AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT review: Delicious 1080p performance

Note: This article was first published on 21 January 2020.

1080p champ

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB is still the most widely used graphics card, at least according to the December 2019 Steam Hardware Survey. But that's a nearly 4-year-old card, one that AMD says no longer quite cuts it for 1080p gaming in 2020, and I'd be inclined to agree. After all, NVIDIA has since released a bunch of other mainstream cards that deliver an attractive boost in performance, such as the GeForce GTX 1660 Super. 

Back at CES, AMD announced the Radeon RX 5600 XT, which slots in neatly between the Radeon RX 5500 XT and Radeon RX 5700. It's positioned as the card you want for modern 1080p gaming, capable of pushing over 60FPS in AAA games and 90FPS in less demanding esports titles.

While the Radeon RX 5500 XT is also technically a card designed for 1080p, it falls short when you crank up all the eye candy. Modern games can require a ton of raw memory bandwidth, which can be thought of as the number of lanes on the highway between the memory and GPU. To help with that, the Radeon RX 5600 XT comes with a wider 192-bit memory bus, which gives it 336GB/s of bandwidth, 40 per cent more than the Radeon RX 5500 XT. Unlike the Radeon RX 5500 XT, it's also got the full 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes compared to the latter's eight, just like the Radeon RX 5700 series cards.

In addition, the card utilises a pared down version of the Navi 10 GPU, which the Radeon RX 5700 series cards are also based on. The Radeon RX 5600 XT has 2,304 stream processors, around 10.5 per cent fewer than on the Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT. It's also got just two active memory controllers compared to the three on the latter cards, so the L3 cache has been reduced to 3MB.

Elsewhere, the Radeon RX 5600 XT ships with 6GB of GDDR6 memory, the first Radeon GPU to come with a 6GB configuration. The memory is clocked at 14,000MHz, the same as the Radeon RX 5700 models. Separately, AMD is also releasing the Radeon RX 5600, but that's a SKU that will be reserved for OEM builds only, and it is identical to the XT version in every way, save for the number of Compute Units, which has been cut down to 32 from 36.

At US$279, AMD is positioning the Radeon RX 5600 XT as the so-called ultimate 1080p gaming GPU. It'll go head-to-head with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, which just saw a price drop from US$349 to US$299.

However, something quite interesting actually happened between the card's announcement and its hard launch today. While AMD initially said that the card would have a 1,375MHz Game clock (this is the clock speed you're most likely to see when gaming) and 1,560MHz Boost clock, it's since pushed out a BIOS update that confers a hefty frequency jump, likely in response to NVIDIA's price drop. 

After flashing the new BIOS, the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT AMD sent me now has a 1,615MHz Game clock and 1,750MHz Boost clock, a significant increase from before. The Total Graphics Power (TGP), which refers to the power consumption of the card as a whole, also sits at 160W. The Sapphire card also comes with a secondary BIOS, which puts it in Silent mode. This reduces the Game clock to 1,460MHz and Boost clock to 1,620MHz, while also bringing down the effective memory clock to 12,000MHz. This in turn drops the TGP to 135W.

So while NVIDIA made its card cheaper, AMD in turn made its own offering faster, which just translates into more good news for gamers. However, I've been told by some brands that the BIOS update arrived so late that the first batch of their cards won't have the new BIOS, so you'll probably have to flash it yourself if you grab one of the early units. 

Test setup

The detailed specifications of our new graphics card testbed system is as follows:-

• Intel Core i7-8086K (4.0GHz, 12MB L3 cache)
• ASUS ROG Strix Maximus X Hero (Intel Z370)
• 4 x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3000 (Auto timings: CAS 15-15-15-35)
• Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD
• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• ASUS PB287Q, 4K monitor

The full line-up of graphics cards tested are listed below:

• Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT
• ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 5500 XT O8G Gaming
• AMD Radeon RX 5700
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition
• ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming OC
• Zotac Gaming GeForce GTX 1660 Super

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Next up, here's a list of all the benchmarks used:

• 3DMark
• Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Far Cry 5
• Metro Exodus
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Tom Clancy's The Division 2

3DMark

The synthetic 3DMark benchmark tests graphics and computational performance at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K. A series of two graphics test, one physics test, and then a combined test stresses your hardware in turn to assess its performance.

The Radeon RX 5600 XT comes super close to overtaking the Radeon RX 5700. It's a mere 4 per cent slower, and it also edges out the GeForce RTX 2060 by around 7 per cent. It's significantly faster than the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB too, posting a solid 42 per cent lead in Fire Strike. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity has long been the poster child for the performance benefits a low-level API like DirectX 12 can bring. It is based on the Nitrous engine and can be extremely punishing thanks to the huge number of onscreen units and the sheer level of detail accorded to each unit. However, the CPU does become the limiting factor at lower resolutions and settings.

At 1080p and Crazy settings, the Radeon RX 5600 XT once again sits between the GeForce RTX 2060 and Radeon RX 5700. In fact, only a few frames separate each of these cards. Compared to the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB, the Radeon RX 5600 XT is also just under 42 per cent quicker. 

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Mankind Divided features just about every trick to make your game look pretty, including things like volumetric and dynamic lighting, screenspace reflections, and cloth physics. Even though it was released in 2016, the game is capable of bringing even the most powerful systems to their knees.

Compared to the GeForce RTX 2060, the Radeon RX 5600 XT is roughly 8 per cent faster at 1080p and Ultra settings. It's also a good 38 per cent better than the Radeon RX 5500 XT.

Far Cry 5

In Far Cry 5, which is a title optimised for AMD, the Radeon RX 5600 XT does really well. It's practically neck-and-neck with the Radeon RX 5700, and also 18 per cent faster than the GeForce RTX 2060. 

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus runs better in DirectX 12, so that's the setting we chose to run our benchmarks at. There's just one caveat though – actual in-game performance is generally better than the results you get in the in-game benchmark, so this is best taken as an indicator of relative performance, rather than the absolute numbers you can expect in game.

At 1080p and Ultra settings, the Radeon RX 5600 XT is 16 per cent faster than the GeForce RTX 2060. And once again, it's just a hair behind the Radeon RX 5700. 

Middle-earth: Shadow of War

The Radeon RX 5700 has a bigger advantage over the RX 5600 XT in Shadow of War, where it posted a 11 per cent lead, its largest yet. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Like Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs better in DirectX 12 as well. DLSS and ray tracing have been added to the game already, but these numbers are obtained without those features turned on.

The Radeon RX 5600 XT raced ahead to a 18 per cent lead over the GeForce RTX 2060 at 1080p and Highest settings. It was also around 8 per cent behind the Radeon RX 5700.

Tom Clancy's The Division 2

Division 2 is another new addition to our benchmark suite, and it replaces 2016's The Division. We've also shifted to DirectX 12 here as well because of the performance gains offered by the low-level API.

The Radeon RX 5600 XT once again narrows the gap with the Radeon RX 5700 here, where there's virtually no difference between the two at 1080p and Ultra settings. However, the former is still approximately 9 per cent quicker than the GeForce RTX 2060. 

Temperature and power consumption

The temperature measurements were obtained after running 40 loops of 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme's stress test and checking the peak sustained temperature. Similarly, the total system power consumption figures were read off a power meter during a run of Fire Strike Extreme.

Unfortunately, all the cards here use different coolers, so the temperature numbers can't really be taken as a fair comparison of how hot the chips are relative to each other.

That said, the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT runs considerably hotter than the ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 5500 XT O8G Gaming, performing much closer to the AMD Radeon RX 5700. That's not particularly surprising, given how the cards perform relative to each other.

When it came to total system power draw, the Radeon RX 5600 XT came in somewhere between the Radeon RX 5500 XT and 5700. Power numbers were also very similar to the GeForce RTX 2060. 

Practically a Radeon RX 5700

Just before the review embargo was slated to lift, AMD sent out an email in response to some questions it had received. The Radeon RX 5600 XT is not in fact replacing the Radeon RX 5700 – the Radeon RX 5700 is geared toward 1440p gaming, while the Radeon RX 5600 XT is targeted at the 1080p market. That may seem like an odd clarification to make, but enough people have clearly asked the question that AMD felt compelled to come out and clarify matters.

It's not difficult to see why this question is being asked. A look at the performance results shows the Radeon RX 5600 XT coming in at just a few frames behind the Radeon RX 5700 in many games, even at 1440p, which is where the Radeon RX 5700 is supposed to excel. And the Radeon RX 5600 XT is a US$279 card, compared to the US$349 Radeon RX 5700.

As it turns out, I'm not even sure AMD intended for the cards to be this close in performance. The BIOS update it pushed out to board partners after NVIDIA dropped the price on the GeForce RTX 2060 makes it seem like AMD originally intended to release a more clearly differentiated card at the beginning. In fact, the BIOS update arrived so late that the first batches of many cards on the shelves will not come with the updated BIOS.

Ultimately, AMD has decided to make the Radeon RX 5600 XT more attractive at the expense of the Radeon RX 5700. It's a decision that makes sense though – after all, AMD still has the Radeon RX 5700 XT to lean on for gamers who want 1440p performance. And given that the 1080p gaming market is still far larger than that for 1440p, I can see why AMD is hell bent on being as competitive as it can in this space.

The Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT I reviewed retails locally at S$440, which is more or less in line with the prices of custom GeForce RTX 2060s on the market right now. It's a good price, especially given the performance it offers, and it'll chew through just about any game at 1080p, even at the highest settings. There's just one caveat – the late BIOS update means that early adopters probably have to download the BIOS from the manufacturer's website and flash it themselves, which not everyone will feel comfortable doing.

That aside, if you don't need the ray tracing capabilities of the GeForce RTX 2060, the Radeon RX 5600 XT has my recommendation as the card to get for 1080p gaming. 

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