ASUS STRIX Radeon RX 5600 XT TOP review - Introduction

ASUS ROG STRIX Radeon RX 5600 XT TOP
Is that Premium RX 5600 XT a h00t?

The Radeon RX 5600 XT has been announced, in this review, we peek at the ASUS ROG STRIX Gaming. The Radeon RX 5600 XT is basically an RX 5700 however with 6GB of GDDR6, lower clocks and a price tag of 279 USD. That could make it an excellent offering in the Quad HD domain at up-to a resolution of 2560x1440. However days before this launch something happened, NVIDIA lowered RTX 2060 pricing to 299 USD. And there's where AMD made an 180 degree turn and pretty much created two separated SKUs for the 5600 XT. That would be the reference product, and then the factory tweaked (OC models) with greatly enhanced specs like a 180 Watt power envelope (opposed to 150 W), an increase of the maximum turbo clock as well as a bump in GDDR6 memory data-rate going from 12 towards 14 Gbps. Interesting for sure. The Radeon RX 5600 XT is not replacing the Radeon RX 5700 graphics card. The two products address different market needs. The Radeon RX 5600 XT was specifically designed and optimized to deliver the best 1080p gaming experiences, while the Radeon RX 5700 – with its additional memory and memory bandwidth – was specifically designed for 1440p gaming. 

Yeah, AMD hasn't been wasting any time, Ryzen 3000 at 7nm, Radeon VII at 7nm, then the Radeon 5700 and 5700 XT, as well as the 5500 series. All at 7nm fabrication. We now add the 5600 XT series. The basis of the product that we test today is the NAVI GPU, with a die fabbed at a 7nm fabricated package and 6GB of GDDR6 graphics memory (12 Gbps) these cards are released in an aim to compete with the GeForce RTX 2060, will it be capable to do that? We can already tell you that the numbers will be interesting to see. The most important aspect, however, is pricing. Where the Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT cost 349 and 399 USD respectively the 5600 XT series starts at 279 USD. The NAVI GPU is based on what AMD refers to as RDNA architecture (Radeon DNA). The Radeon 5000 series is the first commercial consumer graphics card that is PCIe Express 4.0 compatible. Both the Radeon 5600 and 5700 are offered with 2304 shader processors. The GPU game clock is dynamic at 1130~1375 MHz with a peak boost clock to 1.560 GHz for the no- OC (reference) model card. NAVI cards are fitted with GDDR6 memory, that means HBM2 is no longer used opposed to what you have been seeing with Vega 56/64, a clever choice as HBM2 memory is difficult to assemble onto the die substrate (lot's of yield issues there) and that makes it very expensive, next to being an expensive memory type to purchase. 

	RX 5700 XT	RX 5700	5600XT STRIX TOP	RX 5600 XT	RX 5500 XT
GPU	Navi 10 XT	Navi 10 XL	Navi 10	Navi 10	Navi 14 XTX
Cores	2560	2304	2304	2304	1408
Basic clock	1605 MHz	1465 MHz	1130 MHz	1130 MHz	1607 MHz
Game clock	1755 MHz	1625 MHz	1660 MHz	1375 MHz	1717 MHz
Boost clock	1905 MHz	1725 MHz	1750 MHz	1560 MHz	1845 MHz
Memory	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR6	4GB / 8GB GDDR6
Memory bus	256 bit	256 bit	192 bit	192 bit	128 bit
Memory clock speed	14 Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps	12 Gbps	14 Gbps
Bandwidth	448 GB/s	448 GB/s	336 GB/s	288 GB/s	224 GB/s
Recommended retail price	USD 449	USD 379	289 USD	279 USD	199 USD

ASUS ROG STRIX Radeon RX 5600 XT 6G TOP edition

ASUS outs its familiar-looking dual-slot ASUS ROG STRIX, first off this is the TOP edition, not the OC edition. The TOP edition has the fastest clocks and TGP. Yeah we review and test the Republic Of Gamers card from ASUS which comes all custom cooled and a self-made PCB design. The board is fed by not one, but two power connectors 6+8 and comes with a dual-BIOS mode that lets you switch between Quiet and Performance BIOS profiles. The factory game clock frequency is 1670 MHz for the performance mode and 1750 on the max boost.  If you enable the software OC mode that value jumps upwards with 20 MHz towards 1770 MHz. GDDR6 memory is stock 12 GHz (effective clock-rate) for the reference clocked versions, the OC models (like this review uses) are bumped upward to 14 Gbps. Embedded as well is a LED lighting system and a rear side located fan and LED connector, everything about this product states 'premium' really. The PCB is reinforced by a backplate that adds structural rigidity. The card features 6 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 12/14 Gbps (depends if you have the TOP model or not) and that means a memory bus width at 192-bits, delivering bandwidth of 288/344 GB/s. The card offers one HDMI 2.0b port and three DisplayPorts v1.4. The card has an LED logo on it at the top side but other than that no RGB functionality, but have a quick peek first after which we then head onwards into the review.