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 ESTSynthetics
Moving on, we have our synthetic performance testing, taking a look at geometry throughput, pixel throughput, memory compression, and more.
Given the significance of cutting a quarter of Navi 10’s GDDR6 memory bus, I was very curious to see what that would do for synthetic performance. But for better or worse, this has created more questions than it has solved.
The numbers listed below are accurate, in as much as these are the results I get when testing these cards. Whether they are correct, however, is another matter.
The problem, in short, is that due to AMD’s very aggressive power savings/idling implementation for their Navi 10 cards, I have been unable to get these cards to run at their full memory clockspeeds when executing the the Beyond3D Suite benchmark suite. The GPU clocks regularly pass 1600MHz like they should, however AMD’s telemetry is reporting that memory clocks are rarely hitting 7Gbps, let alone 12Gbps+. As a result, we end up with results like the pixel test below, where the RX 5600 XT is beating the RX 5700, an otherwise impossible outcome.
As best as I can tell, this issue has been going on since the launch of the Radeon RX 5700 series back in July, but it’s only now that I’ve noticed it, in large part due to the RX 5600 XT cards being slightly less aggressive in their idling. In other words, those cards are boosting to higher memory clockspeeds more often, putting them ahead of the RX 5700 and bringing the clocking issue front and center.
I’m still working on a proper fix for the issue, but for now the results with Navi 10 cards should be taken with a large grain of salt. The benchmark itself is still fine, but AMD’s aggressive power management (and lack of an easy means to disable it) is kneecapping AMD’s performance in these benchmarks.
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Korguz - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
if you say so.. but still should be taken with some salt :-)Spunjji - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
You seem to be confusing "nobody" with "not as many as Nvidia". AMD's market share hovers around about 33% of the add-in board market.If you doubt this, try Google.
vladx - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
Considering the driver issues with RX 5700 XT, one would have to be downright moronic to buy this card over RTX 2060.Korguz - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
care to explain ??? or is this just anti amd comments from vladx ???Spunjji - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
No explanation from vladx, but lots of loud retaliatory nonsense from cmdrmonkey. Sensors detect more sockpuppets.It's almost like the review would mention if AMD had significant driver issues...
cmdrmonkey - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
You'd have to be moronic to buy any AMD video card: bad drivers that rarely get updated, loud, hot, power guzzling. Their cards are junk. I wish they weren't but they are. It's why no one buys them.Korguz - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
yea ok.. and nvidia drivers are better ?? come on.. the BOTH have had driver issues, looks like just another anti amd comment, just this time from cmdmonkey..............cmdrmonkey - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
nvidia drivers are near flawless. i haven't had driver issues with an nvidia card in many years.Korguz - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
then you have been VERY lucky... cause i have had a few issues with them, and had to go back a version or 2...Beaver M. - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
Yet those issues always were fixed quickly. AMD takes ages. if they fix it at all, especially on less known games.Nvidia drivers may lack some basic features (like a pivot function), but bad and long time issues with them only ever turned out to be actually a defective graphics card causing the driver to act up.
So if you have such bad issues, try replacing it.