AMD Launches Radeon RX 5600 XT: Ultimate 1080p Gaming GPU at $279

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By Zhiye Liu
last updated

The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti has met its match.

Radeon RX 5600 XT

Radeon RX 5600 XT (Image credit: AMD)

AMD has officially announced the brand-new Radeon RX 5600 XT gaming graphics card at CES 2020. Based on the RDNA architecture, Navi 10 silicon and 7nm process, the Radeon RX 5600 XT arrives with 36 Compute Units (CUs), totaling to 2,304 Stream Processors (SPs). 

The Radeon RX 5600 XT runs with a 1,375 MHz game clock and a boost clock that climbs up to 1,560 MHz. As a result, the graphics card delivers up to 7.19 TFLOPs of peak single-precision performance. It has up to 6GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 1,500 MHz (12,000 MHz effective) across a 192-bit memory bus at its disposal. The Radeon RX 5600 XT comes with a 150W Total Board Power (TBP) rating. However, the graphics card hits 120W in most gaming scenarios.

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Radeon RX 5600 XT Specifications
Header Cell - Column 0 Radeon RX 5700Radeon RX 5600 XTRadeon RX 5500 XT
Architecture (GPU)RDNA (Navi 10)RDNA (Navi 10)RDNA (Navi 14)
Shading Units2,3042,3041,408
Texture Units14414488
ROPs646432
Base Clock Rate1,465 MHz?1,607 MHz
Game Clock Rate1,625 MHz1,375 MHz1,717 MHz
Boost Clock Rate1,725 MHz1,560 MHz1,845 MHz
Memory Clock14 GBps12 GBps14 GBps
Memory Capacity8GB GDDR66GB GDDR64GB / 8GB GDDR6
Memory Bus256-bit192-bit128-bit
Memory Bandwidth448 GBps288 GBps224 GBps
L2 Cache4MB4MB2MB
TBP180W150W130W
Transistor Count10.3 billion10.3 billion6.4 billion
Die Size251 mm²251 mm²158 mm²
Price$349$279$169

AMD is comparing the Radeon RX 5600 XT to the outdated Radeon RX 590. The Navi-powered graphics card offers up to 2.1X higher performance-per-watt over the Polaris-based model. If you want to look at the numbers individually, the Radeon RX 5600 XT outperforms the Radeon RX 590 by up to 42% while consuming approximately up to 33% less power.

Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1050 are the top three most popular graphics card on Steam. While they might have been awesome performers in their time, the trio have fallen victims to Father Time. That’s where the Radeon RX 5600 XT comes in to win over gamers' hearts.

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Radeon RX 5600 XT
Radeon RX 5600 XT(Image credit: AMD)


As per AMD's internal tests, the Radeon RX 5600 XT is, on average, up to 55% faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. The Navi graphics card pumps out frame rates over the 60 FPS (frames per second) mark without much effort.

The Radeon RX 5600 XT holds its own against some of Nvidia's more recent offerings. The Radeon RX 5600 XT provides up to 20% and 10% higher performance than the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti in AAA and eSports titles, respectively.

When compared to the GeForce GTX 1660 Super OC, the Radeon RX 5600 XT still manages to come out on top. It's 15% and 5% faster than the GeForce GTX 1660 Super OC in AAA and eSports games, respectively.

Radeon RX 5600 and Radeon RX 5600M

The Radeon RX 5600 XT will make its way over to the OEM and mobile markets as well. The Radeon RX 5600 is tailored towards OEMs, while the Radeon RX 5600M is designed for mobile devices.

The Radeon RX 5600 only has 32 CUs enabled, but maintains the same operating clocks and TBP as the XT variant. The difference in performance will depend on whether the game is shader-bound. If the game is good, we're looking at a 5% difference, give or take.

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Radeon RX 5600M Specifications
Header Cell - Column 0 Radeon RX 5600MRadeon RX 5500M
Architecture (GPU)RDNA (Navi 10)RDNA (Navi 14)
Shading Units2,3041,408
Texture Units14488
ROPs6432
Base Clock Rate??
Game Clock Rate1,375 MHz1,448 MHz
Boost Clock Rate1,560 MHz1,645 MHz
Memory Clock12 GBps14 GBps
Memory Capacity6GB GDDR64GB GDDR6
Memory Bus192-bit128-bit
Memory Bandwidth288 GBps224 GBps
L2 Cache4MB2MB
TBP?85W
Transistor Count10.3 billion6.4 billion
Die Size251 mm²158 mm²

The Radeon RX 5600M comes with Navi 10 die with the same 36 CUs as the Radeon RX 5600 XT. Laptop manufacturers will have to pay extra attention to the spacing and cooling to accommodate the Radeon Rx 5600M since the Navi 10 die is significantly larger than the Navi 14 die that's inside the Radeon RX 5500M.

Unlike the Radeon RX 5500M, which is rated for 85W, AMD didn't established a maximum TBP value for the Radeon RX 5600M. We're told that the minimum is 60W. As always, OEMs have the liberty to play with the Radeon RX 5600M's clockspeeds and TDP to fit their needs.

Radeon RX 5600 XT Availability and Pricing

Since the Radeon RX 5600 XT is strictly for add-in board (AIB) partners, you can expect a wide range of offerings at launch day. AMD estimates at least two SKUs from each vendor.

The Radeon RX 5600 XT will be available on January 21 for $279, which is on par with the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti's pricing.

Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
RAM Reviewer and News Editor

Zhiye Liu is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

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14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • alextheblue
    The Radeon RX 5600 XT holds its own agaisnt some of Nvidia's more recent offerings. The Radeon RX 5600 XT provides up to 20% and 10% higher performance than the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti in AAA and eSports titles, respectively.

    Whem compared to the GeForce GTX 1660 Super OC, the Radeon RX 5600 XT still manages to come out on top. It's 15% and 5% faster than the GeForce GTX 1660 Super OC in AAA and eSports games, respectively.
    This seems backwards to me. The 1660 Ti should edge out the 1660 Super, and thus the 5600 XT should be edging out the Ti by the smaller margin.

    Anyway that's not a bad price. The 1660 Ti typically starts at $279, with many cards being closer to $300. Meanwhile the 1660 Super, while a bit slower, still represents a pretty darn good value.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    The Radeon RX 5600 XT will be available on January 21 for $279, which is on par with the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti's pricing.
    The 1660 SUPER starts at just $230 though, while performing within about 5% of a 1660 Ti, making it a better card to compare against. That makes the 5600 XT priced around 20% higher, for what sounds like maybe 15% more performance on average in demanding games. And it also remains to be seen how performance will compare against the next cards up, the 2060 SUPER and RX 5700, which can at times be found on sale for not a whole lot more than $300. I'm not exactly convinced that the pricing is all that attractive.

    alextheblue said:
    This seems backwards to me. The 1660 Ti should edge out the 1660 Super, and thus the 5600 XT should be edging out the Ti by the smaller margin.
    While definitely an odd set of graphs, apparently those tests were performed on two different test systems. The comparison versus the 1660 Ti was performed on a Ryzen 3800X test system, while the comparison versus the 1660 SUPER was performed on an i9-9900K test system. Which begs the question, why did the system with the slightly faster gaming CPU create results that were closer to one another, rather than farther apart, as one might expect?

    One possible explanation I can think of is that we may be seeing a repeat of the 5500 XT scenario. It may not be the 9900K holding the 5600 XT back, but rather PCIe 3.0, or more precisely, I suspect AMD might have once again gimped the card on PCIe 3.0 systems by giving it an x8 connection, which seems completely unacceptable for a nearly $300 graphics card. If that's true, then the performance on anything but an x570 motherboard might look more like the 1660 SUPER results, and as a result, the 5600 XT might only be around 10% faster than a 1660 Ti in demanding titles on most systems.

    Or maybe it's simply a case of driver optimization, or someone messed up the graphs, or something else. It might be too early to jump to conclusions, but given that the 5500 XT sees similar performance anomalies due to its limited PCIe bandwidth on most systems, I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.
    Reply
  • King_V
    I'm not sure if the PCIe 3.0 issue is it - but hard to say, and it would definitely be a mistake if AMD did this. Still, I suspect the performance would be worse, if that were the case. Don't hold me to that, though. EDIT: as was done for the 5500XT, I would definitely like to see that analyzed, though. I also wonder if it would gimp a 6GB card the way it gimped the 8GB 5500XT (relative to the 4GB version).

    As for pricing, etc. The 1660 Super is, for all intents and purposes, about the same as the 1660Ti. Nothing about the Ti justifies paying that extra money over the Super.

    So, saying that, I think the 5600XT is going to have to come down a little. At least, that would seem to make sense for me - edging the 1660 Super and Ti out both in performance (more), and in price (less), if AMD wants to hold on to owning the mainstream tier. Hopefully the prices dip down below the release price quickly.


    On another note, I'm also really enthused about the idea that, while it's rated at a 150W TDP, it hits 120W in most gaming scenarios. If that's true, we are now officially looking at AMD matching (or slightly outdoing) Nvidia in terms of performance/power-draw ratio. After all, from the 1660 Super review:
    Starting with the gaming power results, the EVGA 1660 Super SC Ultra averaged 123W during the Metro: Exodus test. The slightly faster GTX 1660 Ti SC Ultra used 128W, which fits in well with the expected power use.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    King_V said:
    I'm not sure if the PCIe 3.0 issue is it - but hard to say, and it would definitely be a mistake if AMD did this. Still, I suspect the performance would be worse, if that were the case.
    In the case of the 5500XT, the limited PCIe bandwidth only tends to cause major performance hits in some games with the 4GB version, since the VRAM can fill, at which point the card needs to access data from system memory over the PCIe bus. The 8GB version generally sees much better performance in those titles, since it has VRAM to spare, though smaller performance hits can still occur. If the 5600XT does the same, I suspect the performance hit on PCIe 3.0 might similarly be relatively small in most current titles, since 6GB of VRAM should still be enough for 1080p gaming at ultra settings. However, the card is notably faster than a 5500XT, which might potentially exaggerate any differences that do appear. Plus, while the VRAM may be adequate today, games coming out a couple years from now will likely want more, at which point the card could potentially fall behind. Again, that's assuming they went with an x8 interface, which might not actually be the case. We should know in a couple weeks. : P

    King_V said:
    On another note, I'm also really enthused about the idea that, while it's rated at a 150W TDP, it hits 120W in most gaming scenarios. If that's true, we are now officially looking at AMD matching (or slightly outdoing) Nvidia in terms of performance/power-draw ratio.
    One thing helping efficiency here is that the clock rates are being kept relatively low, while the graphics core count remains the same as an RX 5700. The RX 5500XT, by comparison, has about 40% fewer cores, but the clock rates are cranked up higher than those of a 5700, to around 5700XT levels. So it wouldn't surprise me if the 5600XT's power draw isn't all that much different from that of the 5500XT.
    Reply
  • JonDol
    ROFL: 10-20 % better performance than GTX 1660 Ti while eating 25% more energy (120 W vs 150 W) ? Performance per watt is worse so thank you but not, I'll still stick to the greener card. One could always overclock the GTX to get slightly similar performance and power consumption...
    Reply
  • King_V
    JonDol said:
    ROFL: 10-20 % better performance than GTX 1660 Ti while eating 25% more energy (120 W vs 150 W) ? Performance per watt is worse so thank you but not, I'll still stick to the greener card. One could always overclock the GTX to get slightly similar performance and power consumption...

    It appears that reading isn't your strong suit. If I may re-quote the bit from the 1660 Super review:
    Starting with the gaming power results, the EVGA 1660 Super SC Ultra averaged 123W during the Metro: Exodus test. The slightly faster GTX 1660 Ti SC Ultra used 128W, which fits in well with the expected power use.

    Now, again, because reading the article is important, from the very same article that this thread linked to in the original post:
    The Radeon RX 5600 XT comes with a 150W Total Board Power (TBP) rating. However, the graphics card hits 120W in most gaming scenarios.

    Please think carefully before you start spouting outright nonsense that is explicitly contradicted by documented facts.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    cryoburner said:
    I suspect AMD might have once again gimped the card on PCIe 3.0 systems by giving it an x8 connection, which seems completely unacceptable for a nearly $300 graphics card.
    I'm quite positive all Navi 10 units have a 16 lane connection. Meanwhile the smaller Navi 14 only has 8 lanes to begin with.
    cryoburner said:
    Or maybe it's simply a case of driver optimization, or someone messed up the graphs, or something else.
    Those first two do seem like the most likely culprits.
    Reply
  • joeblowsmynose
    alextheblue said:
    I'm quite positive all Navi 10 units have a 16 lane connection. Meanwhile the smaller Navi 14 only has 8 lanes to begin with.
    Those first two do seem like the most likely culprits.

    I don't see these graphs you guys are talking about ... but system ram speed can make a decent difference with Ryzen in gaming. Just a thought; I always try to rule out "nefariousness" first, when trying to conclude on a consideration.
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    joeblowsmynose said:
    I don't see these graphs you guys are talking about
    About half way through the article there's an image: it's actually a set of 4 images. If you go through them it includes some graphs comparing the 5600 XT to a 1060 6GB, a 1660 Super, and a 1660 Ti in 1080p gaming. It says the 5600 XT is 20% better than a 1660 Ti and 15% better than a 1660 Super, which doesn't make sense given that the 1660 Ti should be a bit better than the Super.
    Reply
  • joeblowsmynose
    TJ Hooker said:
    About half way through the article there's an image: it's actually a set of 4 images. If you go through them it includes some graphs comparing the 5600 XT to a 1060 6GB, a 1660 Super, and a 1660 Ti in 1080p gaming. It says the 5600 XT is 20% better than a 1660 Ti and 15% better than a 1660 Super, which doesn't make sense given that the 1660 Ti should be a bit better than the Super.

    Ok I did see those but I was looking for the part that indicated they were testing on different CPUs ... or was there just a whole lot of speculation about why it might be the case? Sorry I thought that there was confirmation on the two different platforms used. Maybe I need to read posts more carefully.
    Reply