Final words and conclusion
.final words
It took a while for XFX to come up with a validated 14 Gbps solution for their 5600 XT product line. That had everything to do with COVID-19 as in Asia everything was slowed down or stopped completely. More extended testing on the 12 Gbps SKU was needed and as our previous review already had shown, tweaked it would not pass roughly 13 Gbps stable. XFX is not alone in that as many boards did not pass quality analysis and validation for the upgraded 14 Gbps spec. Ergo XFX did well with the new updated SKU. The performance differences are certainly measurable and the tweakability much better. XFX will still sell the 12 Gbps version, likely until stock runs out as the new SKU simply runs a good notch faster at close to the same amount of money. Realistically though, the card itself has not changed at all, we noticed a different batch of GDDR6 ICs used, as well as subtle firmware tweaks as the fans seem to run slightly faster resulting in a bit more noise (bit still very silent), however with slightly improved temperatures. The THICC products look good, aren't screaming out loud with logos and 1980 Disco RGB, it's all just subtle with that all dark design. That, however, is a subjective observation. Aesthetic preference is a difficult thing to grasp. We like the dual-BIOS mode, but the silent BIOS 'mode' is a little redundant as the performance BIOS (the default modus operandus) really, you hardly can hear either. But there are two BIOSes and that is always nice as failsafe and perhaps a customized tweaked BIOS of your own eh? And if that fails, you simply switch back. That said, we expected the default performance to be a notch higher.
If we focus in a bit at the above chart we see an average 4% increase in performance compared to the older THICC II Pro SKU. It varies a little per game though, GPU bound titles caught hardly see improvements, however, fillrate limited games can benefit from that increase in memory bandwidth substantially. 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 is a proper performance product in the 1920x1080 and Quad HD resolutions 2560x1440 realm of resolutions and sits at Radeon VEGA level performance and closing in at 5700 (non-XT) performance. That is not a bad position to be in reality as that includes the newer titles like Battlefield V, Metro: Exodus and others. 6GB versus 8GB is a bit of an icky thing, I do prefer my graphics card to have 8GB of framebuffer, 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 is 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 new revision THICC 2 Pro for $299, and that is fairly spot on really. Way better than the 50 bucks over the AMD MSRP we have seen from some other brands.
.energy
The total power draw for the card we measure to be roughly 150~160 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
The XFX update towards the new SKU is a welcome release, however it kind of blows if you just purchased the 12 GBops version and learn the hard way that you cannot get the performance bump with a BIOS upgrade. It is what it is, the new SKU does perform and tweak better however as always, things remain relative. We did notice the new SKU to be 2 DBa louder, whereas the temps went down a bit. So XFX has been tweaking the fan profile it seems. At a measured 37 DBa it still is a silent product once seated inside a PC. Other than these facts, it's all the same. The aesthetic design is pretty terrific if you ask me, albeit I understand that's a subjective remark to make, the noise levels I can classify as good and with a manual tweak at premium card level performance. The card tweaked well and is competing with the other brands on that level, with roughly 10% performance bumps. Overall it is a nice design and recommended for the more avid and casual PC gamer. For that 299 USD, you get a proper looking and performing product and acoustically very reasonable as well. Remember that at a few tenners more you could also go with a 5700 (Non-XT) that has 8GB of graphics memory, that remains to be a bit of a dilemma while writing this conclusion as yes, pricing is everything in the graphics card arena but at an asking price of 299 XFX is pretty spot on. This new SKU probably is what the card should have been at release. Overall for a card under that 300 USD domain, we can wholeheartedly recommend it.
- 3DMark FireStrike + Time Spy + Port Royale)
- Download AMD Radeon drivers
- Download NVIDIA GeForce drivers
Sign up to receive a notification when we publish a new article.
Or go back to Guru3D's front page
LOAD"*",8,1
- Hilbert
