The AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Review, Feat. Sapphire Pulse: A New Challenger For Mainstream Gaming
by Ryan Smith on January 21, 2020 9:01 AM ESTThe Test
As is usually the case for launches without reference hardware, we’ve had to dial down our Sapphire cards slightly to meet AMD’s reference specifications. In this case, Sapphire’s secondary (quiet) BIOS offers reference power and memory settings, so for our reference-spec testing, we’re using that BIOS, with the GPU underclocked by 85Mhz to meet AMD’s official specs.
Finally, as the RX 5600 series is focused on 1080p gaming, this is what our benchmark results will focus on. Though I have also tested the card at our 1440p settings to see just how well it might do as a 1440p card – the lack of VRAM admittedly not doing it any big favors there – and these are posted below our 1080p results.
Finally, we’re using the latest drivers from AMD and NVIDIA.
CPU: | Intel Core i9-9900K @ 5.0GHz |
Motherboard: | ASRock Z390 Taichi |
Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
Hard Disk: | Phison E12 PCIe NVMe SSD (960GB) |
Memory: | G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4-3600 2 x 16GB (17-18-18-38) |
Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
Video Cards: | AMD Radeon RX 5700 Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB AMD Radeon RX 590 AMD Radeon RX 580 AMD Radeon R9 390X NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB |
Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 441.87 AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.1.1 |
OS: | Windows 10 Pro (1903) |
202 Comments
View All Comments
Korguz - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
in the US.. its $20.. but else where.. its more then that...larger and more reliable ?? barely...
Spunjji - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
The 5600XT price/performance ratio was so competitive that Nvidia had to lower their own prices to counter, which AMD countered with more performance. It literally redefined its price bracket.Funny how you're phrasing that as a failing of AMD.
335 GT - Friday, January 24, 2020 - link
That really broken 2080 die you mean? That die that cant be binned down to a 2070. Lol.headloser - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
You must lived in USA. In Canada, it cost around $400 dollars before tax. And it doesn't even come with free games. No deal sorry.SilthDraeth - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Three weeks into 2019 eh? First sentence.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Some of us are still stuck in the last decade, apparently! (or we're just really tired)Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
I hear ya. Some didn't even make it that far. Every day I wake up and ask "is it 1989?"boozed - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Hi! I'm a pedant from the internet...WaltC - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Very good review--to the point, Ryan! Thanks so much for limiting the cards compared to the same basic economic cost strata! That's rare these days. So many think that throwing in $1400 GPUs with sub-$300 GPUs is the thing to do. Ugh. (Last para, "quitter" should be "quieter")eek2121 - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
It is always worth seeing where a card performs in the stack. If I am shopping for a GPU, I typically go for performance per dollar vs. A fixed budget (except in my last build where I said screw I went ham.)Of course, performance per dollar can also be deceptive, since time is also a factor.