Final words and conclusion

.final words

ASUS brings the 5600 XT series to a level where it needs to be, fairly silent and good looking. The card performance really is close to a reference 5700 in terms of numbers with a small deviation downwards. All by itself as a GPU, NAVI sits fairly close towards last-gen Vega 64 performance levels. So the improved architecture works out well for AMD, it just works. Tweaking performance is very interesting as that gets you towards 5700 non-XT performance levels. Depending on how and where you measure the performance overall is at the very least interesting and in that respect the Radeon RX 5600 XT is fighting off the 1660 running to 2060 and the STRIX TOP models even SUPER series from NVIDIA (with exceptions here and there). Then there is, of course, the discussion on how relevant you find hardware-accelerated Raytracing support. Most of you don't care at this time, but much like anything in the tech industry, anything and everything will evolve, so this year we will likely see say a 5800 with just that.  

.performance

As mentioned, Radeon RX 5600 XT show good performance in the 1920x1080 and Quad HD resolutions 2560x1440 realm of resolutions. That is not a bad position to be in reality as that includes the newer titles like Battlefield V, Metro: Exodus and others. Obviously architectures differ compared to NVIDIA but also last-gen VEGA, and that means you'll be seeing wins and losses in perf compared to team green as well as that vega series. 6GB versus 8GB is a bit of an icky thing, I do prefer 8GB cards and would always recommend that. That said at Full HD, 6GB seems to be pretty decent, but for any graphics card close to 300 USD or above, I would say 8GB was the better way to go. The rDNA architecture does show strength and IPC increase, especially seen from Polaris the results are pretty amazing. The cost of ownership for Polaris at the time of writing is, of course, a much better proposition. But overall, yeah we're not disappointed. 

.pricing

The XT overall as a reference product is priced at 279 USD. The custom boards are roughly that same amount of money. We expect the STRIX boards as they are more premium to be more expensive and ASUS certainly has the tendency to increase that price greatly. In this price category, however, feel you should not be passing 300 bucks TBH. We're still awaiting word from ASUS on final pricing.

.cooling & noise levels

Cooling is a choice with the STRIX series, silent mode sits at roughly 65 degrees C while gaming, and that is totally fine. Honestly, we advise the performance BIOS mode and let things be as they are as this graphics card overall is just silent enough. You then however at a pretty amazing 56 Degrees C under game load. We've have not heard noticeable coil whine. But I do want to note that any graphics card at a high-enough FPS will make some coil-whine. There is one side note for performance mode I need to mention, you can hear fan RPM ramping. So when the GPU quickly heats up, fan RPM jumps up noticeably, however seconds later it'll ramp down to more silent levels. 

.energy

The TDP for this XT we measure to be roughly just over 167 Watts. This matches the TGP 160W Firmware update pretty good.  That number varies a bit per game title, workload, resolution and even refresh rate of course. It's an okay wattage, especially compared to the competition's products with the same performance bracket.

.conclusion

Yeah, the RX 5600 XT is a 5700 reconfigured. Two memory chips less and a firmware configuration really is what this is. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with that, and as you guys confirmed, the 5700 series has been a hit from the very beginning, the STRIX TOP is pretty darn close. So I expect the popularity for the 5600 series, albeit a notch slower at a starting price of 279 USD this might become a very attractive gaming GPU in both the 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 resolution domain. The ROG STRIX TOP card is a proper looking card really, and cooling and acoustic levels can be set to a level of preference with the BIOS switch. While the reference 6GB model is aimed at that MSRP price tag of 279 USD we know for sure that the STRIX will be expensive to a far greater extent. The big conundrum; how acceptable you deem 6GB to be? I mean the performance up-to WQHD really isn't an issue. Tweaking remains a little icky as AMD again is firing off-limits on the memory and GPU clock. So all cards with the new OC firmware will get another 7% extra perf, and reach roughly 10% extra perf (compared to reference settings) at best once manually tweaked. Overall an okay design but surely a well-performing product. Recommended for the more avid and casual PC gamer. The 5600 STRIX, in specific this TOP edition biggest issue might become the price tag, knowing ASUS they'll add another 50 to 75 bucks on top of that reference price which would be steep. From a hardware point of view though, the card ticks all of the right boxes. The card overall is a beast in design and cooling really, perhaps even overkill for the 5600. It will easily deserve our recommended award, with the right price, it can be a top pick. We'll have to wait and see how that pans out. And remember, slide the power limiter, core clock, and memory frequency upwards until it cannot go any further, and you'll get that 5700 performance, all cards can quite easily run max settings based on the AMD limitations applied.

• 3DMark FireStrike + Time Spy + Port Royale)
• Download AMD Radeon drivers
• Download NVIDIA GeForce drivers

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- Hilbert.