The range of video cards is becoming immense, at least in the medium and medium-high range, where NVIDIA's Turing GPUs and AMD's Navi are located. Between 200 and 350 euros there are video cards for all tastes, from those designed for 1080p to those for 1440p, with sometimes minimal price differences. Now with the new RX 5600 XT AMD completes its Navi GPU line-up. The price is $ 279, a figure that should correspond to around € 300 in Italy.
As we said, however, now the cost difference between the various alternatives has become very narrow, a small discount is enough to overturn the balance, that's why in this review we will show a cross-section of today's market, to better understand the power ratios that feature. Protagonists of this challenge are therefore also the Radeon RX 5500 XT and RX 5700, in addition to RTX 2060 in the 6 GB version of RAM and to GTX 1660 Super.
Design and temperatures
AMD did not produce a reference variant of the RX 5600 XT. This means that the dissipation system, and especially the prices, are left in the partner hands, from Asus to MSI, via Sapphire. The model we tried is precisely that of Sapphire, which in its Pulse version offers some small gems. On the design front, Sapphire has created a card that inherits the look of the RX 5500 XT Pulse, with some tricks that improve the final quality, such as the perforated grid on the heatsink body. For the rest there are not many visual differences, the general quality of the plastics is discreet but not exceptional, the backplate is excellent, entirely in metal and characterized by an area dedicated to the choice of bios. By moving a small lever it is possible to set the bios in Performance and Silent mode, which slightly lowers the operating frequencies to reduce the noise of the fans.
The dissipation system has two fans and relatively small dimensions, the card is in fact 25.5 cm long, however models with three fans will also arrive on the market, which will almost certainly exceed 30 cm. These offer better thermal performance, which however could have a very small impact on overclocking margins, due the increase in clock frequencies to which the 5600 XT was subjected and which we will explain better later.
Despite this increase, the operating temperatures remain low, the board reaches 66 degrees at full load and remains at 43 degrees at idle. The dissipation system is rather silent, even when approaching the board the sound emitted by the fans is not noticeable, although we have carried out all the tests with the case open.
A GPU different from that of the CES
The new RX 5600 XT is based on Navi architecture at 7 nm and offers 36 Compute Units, for a total of 2304 Stream Processors. The official specifications speak of operating frequencies that can reach 1560 MHz during the game, while the total memory is 6 GB of GDDR6 on 192-bit bus, bandwidth of 288 GB / s and a Total Board Power of 150 W. These are the features on paper, but AMD literally changed the face of this GPU shortly after the presentation at CES in Las Vegas. Almost simultaneously, in fact, NVIDIA has announced the lowering of the cost of the RTX 2060 from 6 GB to $ 299, compared to the previous $ 349, while AMD has increased the operating frequencies of the RX 5600 XT by updating the bios, both of the memories and of the GPU.
In our tests carried out before this update we found a high overclocking margin, which led to a performance increase of over 10% in a very simple way. In the pre-update tests we managed to bring the RX 5600 XT to work between 1710 and 1728 MHz on the GPU (the real standard frequencies oscillated between 1580 and 1600 MHz), with the RAM cloccate at 1800 MHz (by default they are set to 1500 MHz). The update done by AMD has in fact confirmed the frequencies that we have reached through overclocking, making them available by default and without the need for manual intervention.
The "new" RX 5600 XT therefore offers frequencies that go between 1720 and 1740 MHz for the GPU and 1750 MHz for the GDDR6, making any other attempt vain of manual overclocking: AMD has completely released the power contained in the RX 5600 XT, the real question is why he didn't do it from the beginning. Perhaps the intent was to take NVIDIA by surprise, perhaps AMD wanted to create a product for overclock lovers, a certain answer to this question, unfortunately we are unable to give it.
The rivals for the game in Full HD
The specifications of the RX 5600 XT show one clear resemblance to those of the Radeon RX 5700, which offers the same number of Stream Processors but more memory, 8 GB in total. The operating frequencies are slightly higher for the RX 5600 XT but the 5700 provides a 256-bit memory bus, which as we will see allows it to detach the new model in performance.
There RX 5500 XT instead it has 22 Compute Units and 1408 Stream Processor, the frequencies of the AMD entry level are higher and reach 1845 MHz, in the model with 8 GB of GDDR6 RAM that we have tested.
In the NVIDIA house instead the GTX 1660 Super uses a Turing graphics chip made at 12 nm, with a total of 1408 CUDA Core and a peak frequency of 1785 MHz during the game, all with 6 GB of GDDR5 RAM. There RTX 2060 finally, in its version with 6 GB of memory, it can count on 1920 CUDA Core and a declared peak frequency of 1680 MHz (in reality during the game this card almost reaches 2 GHz in a completely automatic way).
For a price comparison we have taken those of Amazon.it as a reference, where all these GPUs can be purchased in a range between 230 and 350 euros at the time of writing, starting from the Radeon RX 5500 XT, available online at around 230 € (in the 8 GB version).
Going up we find the GTX 1660 Super, priced at around € 250. The RX 5700 and RTX 2060, on the other hand, are very close and can be taken away for around € 350, based on the offers and the model chosen. However, NVIDIA has reduced the cost of the 2060, a drop that has yet to translate into one effective decrease in Italian market prices.
The cost of the RX 5600 XT, of $ 279, places it between the GTX 1660 Super and the upper class models, designed more for the game in 1440p. At first glance, the choice of AMD seems perfectly consistent with the current price list, but the success of this card, at least in our country, will depend entirely on the price that we will observe here in Italy, which could reach, if not slightly exceed, the 300 euros . Defining with absolute certainty the GPUs with the best price-performance ratio is difficult, you have to wait for the actual arrival on the market of the 5600 XT and analyze the prices, the risk of making wrong considerations is very high at the moment. The sure thing is that the positioning of this card is delicate, it takes little to get closer to the higher models, making them more attractive.
The mid-range in comparison
AMD has designed the RX 5600 XT for Full HD resolution, with a target of 60 fps in every game. A goal achieved in full, our tests showed a frame rate significantly higher than 60 fps in 1080p, clearly detaching both the RX 5500 XT and the GTX 1660 Super. If at first it seemed that AMD wanted to contrast the GTX 1660 Super, with the increase in operating frequencies the attention has definitely shifted towards the RTX 2060, but also in this case, albeit with an often reduced margin, it is the 5600 XT to offer the best performance. The graphs show both the performance of the card with the original frequencies and those obtained after updating the bios. In Gears of War 5 and Borderlands 3 the two cards guarantee almost the same frame rate in Full HD, but in The Division 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Metro Exodus is the AMD GPU to offer a higher frame rate, without however clearly detach the rival.
It can therefore be said that the RX 5600 is slightly faster than the RTX 2060 6 GB, positioning itself on the market at a slightly lower price. The RTX 2060, however, has Ray Tracing to act as a counterweight, making it very difficult to decree an absolute winner between the two cards. The RX 5700 instead, although having specifications on paper similar to the RX 5600 XT, manages to maintain a certain detachment already starting from 1080p, not abysmal but still significant.
Going up to 1440p, the RX 5700 consolidates its position, keeping rivals far apart. The performances of the RX 5600 XT and the RTX 2060 instead approach slightly, Gears 5 shows the same frame rate, in The Division 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider the 5600 offers a few more frames while in Metro Exodus and in Borderlands 3 AMD is the winner, but here too the difference is not so significant. Instead, the GTX 1660 Super and the RX 5500 XT remain behind, which at this resolution prove to be lower-end cards.
The 4K test, although useful for understanding the general performance of the cards, is not representative of a real context of use, none of these GPUs are suitable for managing this resolution. Here too, however, the RX 5600 XT manages to pull out a few more frames than the RTX 2060.
