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) |
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GreenReaper - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Maybe you want free and open drivers on Linux - in the kernel. I know it's not a huge market, but for flexibility's sake I have no intention of buying NVIDIA until they follow the same path.extide - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Looks to me like the Sapphire Pulse is $10 cheaper, and also faster than the 2060..Fulljack - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link
scratch that DLSS as more feature. Radeon has RIS which is way more better in practice rather than Nvidia AI mumbo jumbo.Spunjji - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link
DLSS is pretty poor visually, near-useless below 4K and only available in a few games.Ray tracing is effectively useless at the 2060's performance level, a situation that is only likely to get worse as the card ages and more games supporting RTX come out (assuming they do).
VRS is a very helpful feature, but it's still barely used - if it were playing more of a role then the 2060 would win more benchmarks.
So, I'll flip your question: why would I spend significantly more money (UK resident here) for a sometimes-faster sometimes-slower card that draws more power and has a bunch of features that I can't use or don't want?
Zizy - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
So, a pretty decent although unimpressive base card (same price/performance as other AMD cards), and a surprisingly good factory overclocked one.Koenig168 - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
AMD should extend the MHW:I game bundle promo to the 5600XT.Rudde - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
Doesn't it have 32 CUs, not 36?TEAMSWITCHER - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
I like that AMD has three tiers of performance... But, when those tiers are Medium, Low, and Ultra-Low, I just can't get excited about any of it.Korguz - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
" But, when those tiers are Medium, Low, and Ultra-Low " how do you figure? or is this just more of teamswitchers anti amd comments again ??Qasar - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link
yea no kidding... its still better then nvidia's semi expensive, expensive and ultra expensive prices....