Final words and conclusion

.final words

Nice, let me first start by saying we really like the design (aesthetically) of this product, I mean that's the equivalent of a gorgeous woman in a black gala gown eh? That said, we reviewed the THICC 3 Ultra edition, which is the premium model. We expected the default performance to be a notch higher. While it does have a slight power envelope increase and higher-bost frequencies it lacks that 14 Gbps clocked GDDR6 memory, and that shows. The flipside of it all is that when you apply a manual tweak, it all works at least at 14 Gbps and an extra 20% on the total power board design. Ergo, tweaked it's as fast as any other card. but The THICC 3 Ultra model is premium with a premium price tag, and that's why I do no grasp the 12 Gbps memory data-rate opposed to 14 Gbps. Realistically AMD dropped a small bomb on the 5600 XT release allowing these higher specs merely a week before release. These boards do go through QA and need to be validated 100% for the advertised data-rates. It is what it is though, but as a result, this board sits closer to reference performance then any other board tested. The THICC 3 is remarkably silent, I mean at the performance mode BIOS we reach an all-time low 33 DBa. There is also a silent mode BIOS, but the differences are so small that we left things as they are and 33 DBa in performance mode, come on that's closing in at acoustic perfection. Temps are a fraction higher overall just above the 70 Degrees C range, but I am fine with that as the tradeoff is just a very silent product. So yes, you take a Radeon RX 5700 (non-XT), remove two GDRR6 and lower the clocks, that in a nutshell is the 5600 XT. And with the cheaper price tag and a bit of tweaking, this could be a serious success. All by itself as a GPU, NAVI sits fairly close towards last-gen Vega performance levels. So the improved architecture works out well for AMD, it just works. 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 series from NVIDIA (with exceptions here and there) and the premium clocked models closing in on 2060 Super. 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, the Radeon RX 5600 XT overall show good performance in the 1920x1080 and Quad HD resolutions 2560x1440 realm of resolutions and sits at Radeon VEGA level performance. 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 some boards to be more premium and more expensive. In this price category I, however, feel you should not be passing 300 bucks. At the time of writing, we've seen this THICC 3 for $329  at eggy, and that might be an issue as the one thing a 5600 XT cannot be, is to be over that 300 USD threshold. Then again, if you dig the looks of this card (and we do) combined with that low acoustic level it might be worth the price premium for you. It's however 50 bucks over the AMD MSRP, and that is problemsome. 

.energy

The total power draw for the card we measure to be roughly 160 Watts. 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

I think I said all there is to be said already I guess. This has to be one of the most beautiful designs your money can get you. Performance-wise we feel XFX is missing a chance here on the memory subsystem, while the Turbo clock is increased with a bit more power allowance, really the GPU needs to breathe on that GDD6 memory to fully unleash it's potential, and at 14 GBps most cards reach gaming nirvana. That's said, it's easily tweaked to that level yourself as overclocking wise, this card will not differ from any other premium product. The aesthetic design is fantastic, albeit I understand that's a subjective remark to make, the noise levels are close to perfect and the performance slightly better than the reference 5600 XT, and with a manual tweak at premium card level performance. How acceptable you deem 6GB to be? I mean the performance up-to WQHD really isn't an issue. Tweaking wise you'll bump an easy 10% extra out of the card. Overall it is a nice design and recommended for the more avid and casual PC gamer. For that 329 USD, you get a gorgeous and silent product, however, it's a steep price and at the level of the ASUS STRIX and MSI Gaming X versions (which we also find pricy). Remember that at the same price you could also go with a 5700 (Non-XT) that has 8GB of graphics memory, so that was a bit of a dilemma while writing this conclusion as yes, pricing is everything in the graphics card arena. 

Please note - We've been talking about XFX as to why 14 Gbps memory is not enabled. This MIGHT still change with a BIOS update. XFX wants to perform further testing, and that happens in China, unfortunately, the team is still in-active due to the Corona virus a the staff gets a prolonged Chinese new year celebration. If XFX will update their BIOS, we'll obviously relay that.

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

Sign up to receive a notification when we publish a new article.
Or go back to Guru3D's front page

LOAD"*",8,1

- Hilbert