be eligible for refund or replacement with new version.

All of the OC versions of RX 5600 XT like Red Dragon, from PowerColor, Asus Strix, Sapphire Pulse will have the new BIOS.

The only versions that will not get new BIOS are "reference" versions of this GPU, like this one: https://www.powercolor.com/product?id=1577415751

You better know what you are buying.

 

[Hitman928]

How about we keep things relevant? Here is Dishonored 1 where you can see the aggressive downclocking on the RX 5700. GPU clocks are in the 200-450MHz range:

which makes it barely better than an RX 580 at the same/higher settings, where there is no downclocking:

I fired up Dishonored at 1080p and FXAA on my Vega56 and get the same thing, extreme GPU down clocking but high frame rates. It's probably just because Dishonored isn't a very demanding game on the GPU and so the Navi down clocks to save power as it is already maxing out what the 1700 can do, or at times is hitting the game's hard cap of 130 fps. If the Navi is still down clocking that far running 1440p or 4K, I'd say that shows a problem.

 

[railven]

Nobody has said the drivers are issue free, only that it impacts specific setups. AMD has stated they are working to resolve the issue, but because it is not common, it makes it harder to replicate.

You sure about that?

Question - 2020 how much extra are we really paying for raytracing components?

Seems to me its almost to the point where the raytracing components are irrelevant in a price compare.. Said as an observer sitting here on the sidelines with with my rx580 and a wad of cash. RX vs super.. looks like not much of $$ difference. What are we talking about these days $40?

forums.anandtech.com

I got called a fanboy because I guess AMD drivers are superior to NV and have absolutely no issues.

 

[Glo.]

You sure about that?

Question - 2020 how much extra are we really paying for raytracing components?

Seems to me its almost to the point where the raytracing components are irrelevant in a price compare.. Said as an observer sitting here on the sidelines with with my rx580 and a wad of cash. RX vs super.. looks like not much of $$ difference. What are we talking about these days $40?

forums.anandtech.com

I got called a fanboy because I guess AMD drivers are superior to NV and have absolutely no issues.

Which is quite funny, that AMD driver Issues pushed GPU buyers towards Nvidia GPUs, but GDDR6 memory failing on Nvidia GPUs haven't pushed GPU buyers towards AMD.

I for one, would rather have Driver issues, than GPU failing over me, because of rubbish heatsink design, or simply bad batch of GDDR memory.

Driver issues are going to be solved, one day. They are genuinely minor problem, IMO.

 

[AtenRa]

The chip may or may not be able to overclock like a 5700 but that's moot if the software isn't letting it overclock to 5700 OC levels.



Banking on them lifting these limits in the future would also not be particularly wise.

Ahh too bad , they dont want to cannibalize their 5700.
But the RX5600XT with 1750MHz on the core and 14Gbps memory (MSI RX5600XT Gaming Z) is able to reach RTX2060 SUPER performance levels.

MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming Z review

The new Radeon RX 5600 XT has been announced, in this review, we peek at the MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming Z . The Radeon RX 5600 XT is basically an RX 5700 however with 6GB of GDDR6, lower clock freq... Introduction

www.guru3d.com

From what i have seen an OC RTX2060 reaches the RTX2060 SUPER performance, that means that OC RX5600XT and OC RTX2060 will have the same performance on average.

 

[Shivansps]

Which is quite funny, that AMD driver Issues pushed GPU buyers towards Nvidia GPUs, but GDDR6 memory failing on Nvidia GPUs haven't pushed GPU buyers towards AMD.

I for one, would rather have Driver issues, than GPU failing over me, because of rubbish heatsink design, or simply bad batch of GDDR memory.

Driver issues are going to be solved, one day. They are genuinely minor problem, IMO.

It took AMD well over a year to get Polaris drivers working 100%, and OpenGL driver is still c* and it will always will be.
Navi issues, from what i read are the same or even worse than Polaris, they need to learn someday that this is not acceptable.

 

[railven]

Which is quite funny, that AMD driver Issues pushed GPU buyers towards Nvidia GPUs, but GDDR6 memory failing on Nvidia GPUs haven't pushed GPU buyers towards AMD.

As someone who got space invaders, mix in with NV's terrible handling of RTX - I'm probably not going to Day-1 buy their newest card. I might wait a week or four, unless Big Navi is AMAZING!

I for one, would rather have Driver issues, than GPU failing over me, because of rubbish heatsink design, or simply bad batch of GDDR memory.

Oddly enough, browsing r/AMD it would seems AIB partners aren't doing AMD any favors either. No VRAM paddings, incorrect screws resulting in pockets and not proper surface contact, and XFX recalling their thicc boy cooler.

Between drivers and hardware issues, I'm not at all surprised people are swapping over to NV.

Driver issues are going to be solved, one day. They are genuinely minor problem, IMO.

I don't think AMD has this opinion. As they scramble to fix their drivers they're hemorrhaging users. You and I are both aware of this. They most definitely are.

 

[tamz_msc]

I fired up Dishonored at 1080p and FXAA on my Vega56 and get the same thing, extreme GPU down clocking but high frame rates. It's probably just because Dishonored isn't a very demanding game on the GPU and so the Navi down clocks to save power as it is already maxing out what the 1700 can do, or at times is hitting the game's hard cap of 130 fps. If the Navi is still down clocking that far running 1440p or 4K, I'd say that shows a problem.

Which is precisely what many are reporting is the case in many older games.

 

[tamz_msc]

Driver issues are going to be solved, one day. They are genuinely minor problem, IMO.

It's been over six months, patience runs thin waiting this long, especially when paying $300+ for a GPU.

 

[Shivansps]

It's been over six months, patience runs thin waiting this long, especially when paying $300+ for a GPU.

As i said earlier, i was a Polaris early adopter it took them a year+ to get Polaris properly working.

Navi seems to have even more issues than Polaris ever had, so ill recomend people with Navis to sit conformly.

AMD drivers issues are not acceptable, regardless of what Nvidia does. At the end everything ends up working really well, but the timming is bad, at best.

 

[PhonakV30]

How about we keep things relevant? Here is Dishonored 1 where you can see the aggressive downclocking on the RX 5700. GPU clocks are in the 200-450MHz range:

which makes it barely better than an RX 580 at the same/higher settings, where there is no downclocking:

How can you get 120fps with Very low clock ? LOL.

 

[Glo.]

As someone who got space invaders, mix in with NV's terrible handling of RTX - I'm probably not going to Day-1 buy their newest card. I might wait a week or four, unless Big Navi is AMAZING!

Even I, excited for the GPU of the topic, I will not buy it for upcoming month to two months.

Why? For the very reasons: Quality Assurance problems potential, and potential sales down the road of those very GPUs. And also maybe at that time there will be GPU batches that will not require new BIOS, and will work out of the box, as fast as review samples.

For your own sake, no matter how excited you will be about upcoming tech, be it from Nvidia or AMD, don't bloody buy it on day one. Your life will not become suddenly so much worse when you will get it two-three months after initial release.

 

[Glo.]

It's been over six months, patience runs thin waiting this long, especially when paying $300+ for a GPU.

The problems with Navi are pretty much minor, with really nieche configs, from what I have witnessed.

I may never experience them when I will get mine RX 5600 XT.

 

[Hitman928]

Which is precisely what many are reporting is the case in many older games.

It's hard to comment without knowing the situation as many older games had hard fps caps or would be far more cpu bound than gpu bound by today's hardware due to being dependent on a single core or maybe very lightly threaded across 2 -3 cores. There are some old dx9 games I can run at 4K on my Vega56 and still get GPU clock speeds that are like 600 - 800 MHz because the GPU renders so much faster than the game or the CPU can keep up that the GPU down clocks itself to save power. Not sure why people would be upset about this unless they're seeing low fps at the same time. . .

 

[railven]

The problems with Navi are pretty much minor, with really nieche configs, from what I have witnessed.

I may never experience them when I will get mine RX 5600 XT.

Unfortunately for AMD is word of mouth is already tarnishing the products. I can sort of sense why now people are trying to discredit r/amd.

When the bastion of your users are starting to raise a stink, you got to do everything you can to squash it. They're looking up return rates now. It's safe to say they are upset.

 

[Glo.]

Unfortunately for AMD is word of mouth is already tarnishing the products. I can sort of sense why now people are trying to discredit r/amd.

When the bastion of your users are starting to raise a stink, you got to do everything you can to squash it. They're looking up return rates now. It's safe to say they are upset.

I was talking about Driver issues, not hadware issues. Hardware issues always will be problems that should NEVER happen.

Software is different kind of thing. I have had lots of driver issues with Nvidia GPUs. Never spoken a word, because frankly - I could not care less. Reinstall the driver - off it went, most of the time.

 

[Glo.]

On the other note, Mid-Feberuary is the time when all of the GPUs on sale should have new BIOSes. Till that time - you buy at your own risk of not getting new BIOS, with the GPU and you could have to flash it yourself.

 

[Zstream]

Unfortunately for AMD is word of mouth is already tarnishing the products. I can sort of sense why now people are trying to discredit r/amd.

When the bastion of your users are starting to raise a stink, you got to do everything you can to squash it. They're looking up return rates now. It's safe to say they are upset.

Do people really believe that a few of you are AMD users? Show me a video of your driver "bug", I'd love to see it. I've owned more GPU's than most here on the forum and haven't run across any bugs outside of SLI/CFX. It may not represent everyone, but guess what? It represents that I follow procedures properly and use my brain when swapping GPU's.

 

[railven]

Do people really believe that a few of you are AMD users? Show me a video of your driver "bug", I'd love to see it. I've owned more GPU's than most here on the forum and haven't run across any bugs outside of SLI/CFX. It may not represent everyone, but guess what? It represents that I follow procedures properly and use my brain when swapping GPU's.

I'm not sure what you're angling with this post. The only AMD card I currently have in service is an aging 290X in my basement PC.

I have very few driver issues, I also rarely post regarding them unless I can't trouble shoot itself myself.

What I've never done is post my experience as a defacto, ie "I'm not having issues so clearly there is nothing wrong" type of posts. If people want to pretend AMD is having no issues because it doesn't affect them, go for it. Stick your head in the sand. But what baffles me is then trying to accuse others of having bad faith when they do address issues. Even more baffling when AMD themselves are asking users for feedback because they are aware of the issues. That's some next level denial.

The summary I keep taking away from AMD "fans" is AMD is perfect, anyone having issues is clearly doing it wrong. With true fans like this, AMD has nothing to worry about.