Alongside the launch of its new Ryzen 3000 processors, AMD is also releasing two new graphics cards in the shape of the Radeon RX 5700, and the RX 5700 XT. Rather than going after the high-end market segment, these cards are targeting the £350-450 market segment – so they're far from entry-level, but neither are they rivalling the likes of the RTX 2080 or 2080 Ti.
We have launch day reviews of both cards, but this article is all about the RX 5700 XT. If you want to read our coverage of the RX 5700 you can do so over here, but in this review everything boils down to one question – is the RX 5700 XT a worthy competitor to Nvidia's RTX 2060 SUPER?
AMD's Radeon RX 5700 XT was meant to go head-to-head with the RTX 2070, but only this week saw the release of the new RTX 2070 SUPER, raising the bar that bit higher for AMD's new card. We had a further plot twist on Friday, when AMD announced that it had actually cut pricing of the new cards – with the RX 5700 coming in at $349, and the 5700 XT now at $399.
I have to say, this is a ballsy move on AMD's behalf, and it really ups the ante – 5700 XT is now going head to head with 2060 SUPER, while 5700 competes directly against the original RTX 2060.
| RX 5700 | RX 5700 XT | RX Vega 56 | RX Vega 64 | Radeon VII | |
| Architecture | Navi | Navi | Vega 10 | Vega 10 | Vega 20 |
| Manufacturing Process | 7nm | 7nm | 14nm | 14nm | 7nm |
| Transistor Count | 10.3 billion | 10.3 billion | 12.5 billion | 12.5 billion | 13.2 billion |
| Die Size | 251mm² | 251mm² | 486mm² | 495mm² | 331mm² |
| Compute Units | 36 | 40 | 56 | 64 | 60 |
| Stream Processors | 2304 | 2560 | 3584 | 4096 | 3840 |
| Base GPU Clock | Up to 1465MHz | Up to 1605MHz | 1156 MHz | 1274 MHz | 1400 MHz |
| Game GPU Clock | Up to 1625MHz | Up to 1755MHz | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Boost GPU Clock | Up to 1725MHz | Up to 1905MHz | 1471 MHz | 1546 MHz | 1750 MHz |
| Peak Engine Clock | n/a | n/a | 1590 MHz | 1630 MHz | 1800 MHz |
| Peak SP Performance | Up to 7.95 TFLOPS | Up to 9.75 TFLOPS | Up to 10.5 TFLOPS | Up to 12.7 TFLOPS | Up to 14.2 TFLOPS |
| Peak Half Precision Performance | Up to 15.9 TFLOPS | Up to 19.5 TFLOPS | Up to 21.0 TFLOPS | Up to 25.3 TFLOPS | Up to 28.1 TFLOPS |
| Peak Texture Fill-Rate | Up to 248.4 GT/s | Up to 304.8 GT/s | Up to 330.0 GT/s | Up to 395.8 GT/s | 432.24 GT/s |
| ROPs | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
| Peak Pixel Fill-Rate | Up to 110.4 GP/s | Up to 121.9 GP/s | Up to 94.0 GP/s | Up to 98.9 GP/s | 115.26 GP/s |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB HBM | 8GB HBM | 16GB HBM2 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 410 GB/s | 483.8 GB/s | 1 TB/s |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 2048-bit | 2048-bit | 4096-bit |
| Board Power | 185W | 225W | 210W | 295W | 300W |
Both of AMD's new graphics cards are built upon its latest RDNA architecture, the long-awaited successor to Graphics Core Next (GCN). These cards use the same Navi GPU, where the RX 5700 XT is a full implementation with 40 Compute Units (CUs) and 2560 stream processors. RX 5700 is cut down slightly, to 36 CUs and 2304 stream processors.
A lot has been made of AMD's move to a new 7nm process for these cards – hence the 7/7 release date – and one consequence of this is a much smaller die size for the Navi GPU. Where the 14nm Vega 64 GPU die measures 495mm², Navi is just 251mm², and AMD claims a 2.3x performance per area increase for Navi vs Vega 10.
On top of this, clock speeds have been cranked up, with base clock increases from 1274MHz for Vega 64, up to 1605MHz for RX 5700 XT. AMD is also introducing a new clock speed metric known as ‘game clock', meaning the frequency which you can expect to see the card hit while gaming, and for the 5700 XT that is up to 1755MHz.
Interestingly, AMD is no longer equipping its cards with High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), instead opting for 8GB of GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit bus. Total memory bandwidth comes in at 448GB/s.
Lastly, total board power for the 5700 XT is rated at 225W, down from 295W for Vega 64 – AMD is claiming a 1.5x performance per watt increase for the new cards.
The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT ships in a compact box, with just the product branding visible on the front. Removing the outer sleeve, we can see the box is in two parts – the top lifts off to reveal the card sitting in a foam surround.
Just before getting a closer look at the card, however, it is worth pointing out a warranty card and an international compliance information leaflet are also included.
The RX 5700 XT itself certainly very distinctive in terms of its appearance. It has a dark grey aluminium shroud, but unlike the 5700 which is quite plain, this has a number of ridges – or lines – cut into the shroud itself, giving it a very textured feel. On top of that, you can already make out the signature ‘dent' in the top side of the card, but we'll touch on that below.
Personally I think it is a visually appealing design. It's more than just a slab of aluminium, while the red and silver Radeon logo positioned in the middle of the shroud adds some sparkle. Aesthetics aside, it's obviously still one of AMD's blower-style coolers – where the fan draws air over the GPU and board before exhausting it out the back of a case. We'll have to see how effective this is later on in the review.
Both sides of the shroud keep the same ridged aesthetic, with some stickers just above the PCIe connector.
As for dimensions, I measured the card at 277mm long x 112mm tall, while it is a standard dual-slot thickness. No doubt we will see some beefy custom cards from the likes of Sapphire, ASUS and MSI, but the reference board is pretty compact.
Here we get a better look at the front side of the shroud, with its red stripe and the Radeon logo which is illuminated by red LEDs once the system is powered on.
The black backplate also looks good on the dark grey shroud, with some slight Radeon branding in the bottom corner. AMD has left a cut-out behind the GPU core, but aside from that the backplate covers the entirety of the card.
Above we get a closer look at the card's ‘dent'. AMD officially calls this a ‘thermal contour' which is supposedly meant to help airflow, but it seems to me to be more about product differentiation than anything else.
The rear of the card is also home to more Radeon branding, printed in red.
As for power connectors, the 5700 XT requires 1x 8-pin and 1x 6-pin. Total board power is rated at 225W, which is 10W more than Nvidia's 215W total graphics power (TGP) rating for its RTX 2070 SUPER.
Lastly, display outputs are set as 3x DisplayPort and 1x HDMI connectors, with most of the I/O bracket given over to ventilation.
Our newest GPU test procedure has been built with the intention of benchmarking high-end graphics cards. We test at 1920×1080 (1080p), 2560×1440 (1440p), and 3840×2160 (4K UHD) resolutions.
We try to test using the DX12 API if titles offer support. This gives us an interpretation into the graphics card performance hierarchy in the present time and the near future, when DX12 becomes more prevalent. After all, graphics cards of this expense may stay in a gamer’s system for a number of product generations/years before being upgraded.
We tested the RX Vega64 and Vega56 using the ‘Turbo‘ power mode in AMD’s WattMan software. This prioritises all-out performance over power efficiency, noise output, and lower thermals.
GPU-Z is not currently reporting clock speeds of the RX 5700 XT, but the reference card has a base clock of 1605MHz, a game clock of 1755MHz and a boost clock 1905MHz.
Driver Notes
- All AMD graphics cards were benchmarked with the Adrenalin 19.6.2 driver.
- All Nvidia graphics cards (except 2060/2070 SUPER) were benchmarked with the Nvidia 430.86 driver.
- Nvidia RTX 2060/2070 SUPER cards were benchmarked with the 431.16 driver supplied to press ahead of launch.
Test System
We test using the Overclockers UK Germanium pre-built system, though it has been re-housed into an open-air test bench. You can read more about it over HERE.
| CPU |
Intel Core i7-8700K
Overclocked to 4.8GHz |
| Motherboard |
ASUS ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming
|
| Memory |
Team Group Dark Hawk RGB
16GB (2x8GB) @ 3200MHz 16-18-18-38 |
| Graphics Card |
Varies
|
| System Drive |
Samsung 960 EVO 500GB
|
| Games Drive | Crucial M4 512GB |
| Chassis | Streacom ST-BC1 Bench |
| CPU Cooler |
OCUK TechLabs 240mm AIO
|
| Power Supply |
Corsair AX1500i 80+ Titanium PSU
|
| Operating System |
Windows 10 1903
|
Comparison Graphics Cards List
- Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition (FE) 11GB
- Nvidia RTX 2080 Founders Edition (FE) 8GB
- Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition (FE) 8GB
- MSI RTX 2070 Armor 8GB
- Nvidia RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition (FE) 8GB
- Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition (FE) 6GB
- Gigabyte GTX 1660 Ti OC 6G
- Gigabyte GTX 1660 Gaming OC 6G
- Palit GTX 1650 StormX OC 4GB
- Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition (FE) 11GB
- Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming 8GB
- Palit GTX 1070 Ti Super JetStream 8GB
- Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition (FE) 8GB
- Nvidia GTX 1060 Founders Edition (FE) 6GB
- AMD Radeon VII 16GB
- AMD RX Vega 64 Air 8GB
- AMD RX Vega 56 8GB
- Sapphire RX 590 Nitro+ SE 8GB
- Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB
- ASUS RX 570 ROG Strix Gaming OC 4GB
Software and Games List
- 3DMark Fire Strike & Fire Strike Ultra (DX11 Synthetic)
- 3DMark Time Spy (DX12 Synthetic)
- Battlefield V (DX12)
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (DX12)
- Far Cry 5 (DX11)
- Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands (DX11)
- Metro: Exodus (DX12)
- Middle Earth: Shadow of War (DX11)
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
We run each benchmark/game three times, and present averages in our graphs.3DMark Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for today’s high-performance gaming PCs. It is our [FutureMark’s] most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.
The 5700 XT is off to fascinating start in 3DMark testing. It's faster than the 2070 SUPER in both Fire Strike and Fire Strike Ultra (both DX11), but is slower than the 2060 SUPER when it comes to Time Spy (DX12).
Battlefield V is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA DICE and published by Electronic Arts. Battlefield V is the sixteenth instalment in the Battlefield series. It was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on November 20, 2018. (Wikipedia).
We test using the Ultra preset with the DX12 API.
Battlefield V is a really interesting first game result for the RX 5700 XT. It beats the 2070 SUPER by 8FPS at 1080p, while the 2060 SUPER is even further behind. Nvidia's cards close the gap as the resolution increases, but the 5700 XT is on average 4% faster than the 2070 SUPER and 19% faster than the 2060 SUPER.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is set in the year 2029, two years after the events of Human Revolution and the “Aug Incident”—an event in which mechanically augmented humans became uncontrollable and lethally violent. Unbeknownst to the public, the affected augmented received implanted technology designed to control them by the shadowy Illuminati, which is abused by a rogue member of the group to discredit augmentations completely. (Wikipedia).
We test using the Very High preset, with MSAA disabled. We test using the DX12 API.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided again has the 5700 XT a decent margin ahead of the 2070 SUPER – the gap is almost 10FPS at 1080p. Again, however, as we move up to 1440p and 4K, Nvidia's card closes the gap until the cards are effectively tied at 3840×2160.
Far Cry 5 is an action-adventure first-person shooter game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Toronto and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is the eleventh entry and the fifth main title in the Far Cry series, and was released on March 27, 2018.
The game takes place in the fictional Hope County, Montana, where charismatic preacher Joseph Seed and his cult Project at Eden’s Gate holds a dictatorial rule over the area. The story follows an unnamed junior deputy sheriff, who becomes trapped in Hope County and works alongside factions of a resistance to liberate the county from Eden’s Gate. (Wikipedia).
We test using the Ultra preset, with AA and motion blur disabled.
It's the 2060 SUPER which is snapping at the heels of the 5700 XT when playing Far Cry 5 at 1080p, however the AMD card establishes a reasonable margin of difference at 1440p and 4K. The RX 5700 XT is on average 5% slower than the 2070 SUPER in this title.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is a tactical shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Paris and published by Ubisoft. It was released worldwide on March 7, 2017, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, as the tenth instalment in the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon franchise and is the first game in the Ghost Recon series to feature an open world environment. (Wikipedia).
We test using the Very High preset.
The 5700 XT is slower than both 2060/2070 SUPER cards at 1080p, though it pulls ahead of the 2060 S at 1440p and 4K. 2070 S is faster across all three resolutions tested.
Metro Exodus is a first-person shooter video game developed by 4A Games and published by Deep Silver in 2019. It is the third instalment in the Metro video game series based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novels, following the events of Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light. (Wikipedia)
We test using the Ultra preset, but with Hairworks and Advanced PhysX turned off. We test using the DX12 API.
It's a case of small margins when we get to Metro Exodus, but the AMD hardware does better than I'd have thought considering this is one of the few titles to currently support RTX ray tracing. The 5700 XT is consistently faster than the 2060 SUPER, by some margin, and it comes in just 4% slower than the 2070 SUPER.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is an action role-playing video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It is the sequel to 2014’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 10, 2017. (Wikipedia).
We test using the Very High preset.
Middle Earth: Shadow of War heavily favours Nvidia's SUPER cards in our testing, as both 2060 and 2070 SUPER models outperform the 5700 XT across all three resolutions tested. There's only a few frames in it between the 5700 XT and 2060 SUPER, but 2070 SUPER is significantly faster across the board.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Eidos Montréal in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. It continues the narrative from the 2013 game Tomb Raider and its sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider, and is the twelfth mainline entry in the Tomb Raider series. The game released worldwide on 14 September 2018 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. (Wikipedia).
We test using the Highest preset, with AA disabled. We test using the DX12 API.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is another interesting game to look at, with the 5700 XT again faster than the 2060 SUPER by almost 12FPS at 1080p. Compared to 2070 SUPER, on the other hand, the AMD card remains 6% slower on average.
Of the seven games in our benchmarking suite, four of them support the DX12 API, and we test with DX12 where available. We noticed the RX 5700 performing better in the DX12 titles in our suite, so we wanted to see how the RX 5700 XT performs when running DX11 vs DX12.
While the 5700 XT proved faster than the 2070 SUPER in just two of our titles – Battlefield V and Deus Ex – we can still see a clear preference for the DX12 API. Performance, on average, dropped by 12% when switching from DX12 to DX11.
Here we present the average clock speed for each graphics card while running the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test 20 times. We use GPU-Z to record the GPU core frequency during the Fire Strike Ultra runs. We calculate the average core frequency during the entire 20-run test to present here.
Clock speed is an interesting metric for the new AMD cards. The RX 5700 XT has a rated ‘game clock' of up to 1755MHz, but based on our 3DMark testing we saw the core average 1822MHz under load – so about 70MHz faster than expected. It will be interesting to see how far custom cards can push the frequencies.
For our temperature testing, we measure the peak GPU core temperature under load, as well as the GPU temperature with the card idling on the desktop. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test 20 times. An idle reading comes after leaving the system on the Windows desktop for 30 minutes.
Moving onto GPU temperatures, this reference cooler is OK. A peak of 80C isn't the end of the world, but nor is it especially cool – at least we're not nearing Vega 64 temperatures! Either way, there's no doubt that Nvidia's Founders Edition design is much better than this reference card, so it once again puts the onus on custom cards to lower temperature further.
Our thermal imaging camera reports no issues for the side of the card's shroud, but as expected there is a noticeable hot-spot behind the GPU core – where AMD left a cut-out in the backplate. You can see from the blue surrounding areas that the backplate itself does a good job at spreading the heat from the rest of the PCB.
We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the noise floor to be 32 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The power supply is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in, while all CPU and system fans were disabled.
A reading under load usually comes from running the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test 20 time, however with both AMD cards I noticed significantly louder noise levels while gaming versus this stress test. To give more representative figures, the results below come from playing Battlefield V for twenty minutes. An idle reading comes after leaving the system on the Windows desktop for 30 minutes.
Both Navi cards perform similarly in terms of acoustics. Neither is quite as ear-shattering as Vega 64, but both are still very much on the loud side which is quite annoying. Once again we look to partner cards to reduce noise levels for AMD.
We measure system-wide power draw from the wall while the card is sat idling at the Windows 10 desktop for 30 minutes. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test 20 times.
Power draw is significantly improved, however, and is one of the most impressive features of the new RDNA architecture. Our testing shows power draw of the 5700 XT is basically on par with the 2070 S – 2W more, but that is frankly negligible. The fact that RX 590 draws 20W more than 5700 XT, despite coming nowhere near the overall performance levels of this card, shows you how AMD has improved.
Our overclocking section of this review is not as detailed as I would like, purely due to time constraints. The driver we did all of our testing with (19.7.1, dated June 27) was not friendly to overclocking and AMD themselves acknowledged this and asked reviews to hold off with overclocking testing until it could provide a new driver. Well, that driver arrived on Saturday, July 6 – just one day before launch.
So, I tried my best with the new driver in the short window that was available to me, but initial testing suggests relatively limited overclocking headroom. Using Wattman – MSI Afterburner wasn't playing nice with voltage adjustments – after a reasonable amount of time spent adjusting the curve, I achieved my best results with the above settings.
This saw pretty limited gains in 3DMark, our Fire Strike score rose some 1300 points which is alright but not amazing, though Time Spy was even less impressive. As a quick game test we also ran Ghost Recon: Wildlands at 1440p, where our average frame rate rose by just 2FPS. Maybe things will improve with further driver optimisations, or maybe a significant amount of time needs to be spent fine-tuning the settings – but based on my initial testing, there are precious little gains to be had from manual overclocking.
Not content to just launch its new processors, today also marks the release of AMD's new mid-range graphics cards, the Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT. We have a separate review of the 5700 if you want to read about that, but here we focus on the higher-end 5700 XT variant.
With no beating about the bush, it is clear AMD is in a fantastic position with this card. At the original price of $449, the 5700 XT was positioned as a strong value alternative to the 2070 SUPER – slotting in between that card and its little brother, the 2060 SUPER, in terms of price.
AMD, however, was clearly not interested in just being a ‘value alternative', and we were told of a $50 price drop just two days before launch, giving the card a new $399 MSRP. In other words, it's now priced the same as the 2060 SUPER.
That is very significant, as when compared to the 2070 SUPER, the 5700 XT comes close but is on average 4% slower – outperforming the Nvidia card in just two of our games today, namely Battlefield V and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Both those titles favour AMD hardware, and if we take them out of the equation the 5700 XT drops to 8% slower than the 2070 SUPER.
That's still pretty decent, however, and like I said it presents good value considering the original pricing was still going to be $50 less than the 2070 SUPER. If we compare the 5700 XT to the 2060 SUPER, though – and remember, they are now priced exactly the same – it's a clear win for AMD, with the 5700 XT performing on average 10% faster, but up to 20% faster in some individual titles like Battlefield V.
Relative to its sibling, the 5700, this XT model is on average 11% faster and that was pretty consistent across our testing. At 14% more expensive, that does make the 5700 slightly better value overall, but it has always been the case that you need to pay more to get more in the graphics card market.
AMD's reference design for the 5700 XT is OK but not great – Nvidia's Founders Editions are undoubtedly superior in regards to their coolers. 5700 XT doesn't run as hot as Vega 64, but the GPU still peaked at 80C – or 7C hotter than the 2070 SUPER Founders Edition. It's also not as loud as Vega 64, but again it is still very much on the loud side and is easily beaten by Nvidia's designs in this regard. Clearly AMD is reliant on its partners to produce more effective coolers than the reference designs, and we will have to hope they can do so without adding too much to the price tag.
Power draw, on the other hand, shows a fantastic improvement for AMD, with the 5700 XT drawing essentially the same levels of power as the 2070 SUPER. Or put it another way, 5700 XT draws 120W less than Vega 64, while outperforming it by 16%. It's a remarkable turnaround for AMD, whose cards have been long known as power hogs.
To round out this review, I was planning on doing a final comparison between the 5700 XT and the 2070 SUPER. The pre-release price cut, however, has rendered that line of thinking moot – as 5700 XT is now a direct rival to the 2060 SUPER, not the 2070 SUPER, with both of those cards priced at $399.
At its original $449 price, the 5700 XT would have still earned a recommendation as a solid value alternative, even proving faster than the 2070 SUPER in select DX12 titles like Battlefield V. At $399, it is on average 10% faster than the 2060 SUPER, and only came marginally slower than that Nvidia card in one of our games. With both priced the same, for me the AMD card is a clear winner.
Of course, AMD cards do not yet have any support for ray tracing, where Nvidia has the edge. In fact, I would expect Nvidia to really begin cranking up the ray tracing marketing to try and fire home that distinction between the two cards. Like I said in the 5700 review, at the moment ray tracing isn't a significant advantage for Nvidia due to the very low number of games that currently support the technology. Blockbuster after blockbuster title announced RTX support at E3, though, so I can only see ray tracing getting bigger and bigger.
All we can do, though, is assess the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT based on how things stand now. And the facts are clear – it's 10% faster than the RTX 2060 SUPER for the same money. Yes, the reference design needs work, so let's hope AMD's partners can come to market with a range of solid cards as close to MSRP as possible – but taken as a new technology, the 5700 XT is very impressive.
RX 5700 XT has a MSRP of $399, and we'd expect to see UK pricing around the £379 mark. You can see all the options available from Overclockers UK HERE.
Pros
- Easily faster than RTX 2060 SUPER.
- Has the edge on RTX 2070 SUPER in Battlefield V.
- Pre-launch price cut makes this the best option at $399.
- Vastly improved power efficiency for AMD.
- Attractive shroud design.
Cons
- Reference card is still loud.
- Limited gains from overclocking.
- Nvidia's Founders Edition designs are quieter and cooler.
- No ray tracing support at launch.
KitGuru says: AMD has well and truly put the cat amongst the pigeons with the RX 5700 XT. It's faster than the RTX 2060 SUPER for the same money, and even bests the RTX 2070 SUPER in some titles. We've not heard the last of it from Nvidia, but at $399 this is the card to beat.
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