AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT
Feeling all shook up, Jarred Walton thought AMD was going to shake up the middle-aged, when it actually meant the mid-range market.
Feeling all shook up, Jarred Walton thought AMD was going to shake up the middleaged, when it actually meant just the mid-range GPU market. Sorry.
AMD’S Radeon RX 5600 XT has joined the battle for the best graphics card. It’s a cut-throat competition, especially when it comes to mainstream GPUS that cost around £300 or under. AMD’S RX 5600 XT announcement is a great example of this – the company announced initial specifications and pricing, and Nvidia responded with a price cut on the RTX 2060. Then AMD counterattacked with an updated RX 5600 XT VBIOS that boosted clock speeds and performance. It’s all tit-for-tat.
As far as the core hardware goes, the RX 5600 XT plays it straight. This is the same Navi 10 GPU as the £350 RX 5700, but with 6GB GDDR6 instead of 8GB. It has the same 2,304 GPU cores, but with potentially lower clock speeds. There are no “reference” RX 5600 XT cards, which means most GPUS will be factory overclocked. We’ve included specs for the Sapphire RX 5600 XT Pulse that we’re testing for this review.
Officially, the TDP of the reference model is 150W, and the “performance” BIOS for the Sapphire Pulse has a 180W TDP. In practice, however, the power use with the high-performance BIOS fell well short of 180W during gaming tests.
The problem (largely mute for Linux gamers) is AMD is still missing an answer to Nvidia’s ray-tracing-capable RTX series hardware, which will likely come later this year as a high-end offering to compete with the likes of the RTX 2080 Super. Until then, the RX 5600 XT is supposed to fill the gap between the RX 5500 XT and RX 5700.
Even before we hit the performance numbers, it feels like the RX 5600 XT is priced a little bit too high. We won’t be surprised if the street pricing on these cards starts high, then drops closer to £250. Regardless, the mainstream £200-£300 bracket is very congested – there’s lots of options, including previous-gen GPUS that are still floating around.
1080p medium is an easy hurdle for the RX 5600 XT. At these settings, the RX 5600 XT is 17 per cent faster than the 1660 Ti, 20 per cent faster than the 1660 Super, and six per cent slower than the RX 5700. For a £270 graphics card, that’s a strong showing. It’s important for it to perform well at 1080p ultra, and it does. All of the test games still break 60fps; less demanding games won’t be a problem.
AMD isn’t marketing the RX 5600 XT as a 1440p or 4K card, though it can handle some games at those settings. At 1440p ultra, the 5600 XT closes the gap with the RTX 2060, but each GPU still claims individual wins in various games. The lead over the GTX 1660 Ti and Super increases as well, while the RX 5700 lead also starts to grow. If you have a 1440p display, playing at medium or high should get 60fps or more in quite a few games.
We haven’t investigated overclocking potential fully on the RX 5600 XT, but it seems to behave similarly to other Navi GPUS. The “performance” VBIOS update did boost performance by about 10 per cent.
The Radeon RX 5600 XT performs well and is certainly worth considering, but is it good value? Calculating value isn’t an exact science. What GPU do you have right now, how much will it cost to upgrade, or are you building a new gaming PC? If it’s the latter, you’re usually better off spending more on the GPU. If you’re looking to upgrade, on the other hand, the RX 5600 XT is decent value – better than some cards, not as good as others. It varies by regional pricing as well, not to mention any sales you might find, but for the level of performance you get, the RX 5600 XT is a great option.