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
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.