AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 Video Card Review

[Strelok]

Seems this launch by AMD was a bit of a mess. BIOS issues on the CPU side for certain reviewers, driver issues for others for the GPU's and a pretty bad cooler on these cards. They should have just waited to launch these cards with better coolers since there is definitely potential.

 

[Brian_B]

Hot, yes. Doesn't look like AMD has updated their reference cooler since they first moved to that vapor chamber in what... the last 5000 series? They are certainly doing themselves a disservice with it.

Power hungry - according to power tests doesn't appear to be that bad. nVidia still has the lead (even without the process node advantage), but it's not egregious. The XT is only 30W higher than the 2070 and beats it fairly consistently, and is within 15W of the 2070 Super, which is probably a better comparison.

The 5700 outright is better than nVidia right now with respect to power. Looking as the differences in clock speed, you can tell they just cranked the XT up to where they needed to be in order to be on performance footing with the 2070, and the power consumption bears that out. It makes me wonder what kind of legs an overclock on a 5700 outright would have.

I think the power thing is only being made an issue now because the reference cooler isn't that great, in my opinion. I thought similarly on VII and the air cooled Vegas.

 

[Dan_D]

Seems this launch by AMD was a bit of a mess. BIOS issues on the CPU side for certain reviewers, driver issues for others for the GPU's and a pretty bad cooler on these cards. They should have just waited to launch these cards with better coolers since there is definitely potential.

Honestly, I've been part of quite a few launches and AMD handled the CPU side pretty well. Despite the issues, it was fairly clean. They provided a ton of reference materials, hardware and updates throughout the process. The issue with boost clocks is one that's a bit harder to pin down as they aren't guaranteed. I was surprised not to see max frequencies more frequently if at all, but I rarely saw maximum boost clocks on my Intel test setup either.

Hot, yes. Doesn't look like AMD has updated their reference cooler since they first moved to that vapor chamber in what... the last 5000 series? They are certainly doing themselves a disservice with it.

Power hungry - according to power tests doesn't appear to be that bad. nVidia still has the lead (even without the process node advantage), but it's not egregious. The XT is only 30W higher than the 2070 and beats it fairly consistently, and is within 15W of the 2070 Super, which is probably a better comparison.

The 5700 outright is better than nVidia right now with respect to power. Looking as the differences in clock speed, you can tell they just cranked the XT up to where they needed to be in order to be on performance footing with the 2070, and the power consumption bears that out. It makes me wonder what kind of legs an overclock on a 5700 outright would have.

I think the power thing is only being made an issue now because the reference cooler isn't that great, in my opinion. I thought similarly on VII and the air cooled Vegas.

The problem is that performance wise, NVIDIA's RTX 2070 Super beats the 5700 down pretty hard. NVIDIA timed its refresh perfectly to ensure that reviewers were pressed for time and that it had products that threw AMD off at every price point. AMD's 5700 series doesn't just have to contend with the outgoing RTX series, but the Super cards as well. Even if they look good on the power front, they look allot less compelling on the performance front.

 

[DrezKill]

As a GTX 970 owner since launch, I think the 5700 XT will finally get me to upgrade (well that and the fact I actually have some money this year). I was wishing the 2070 Super was $400, and the 5700 XT looks to be reasonably close to 2070 Super performance while saving us 100 bucks. Was hoping by now cards would start coming with around 12GB of vRAM but oh well. I'll probably wait until later in the year to make my final decision.

Thanks a ton for bringing us this review Brent. theFPSreview.com is off to a great start!

 

[Brian_B]

Even if they look good on the power front, they look allot less compelling on the performance front.

Not denying that, just commenting on the "power hungry" comment, which doesn't appear to be quite the case

 

[magoo]

YEA!!!!!
Everybody is back and it couldn't be soon enough.
I love the new website and the look of the pages.
Awesome review of the 5700 series cards.
I was a hardcore [H] reader and now I can simply slip over here and get my fix.

Only question I have is, does AMD plan to manufacture a challenger to the 2080/2080 Ti ????

My 2 cents to the question why MP games are not in the review.......honestly, doe anyone in a MP game ever stop to look around at the visuals?
I would say pretty much no......maybe a little in Hunt: Showdown, but realistically the visuals are not why you're there.
Speed, decreased latency maybe but those are more connection/networking issues than GPU.

Again, thanks for this site. great, honest reviews; based on real world thought and testing. Yahoo!!

 

[ofacesig]

Currently chillin with my custom cooler/factory OC'd Vega 64. The 5700 XT is a no brainer upgrade for me. 3700x and a 5700XT is certainly looking like a probable upgrade path for my main rig.

 

[Chimpee]

Only question I have is, does AMD plan to manufacture a challenger to the 2080/2080 Ti ????

I don't think it is a question if they are making a card to challenge the 2080 or 2080Ti but when are they going release it.

 

[Strelok]

I don't think it is a question if they are making a card to challenge the 2080 or 2080Ti but when are they going release it.

They are barely hitting RTX efficiencies while being on a smaller node AND they still can't really beat those cards. When Nvidia goes 7nm or w/e they are going next, they will once again kill AMD. Hopefully AMD figures something out in their GPU department, because Nvidia isn't like Intel and just flops over for 6 years.

 

[ofacesig]

They are barely hitting RTX efficiencies while being on a smaller node AND they still can't really beat those cards. When Nvidia goes 7nm or w/e they are going next, they will once again kill AMD. Hopefully AMD figures something out in their GPU department, because Nvidia isn't like Intel and just flops over for 6 years.

You are unfortunately correct. Nvidia pull far ahead with the 2080 ti and the VII is no competitor there. Raja Koudori gave us polaris and dick else. I'd like to slap him. I don't really know who's the face of radeon these days, but they need to hire someone good.

 

[Brian_B]

I'm still of the opinion that AMD doesn't have to take the speed crown in order to remain competitive.

Navi is a good product, just like Polaris was good. It's not a replacement for Vega though.

Vega was... lackluster. Not horrible, but not great. HBM is a great technology but just never hit high enough volume to make it commodity, and Vega could never hit high enough performance levels to allow for margins to make it worthwhile. It may yet make a comeback later on, but Fiji was a poor product for gaming and while Vega was much better, it was a case of too little, too late, for too expensive to compare to what nVidia had to offer.

nVidia does have the edge right now, in architecture. And yes, once they get on the same process node that gap will probably widen again. But that really only plays in the top tiers.

Now top tiers are the exciting part, and where a lot of the readers here are looking at. But they aren't the majority of sales or what drive companies quarterly statements.

AMD is taking the safe path - keep plugging at the high volume products. Don't focus on the low volume halo products. Lock down high volume custom order contracts. Keep the R&D budget moving but under control and focused on your target markets, not chasing halos. I think it's a good strategy. It's just boring to watch it play out.

 

[5150 Joker]

I'm still of the opinion that AMD doesn't have to take the speed crown in order to remain competitive.

Navi is a good product, just like Polaris was good. It's not a replacement for Vega though.

Vega was... lackluster. Not horrible, but not great. HBM is a great technology but just never hit high enough volume to make it commodity, and Vega could never hit high enough performance levels to allow for margins to make it worthwhile. It may yet make a comeback later on, but Fiji was a poor product for gaming and while Vega was much better, it was a case of too little, too late, for too expensive to compare to what nVidia had to offer.

nVidia does have the edge right now, in architecture. And yes, once they get on the same process node that gap will probably widen again. But that really only plays in the top tiers.

Now top tiers are the exciting part, and where a lot of the readers here are looking at. But they aren't the majority of sales or what drive companies quarterly statements.

AMD is taking the safe path - keep plugging at the high volume products. Don't focus on the low volume halo products. Lock down high volume custom order contracts. Keep the R&D budget moving but under control and focused on your target markets, not chasing halos. I think it's a good strategy. It's just boring to watch it play out.

What are you talking about? NVIDIA is covered top down and eclipses AMD in every metric from the top down in sales. The only thing AMD has going for it is Ryzen (which hasn't really made a dent in the market) and console sales. Go look at any of the % marketshare charts and you will see AMD is still a very minor player in the CPU and GPU space.

 

[alxlwson]

What are you talking about? NVIDIA is covered top down and eclipses AMD in every metric from the top down in sales. The only thing AMD has going for it is Ryzen (which hasn't really made a dent in the market) and console sales. Go look at any of the % marketshare charts and you will see AMD is still a very minor player in the CPU and GPU space.

Your CPU comments appear to be incorrect.

 

[Brian_B]

What are you talking about? NVIDIA is covered top down and eclipses AMD in every metric from the top down in sales. The only thing AMD has going for it is Ryzen (which hasn't really made a dent in the market) and console sales. Go look at any of the % marketshare charts and you will see AMD is still a very minor player in the CPU and GPU space.

I intended to say - the technology gap only plays a major part in differentiating the top tiers. It still exists in the lower tiers, but it isn't nearly as critical.

AMD does still tend to hold the Price/Performance in the middle-lower tiers. They may not win in absolute power, or energy consumption, or best reference design, or anything else, but Price/Performance is a very important metric in the lower tiers.

It also doesn't matter that they aren't the marketshare leader. They just need to have enough penetration to keep nVidia honest and competitive. And they do, clearly, or Super wouldn't have played out as it did.

 

[ofacesig]

Navi is a good product, just like Polaris was good. It's not a replacement for Vega though.

A little confused by this statement. I have a Vega 64, and I as many others, plainly see the 5700XT as an upgrade path for me.

 

[Brian_B]

A little confused by this statement. I have a Vega 64, and I as many others, plainly see the 5700XT as an upgrade path for me.

Sure, I guess you could. It is slightly faster.

But something even better will be coming out "soon" - the real Vega replacement. Navi is just the replacement for Polaris.

Of course, something better is always coming out "soon" - but Navi isn't intended to be the high end architecture from AMD, just like Polaris wasn't intended to be.

 

[ofacesig]

Sure, I guess you could. It is slightly faster.

But something even better will be coming out "soon" - the real Vega replacement. Navi is just the replacement for Polaris.

Of course, something better is always coming out "soon" - but Navi isn't intended to be the high end architecture from AMD, just like Polaris wasn't intended to be.

Well, yes over time, features and performance trickle down. Today there are four bangers that are faster than the old 5.0 stangs of the late 80s early 90s. So if that level of performance or better is what you want, then that's all you need. If you want to stay at the "high end" then yes, you'll always be chasing that halo product.

 

[Dan_D]

Currently chillin with my custom cooler/factory OC'd Vega 64. The 5700 XT is a no brainer upgrade for me. 3700x and a 5700XT is certainly looking like a probable upgrade path for my main rig.

For the price, I can see that.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Finally had some quality time at a local micro to enjoy reading this review more in depth along with some good brew. Got to about page 8 before I got engaged in talking to some other regulars.

Is it me or does the estimated overhead from AMD for PCIe 4.0 seem a little higher than normal? I haven't crunched the percentages from 2.0 to 3.0 to 4.0 but it sure seems like a 31.5 GB/sec down to 22 GB/sec is a significant increase in overhead for the stream. I admit, 4k/HDR/VRR/HDCP/anything else, could be the culprit but losing almost 10% is pretty major. Either way, if I didn't already have a 1080TI happily purring along I'd order a 5700XT right now. That price/performance is awesome! I don't expect much more than maybe 1-2 in FPS difference for games but latency show improve significantly with PCIe 4.0.

I'm glad they went with GDDR6 and, for the moment, set HBM2 aside. Yes HBM2 is more superior but their core clocks can't really use it to a worthwhile potential plus the added costs just hinder their pricing options to sell in this market level. I can't wait to see what the AIB's offer for improved cooling and how the boost clock improves. Hopefully someone makes a custom PCB with 2x 8 Pin connectors plus 3 fans to let the 5700xt really reach an impressive potential. BTW, I didn't know this was the 1st time AMD went with 3 speed iterations for the core clocks. Having used green for so long I took it for granted.

I loved the photographs. "Then dent is intentional" LOL! Hope when you are able you can include some with the coolers off to show the PCB layout. I'm curious about the comparisons to NV designs.

 

[5150 Joker]

Your CPU comments appear to be incorrect.

You're not serious are you? Those are compiled by some dude and only specifically to one German retailer. Here's an overall metric that is far more meaningful: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/ I'll give it another 3 month lag for Ryzen 2 but I don't predict it to move more than 0.5% in AMDs favor. Fact of the matter is, in overall ecosystem, Intel is far easier to deal with for both consumers and datacenter customers. Plus Intel marketing and mindshare is like NVIDIA and near impossible to break. So that doesn't mean Ryzen 2 isn't a great product because it is and deserves marketshare but in the real world it just won't happen.