The AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT has finally arrived and while the launch didn't go smooth, the end product is a card that should definitely spice up the mainstream graphics segment. The Radeon 5600 XT is positioned not only against NVIDIA's Turing GeForce GTX lineup but also GeForce RTX lineup of graphics cards, with a starting price of $279 US.
The Radeon RX 5600 series uplifts AMD by bringing a modern architecture design and moving away from its GCN design featured on the Polaris GPUs. This allows AMD to bring more streamlined graphics performance in modern workloads and gaming titles. AMD was already ahead of the curve in utilizing new techs such as HBM and smaller process nodes and Navi is no exception. Aside from the new graphics architecture, AMD has also introduced GDDR6 memory and a smaller 7nm process node for their mainstream lineup which is a big update from the 14nm process on Polaris and Vega series cards.ASRock
While the Radeon RX 5600 series cards bring new technologies and features to the segment, the tech itself doesn't come cheap. We can see this in the table illustrating previous mainstream cards and their price segments. In that regard, the RX 5600 XT has definitely seen a markup in the prices of mainstream graphics cards. Also, there was the whole performance upgrade scene where AMD had to change the specifications of the card at the very last minute to compete against the NVIDIA price cuts for their GeForce RTX 2060. We will talk more about this in the review ahead.
AMD Radeon GPU Segment/Tier Prices
| Graphics Segment | 2015-2016 | 2016-2017 | 2017-2018 | 2018-2019 | 2019-2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ultra Enthusiast Tier | Radeon R9 Fury X Radeon R9 Fury Radeon R9 Nano |
Radeon R9 Fury X Radeon R9 Fury Radeon R9 Nano |
Radeon RX Vega 64 | Radeon RX Vega 64 | Radeon VII |
| Price | $649 US $549 US $649 US |
$649 US $549 US $649 US |
$499 US | $499 US | $699 US |
| Enthusiast Tier | Radeon R9 390X | Radeon R9 390X | Radeon RX Vega 56 | Radeon RX Vega 56 | Radeon RX 5700 XT |
| Price | $429 US | $429 US | $399 US | $399 US | $399 US |
| High-End Tier | Radeon R9 390 | Radeon R9 390 | N/A |
Radeon RX 590 | Radeon RX 5700 |
| Price | $329 US | $329 US | N/A | $279 US | $349 US |
| Mainstream Tier | Radeon R9 380X Radeon R9 380 Radeon R9 370X Radeon R9 370 |
Radeon RX 480 Radeon RX 470 |
Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 570 |
Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 570 |
Radeon RX 5600 XT |
| Price | $229 US $199 US $199 US $179 US |
$229 US $179 US |
$229 US $169 US |
$229 US $169 US |
$279 US |
| Entry Tier | Radeon R7 360 | Radeon RX 460 | Radeon RX 560 | Radeon RX 560 | Radeon RX 5500 XT Radeon RX 5500 XT |
| Price | $109 US | $129 US | $99 US | $99 US | $199 US $169 US |
Well, in terms of performance the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB is supposed to be much faster than the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti at about 20% average. This would allow AMD to reach near RTX 2060 performance at a lower price point which is very impressive on paper. To cut down the costs, AMD had to go with 6 GB GDDR6 memory whereas their RX 5500 XT supports up to 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM. It is quite the sacrifice but in the market where the RX 5600 XT is competing, you won't find much aside from 6 GB cards (RTX 2060, GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 1660 SUPER).
Unlike the GeForce RTX cards which had some feature advantage over the Radeon RX 5700 series cards, the GeForce GTX cards don't feature RTX/DLSS support. This puts them just on par with the Radeon RX 5600 series in feature set with the exception of the Turing NVENC encoder which does an exceptional job for gamers on a budget. The Radeon RX 5600 is supported by the latest AMD Adrenaline 2020 Edition bringing features such as Radeon Boost, Integer Scaling, Radeon Image Sharpening, Radeon Anti-Lag, and Freesync support. These are an impressive list of features on their own and something to really consider when comparing AMD's and NVIDIA's budget tier range of cards.
So for this review, I will be taking a look at the ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC. This is ASRock's new and flagship custom design for the Navi 10 GPU that features a triple fan design and a 2.7 slot cooling solution. The card has an MSRP of $279.99 US which is a small $10 US premium for the custom graphics card.
The AMD Radeon RX 5600 Series Family
The AMD Radeon RX 5600 series lineup is made up of a single desktop and mobility variant. The desktop variant is the Radeon RX 5600 XT which I will be testing today in custom flavor from ASRock while the mobility variant is the upcoming Radeon RX 5600M which should feature similar specs as the Radeon RX 5600 XT but with notebook optimized clock speeds and TDP.
AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB Official Specifications ($279 USD MSRP)
Rocking 36 Compute Units or 2304 stream processors on its Navi 10 XLE GPU, this card offers the same core count as the Radeon RX 5700. The clock speeds for the Radeon RX 5600 XT are tuned at 1130 MHz base, 1375 MHz game, and 1560 MHz boost. This would also lead to much lower TDP, around the 160W range while the Radeon RX 5700 has a TDP of 180W. The card will be able to put out 7.19 TFLOPs of Compute horsepower.
Coming to the memory design, this is where we start seeing major differences between the Radeon RX 5700 and the Radeon RX 5600 XT. While the Radeon RX 5700 rocks an 8 GB GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit wide bus interface, the Radeon RX 5600 XT would rock a 6 GB GDDR6 memory with a 192-bit bus interface. The Radeon RX 5700 also delivers a higher 448 GB/s bandwidth, and while the Radeon RX 5600 XT was initially planned to come with 12 Gbps memory, AIBs have released new 14 Gbps BIOS for their respective cards, offering up to 336 Gbps from the planned 288 Gbps bandwidth. The card will require a single 8-pin power connector & display outputs include a single HDMI 2.0b and triple DisplayPort 1.4 ports.
Do note that these are the reference specifications which are since the cards release not being followed by AIBs. AIBs are instead using custom BIOS's to deliver higher clocks for both GPU and VRAM along with higher TDP limits of up to 160W.
AMD Radeon RX 5000 '7nm Navi RDNA' GPU Lineup Specs:
| Graphics Card | Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary | Radeon RX 5700 XT | Radeon RX 5700 | Radeon RX 5600 XT | Radeon RX 5500 XT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Architecture | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) |
| Stream Processors | 2560 SPs | 2560 SPs | 2304 SPs | 2304 SPs | 1408 SPs |
| TMUs / ROPs | 160 / 64 | 160 / 64 | 144 / 64 | 144 / 64 | 88 / 32 |
| Base Clock | 1680 MHz | 1605 MHz | 1465 MHz | 1130 MHz | 1670 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1980 MHz | 1905 MHz | 1725 MHz | 1560 MHz | 1845 MHz |
| Game Clock | 1830 MHz | 1755 MHz | 1625 MHz | 1375 MHz | 1717 MHz |
| Compute Power | 10.14 TFLOPs | 9.75 TFLOPs | 7.95 TFLOPs | 7.19 TFLOPs | 5.19 TFLOPs |
| VRAM | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 6 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 |
| Bus Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit |
| Bandwidth | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 288 GB/s | 224 GB/s |
| TBP | 235W | 225W | 180W | 150W | 130W |
| Price | $449 US | $399 US | $349 US | $279 US | $169 US (4 GB) $199 US (8 GB) |
| Launch | 7th July 2019 | 7th July 2019 | 7th July 2019 | 21st January, 2020 | 7th October 2019 |
Radeon RX 5600 "7nm Navi RDNA GPU" Feature Set and A Word on HW-Enabled Ray Tracing
While we would share a few tidbits of the RDNA architecture itself below, there are also some highlights we should mention for the Navi GPU. According to AMD themselves, the Navi 10 GPU will be 14% faster at the same power and should consume 23% lower power at the same clock speeds as Vega 64 GPU. The AMD Navi GPU has a die size of 251mm2 and delivers 2.3x perf per area over Vega 64. The chip packs 10.3 Billion transistors while the Vega 10 GPU packed 12.5 Billion transistors on almost twice the die space.
Also, when it comes to ray tracing, AMD is indeed developing their own suite around it. According to their vision, current GCN and RDNA architecture will be able to perform ray tracing on shaders which will be used through ProRender for creators and Radeon Rays for developers. In next-gen RDNA which is supposed to launch in 2020 on 7nm+ node, AMD will be bringing hardware-enabled ray tracing with select lighting effects for real-time gaming. AMD will also enable full-scene ray tracing which would be leveraged through cloud computing.
New Compute Unit Design
Great Compute Efficiency For Diverse Workloads
- 2x Instruction Rate (enabled by 2x Scalar Units and 2x Schedulers)
- Single Cycle Issue (enabled by Executing Wwave32 on SIMD32)
- Dual Mode Execution (Wave 32 and Wave 64 Modes Adapt for Workloads)
- Resource Pooling (2 CUs Coordinate as a Work Group Processor)
As you can tell, AMD is changing a lot in terms of architecture with RDNA (Radeon DNA) compared to GCN. There's a new Compute unity design, a more streamlined Graphics pipeline & a multi-level cache hierarchy. Aside from the GPU architecture, support for GDDR6 memory is another major change that brings AMD's graphics cards on par with NVIDIA in utilizing modern memory designs for higher bandwidth.
We have seen several variants of the ASRock Phantom Gaming series. The lineup is mostly new and was recently unveiled with AMD's Navi lineup and has various configurations, ranging from the two fan D2 and the triple fan D3 variants. The ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC has a total of three fans that provide cooling and is the fastest 5600 XT variant in ASRock's lineup. This card adopts a custom design similar to the RX 5700 Phantom Gaming series.
In addition to the custom design, the Radeon RX 5600 Phantom Gaming D3 comes with a non-reference PCB that ships with a higher factory overclock, featuring a 7+1 phase design that features higher quality components than the reference variant which is already a really good design by itself. In terms of clock speeds, the graphics card features the same base frequency of 1530 MHz and a maximum boost clock of 1750 MHz. Following are the main features of the Radeon RX 5600 Phantom Gaming D3 OC graphics card:
- Clock: GPU / Memory
Boost Clock: Up to 1750 MHz / 14 Gbps
Game Clock: 1670 MHz / 14 Gbps
Base Clock: 1530 MHz / 14 Gbps - Key Specifications
Radeon RX 5600 XT Graphics
2nd Gen 7nm GPU
6GB 192-bit GDDR6
1 x 8-pin Power Connector
3 x DisplayPort / 1 x HDMI - Key Features:
Polychrome SYNC
Triple Fan Design
2.7-slot Design
Stylish Metal Backplate
0dB Silent Cooling
ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 Graphics Card Gallery:
Just like the other Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards, the ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC comes with a stock VBIOS that needs to be updated to unlock the faster core & memory clock speeds. There are two BIOS available, the L10 and the L12. The L10 BIOS enables higher GPU clock speeds while the L12 BIOS enables higher memory clocks. The BIOS can be found over at ASRock's vBIOS page for the card listed below:
- ASRock L12 vBIOS - Support 14 Gbps memory speed
- ASRock L10 vBIOS - Enhance Performance, Faster GPU clock speeds
The ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of both packages has a large "Phantom Gaming" logo in the middle. A large 'OC Edition' badge can also be spotted on the bottom left corner.
Other features of the graphics card are also mentioned such as the RDNA architecture, 7nm node, Fidelity FX, Freesync 2 HDR along some specs such as 6 GB GDDR6, PCIe 4.0 Support, AMD Radeon Software Support & Polychrome Sync.
The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards. The three key aspects of ASRock's Phantom Gaming lineup include a Triple Fan design, a stylish metal backplate, and Polychrome Sync support. A large list of product specifications and features are also mentioned which you can see in the picture below.
The sides of the box once again greet us with the large Radeon RX branding. There's also the mention of 6 GB GDDR6 memory available on the card. The higher memory bandwidth delivered through the new GDDR6 interface would help improve performance in gaming titles at higher resolution over GDDR5 based graphics cards.
Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging. The graphics card comes with a few accessories and manuals which might not be of much use for hardcore enthusiasts but can be useful for the mainstream gaming audience. The card is nicely wrapped within an anti-static cover which is useful to prevent any unwanted static discharges on various surfaces that might harm the graphics card.
After the package is taken care of, I can finally start talking about the card itself. The card itself is very long but the design really stands out from the rest of the RX 5600 XT offerings in the market right now.
The ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC is by no means a small graphics card. It's taller than most of the cards I tested and needs a good amount of space inside a PC. The Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC measures at 290.6x126.5x53.1mm while it is also slightly taller, taking up 2.7 slots of space.
The design of the ASRock Phantom Gaming D3 series is brand new as the company just recently introduced it on its Navi based graphics card lineup. The red and black color scheme on the shroud looks great.
The back of the card features a solid backplate which looks stunning with its matte black finish that also features white and red stripes. There's also a phantom gaming logo on the backplate. You can also see that the cooler shroud extends beyond the PCB and has extra cooling room in the form of aluminum fins which I will discuss more in detail.
The Phantom Gaming D3 cooler is made of three large fans that push air through the central heat sink block. All three fans are acrylic in design and go in well with the overall them of the graphics card.
ASRock also features their 0db Silent Cooling technology for the fans. This feature won’t spin the fans on the card unless they reach a certain threshold.
ASRock's 0dB silent fans are mostly work-load dependent. In stressful applications, the fans would start spinning but if the workloads are not that intensive on the GPU, they would stop.
I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate which both card use. The whole plate is made of solid metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The matte finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic.
There's no multi-GPU connector on the card as AMD uses its XDMA architecture for CrossFireX capabilities. This allows GPUs to communicate directly over the PCIe bus rather than an external bridge.
With the outsides of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood of these monster graphics cards. The first thing to catch my eye is the humungous fin stack that's part of the beefy heatsink which the cards utilize.
The dual fin stacks run all the way from the front and extend beyond the PCB. There are two four-pin connectors that run through the heatsink. One powers the three fans while the other powers the Polychrome Sync RGB LEDs that are featured underneath the shroud.
Running through the heatsink is a total of four copper heat pipes, two of which feature a thick design while a singular copper heat pipe is embedded just under the copper base plate.
The nickel-plated copper baseplate features thermal pads for the VRM and electrical components such as VRMs and MOSFETs. The whole cooling design is very neat and should keep the card cool under intense gaming workloads.
I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme which includes three Display Port 1.4a, & a single HDMI 2.0b.
ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC Teardown:
The ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC makes use of a full non-reference PCB design, featuring a 6+1 Phase design and coupled with better components such as solid-state capacitors along with a series of higher-quality chokes. The PCB makes use of the uP9505P PWM controller.
The ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 features a single 8 pin power connector that feeds the card. The Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC has a rated TDP of 150W.
We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. The latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used from AMD and NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 10. All games that were tested were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.
GPU Test Bench 2020 (MSI RX 5600 XT Gaming Z 6 GB)
| CPU | Intel Core i9-9900K @ 4.70 GHz |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | AORUS Z390 Master |
| Video Cards | MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT Gaming X MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming Z MSI Radeon RX 5700 Gaming X MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Lightning X ASUS ROG GeForce RTX 2070 STRIX OC MSI GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Gaming Z MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming Z MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming X |
| Memory | G.SKILL Trident Z RGB Series 32GB (4 X 8GB) CL16 3600 MHz |
| Storage | Samsung SSD 960 EVO M.2 (512 GB) |
| Power Supply | ASUS ROG THOR 1200W PSU |
| Drivers | Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.1.3 (RX 5600 XT) Adrenalin 2020 Edition 19.12.3 (Rest AMD cards) GeForce Game Ready Driver 441.66 (NVIDIA cards) |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit |
- All games were tested on 1920x1080 (HD), 2560×1440 (2K), and 3840×2160 (4K) resolutions.
- Image Quality and graphics configurations have been provided in the screenshots below.
- The “reference” cards are the stock configs while the “overclock” cards are factory overclocked configs provided to us by various AIB partners.
DOOM
In 2016, Id finally released DOOM. My testing wouldn’t be complete without including this title. All cards were capable of delivering ample frame rates at the 1440p resolution using Nightmare settings, so my focus turned to 4K.
Red Dead Redemption II
RDR2 is using the latest iteration of the Rockstar Advanced Graphics Engine, or RAGE, and has ditched DX11 in favor of being able to choose between Vulkan or DX12 for your preferred API. Red Dead Redemption 2 has built-in benchmark utility that is fairly representative of typical gameplay and we used this to measure our performance.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
Wolfenstein is back in The New Colossus and features the most fast-paced, gory and brutal FPS action ever! The game once again puts us back in the Nazi-controlled world as BJ Blazkowicz. Set during an alternate future where Nazis won the World War, the game shows that it can be fun and can be brutal to the player and to the enemy too. Powering the new title is once again, id Tech 6 which is much acclaimed after the success that DOOM has become. In a way, ID has regained their glorious FPS roots and are slaying with every new title.
Ultra HQ-AF, Vulkan, Async Compute On *if available, Deferred Rendering and GPU culling off
We tested the game at Ultra settings under the Vulkan API which is standard. Async Compute was enabled for graphics cards that support it while deferred rendering and GPU culling were disabled.
Battlefield V
Battlefield V brings back the action of the World War 2 shooter genre. Using the latest Frostbite tech, the game does a good job of looking gorgeous in all ways possible. From the open-world environments to the intense and gun-blazing action, this multiplayer and single-player FPS title is one of the best looking Battlefields to date.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Humanity is at war with itself and divided into factions. On one end, we have the pure and on the other, we have the augmented. That is the world where Adam Jensen lives in and this is the world of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The game uses the next generation Dawn Engine that was made by IO interactive on the foundation of their Glacier 2 engine. The game features the support of DirectX 12 API and is one of the most visually intensive titles that taxes the GPU really hard.
Gears 5
The Coalition is back with the Gears of War series, but this time they've dropped the 'of War' so I guess war does change sometimes. Gears 5 is a bit of an interesting one from a release standpoint as it released on Xbox as well as the multiple stores on the PC; Steam as well as the Xbox PC App and Windows Store. Running off the Unreal Engine, the game boasts some seriously impressive visuals which can put even one of the best cards on their feet.
Hitman 2 (DX12 Highest Settings)
Hitman 2 is the highly acclaimed sequel to 2016 Hitman which was a redesign and reimaging of the game from the ground up. With a focus on stealth gameplay through various missions, the game once again lets you play as Agent 47 who embarks on a mission to hunt down the mysterious Shadow Client. The game runs on IO’s Interactive’s Glacier 2 engine which has been updated to deliver amazing visuals and environments on each level while making use of DirectX 12 API.
Shadow of The Tomb Raider
Sequel to The Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of The Tomb Raider is visually enhanced with an updated Foundation Engine that delivers realistic facial animations and the most gorgeous environments ever seen in a Tomb Raider Game. The game is a technical marvel and really shows the power of its graphics engine in the latest title.
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus continues the journey of Artyom through the nuclear wasteland of Russia and its surroundings. This time, you are set over the Metro, going through various regions and different environments. The game is one of the premier titles to feature NVIDIA’s RTX technology and does well in showcasing the ray-tracing effects in all corners.
Assassins Creed: Odyssey
Assassins Creed Odyssey is built by the same team that made Assassins Creed Origins. They are known for reinventing the design and game philosophy of the Assassins Creed saga and their latest title shows that. Based in Greece, the open-world action RPG shows its graphics strength in all corners. It uses the AnvilNext 2.0 engine which boosts the draw distance range and delivers a very impressive graphics display.
We tested the game at maxed settings with TAA enabled and 16x AF. Do note that the game is one of the most demanding titles out in the market and as such tweaks and performance issues are being patched out.
Far Cry 5
Far Cry 5 is a standalone successor to its predecessor and takes place in Hope County, a fictional region of Montana. The main story revolves around doomsday cult the Project at Eden’s Gate and its charismatic leader Joseph Seed. It uses a beefed-up Dunia Engine which itself is a modified version of CryEngine from Crytek.
Ghost Recon: Wildlands
Using the new Anvil Next engine that was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Ghost Recon: Wildlands goes wild and grand with an open-world setting entirely in Bolivia. This game is a tactical third-person shooter which does seem an awful lot similar to Tom Clancy's: The Division. The game looks pretty and the wide-scale region of Bolivia looks lovely at all times (Day/Night Cycle).
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
The Witcher 3 Game of The Year Edition
Witcher 3 is the greatest fantasy RPG of our time. It has a great story, great gameplay mechanics and gorgeous graphics. This is the only game I actually wanted to get a stable FPS at 4K. With GameWorks disabled, I gave all high-end cards the ability to demonstrate their power.
Middle Earth: Shadow of War
The successor of 2014’s epic, Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War continues the previous game’s narrative continuing the story of the ranger Talion and the spirit of the elf lord Celebrimbor, who shares Talion’s body, as they forge a new Ring of Power to amass an army to fight against Sauron. The game uses the latest Firebird Engine developed by Monolith Productions and is very intensive even for modern graphics cards.
No graphics card review is complete without evaluating its temperatures and thermal load. The MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT Gaming X series is fitted with the most advanced version of the TORX 3.0 fans. The cooler features a massive heatsink with multiple heat pipes which extend beyond the fin-based aluminum block that lead towards the incredibly dense heatsink block.
The patented Torx fan 3.0 design and Zero Frozr technology featured on this card make sure that it delivers the best cooling performance and best acoustics while operating.
Note – We tested load with Kombuster which is known as a ‘power virus’ and can permanently damage the hardware. Use such software at your own risk!
I compiled the power consumption results by testing each card under idle and full stress when the card was running games. Each graphics card manufacturer sets a default TDP for the card which can vary from vendor to vendor depending on the extra clocks or board features they plugin on their custom cards.
AMD Radeon RX 5500 series is based on TSMC's 7nm process node. The 7nm process is a major upgrade over the 14nm FinFET node, delivering better efficiency and a much smaller chip footprint. The MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming Z has a TDP of 160W and its power consumption is very much close to that in our testing with slight peaks when the card hits peak clocks but those are not fully sustained for longer duration workloads.
With the release of the Radeon RX 5600 XT, AMD finally completes its mainstream lineup with a surprisingly great card. At first, the Radeon RX 5600 XT wasn't looking like a formidable opponent against NVIDIA's Turing lineup but the rather messy situation with the BIOS updates and what I would like to refer to as a 'Free Performance Upgrade' has put it in a very respectable place in the mainstream graphics segment.
Featuring the Navi 10 design, the card has essentially the same chip as the Radeon RX 5700, with optimized clocks and memory configuration. But the unique offsetting point of this chip is the TDP which shows that these Navi 10 dies didn't quite make it to the higher-end clocks of the RX 5700. But it allows AMD to manage a mainstream tier graphics card without producing a separate SKU which isn't either a Navi 14 or a Navi 10 design. The Radeon RX 5600 XT has strong driver support which is made even better with the recent release of the AMD Adrenaline 2020 edition software suite and a whole range of other features that you get with Navi such as Freesync and Anti-Lag technologies. All of these are well-added features in the 1080p HD gaming which this card clearly handles without an effort.
Initially, the card was positioned against the GTX 1660 Ti which retails for $279 US too but the GTX 1660 SUPER replaced it offering 95% of the card's performance at a lower price of $229 US. NVIDIA also dropped the price bomb on the RTX 2060 which with its added feature set of RTX features as DLSS/RTX made for a much worthwhile purchase but AMD's performance upgrade did uplift the RX 5600 XT quite a lot.
In terms of performance, the Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB graphics card consistently outperformed the RTX 2060 and much of this is to do with the faster clock speeds that are enabled through the vBIOS flash on the ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 model. You are looking at anywhere from 20 to 25% performance boosts over the GTX 1660 SUPER and GTX 1660 Ti which makes this card a compelling upgrade for 1080p and even 1440p gamers. I was surprised to find some bigger gains in Vulkan optimized titles that go off to show AMD's great and continuing driver support for the latest APIs.
With all the good things about this card to say, there's one issue which would play a major role in deciding the fate of this card and that's the price. At $290 US, we are talking a $10 US premium over the RX 5600 XT MSRP. The faster clocks and custom cooling for just $10 US extra is totally worth it.
The extra cost also goes into the shroud design which features a solid metal backplate, and a triple-fan cooling system. This specific AIB variant offers a superb cooling solution, superb components, and performance which delivers a 5-10% uplift over the base versions of the card. This puts the ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT comfortably ahead of the RTX 2060 custom designs which are anywhere from $299 to $329 US.
The RTX 2060 has some nifty features of its own such as DLSS and ray-tracing support which has been optimized now to be played around on NVIDIA's entry-level RTX solution but if you aren't a fan of those, the RX 5600 XT is the more compelling option in a simple price to a performance metric.
I had a slight complaint about the temperatures and power consumption which were slightly higher than the other RX 5600 XT model I tested but ASRock has stated that they plan to release another BIOS that should fix power consumption on this card while retaining the clock speeds.
The ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 OC offers a factory overclock with 14 Gbps BIOS, a great cooling design featuring three fans, a nice cooler shroud and even comes with a back-plate, all for a $10 US premium over the reference price of $279.99 US which is simply put one hell of a deal!
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