AMD has allegedly pushed out a new vBIOS to all its graphics cards (opens in new tab) partners to raise the performance on the its looming Radeon RX 5600 XT (opens in new tab) graphics card, Chinese news outlet HKEPC (opens in new tab) reported today. The move would likely be a response to Nvidia slashing the RTX 2060's price (opens in new tab) from $349 down to $299.
With the reported vBIOS, the RX 5600 XT looks like a different graphics card now. For starters, the vBIOS is said to increase the RX 5600 XT's TBP (typical board power) from 150W to 160W. The extra 10W should be enough headroom to bolster the graphics card's performance quite a bit.
Sapphire announced its Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT (opens in new tab) just two days ago. However, it has since updated the card's specs. This leaves us wondering if Sapphire has already received AMD's vBIOS.
The Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT originally featured a 1,560 MHz game clock and 1,620 MHz boost clock. Now, it's specced with a 1,615 MHz game clock and a boost clock up 1,750 MHz. That's a 3.5% and 8% improvement in the game and boost clocks, respectively.
Meanwhile, the specs have gone from listing the memory speed as 12 Gbps to it running at 14 Gbps. That's a 16.7% bump. The faster memory allows the graphics card to deliver a memory bandwidth up to 336 GBps, compared to the original 288 GBps figure.
Radeon RX 5600 XT Specifications
| Radeon RX 5700 | Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT | Radeon RX 5600 XT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture (GPU) | RDNA (Navi 10) | RDNA (Navi 10) | RDNA (Navi 10) |
| Shading Units | 2,304 | 2,304 | 2,304 |
| Texture Units | 144 | 144 | 144 |
| ROPs | 64 | 64 | 64 |
| Base Clock Rate | 1,465 MHz | ? | ? |
| Game Clock Rate | 1,625 MHz | 1,615 MHz | 1,375 MHz |
| Boost Clock Rate | 1,725 MHz | 1,750 MHz | 1,560 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 14 GBps | 14 GBps | 12 GBps |
| Memory Capacity | 8GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bus | 256-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 448 GBps | 336 GBps | 288 GBps |
| L2 Cache | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB |
| TBP | 180W | 160W | 150W |
| Transistor Count | 10.3 billion | 251 mm² | 251 mm² |
| Die Size | 251 mm² | 251 mm² | 251 mm² |
| Price | $349 | ? | $279 |
The RX 5700 (opens in new tab) was already very close to the RX 5600 XT to start with. The RX 5700 had the slight upper-hand, thanks to its higher operating clocks and faster memory. But with these new reported specs, the RX 5600 XT would practically match the RX 5700, except for having 2GB less memory, reduced memory bus and lower TBP. It would seem that AMD essentially converted the RX 5600 XT into a RX 5700 6GB. Both graphics card utilize a variant of the Navi 10 die, so AMD is free to tweak the specifications as desired.
The RX 5600 XT's upgrade should give the graphics card a 10-15% performance boost. With these new enhancements, it'll be exciting to see if the RX 5600 XT gets within striking distance of the RTX 2060 (opens in new tab).
Remember, the RX 5600 XT is expected to debut at $279, and despite the RTX 2060's recent price cut, AMD's offering is still $20 cheaper.
