AMD announces Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700

After months of anticipation, AMD has finally announced the configuration, pricing and internals of the two Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 cards.

Let’s start with performance first. AMD compares the performance of the RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 with Nvidia’s RTX 2070 and RTX 2060. Often these assessments are not confirmed by independent parties, but are generally quite accurate. Of course, the parameters favor games that support AMD more.

Radeon RX 5700 XT will cost $449 and reach 225W TDP, using AMD’s new RDNA architecture, manufactured using TSMC’s 7nm process. According to AMD’s assessment, some AMD games outperform Nvidia, such as Battlefield 5 and Metro Exodus. However, it should be noted that both games can support DXR (DirectX Raytracing), while AMD’s Navi architecture does not support the XDR API.

When compared to RX 5700 and RTX 2060, AMD is even more powerful as their new GPU does better in every game. This is perhaps not surprising news, given that AMD has 8GB of GDDR6 and the 5700 has only a 10% reduction in core count compared to the 5700 XT, while the 2060 has 17% fewer cores and 2GB less memory.

Navi’s new GPUs feature a significantly reworked graphics architecture. AMD says that this is a completely new architecture, but at first glance it seems to be just a reorganization and enhancement of the GCN rather than a brand new one. AMD says it’s 25% faster per CU than the previous generation. When combined with the improvement in power consumption, the performance per watt is up to 50% better. That means the RX 5700 XT at 225W can beat the RX Vega 64 slightly when gaming.

In terms of numbers, the Navi GPU (Navi 10) in the RX 5700 XT has 40 CUs and 2,560 stream processor cores, 8GB GDDR6 overclocked at 14GT/s (448GB/s bandwidth), 1605MHz base clock, with a boost clock of 1905MHz and Game Clock at 1755MHz. Game clock is a new configuration for AMD, but it is only enabled while gaming. Specifically, AMD says that most of the time, the GPU will run closer to the boost clock than the game clock, but only guaranteed to always hit the base clock, not always the boost clock.

The 9.75 TFLOPS result comes from the boost clock, which is AMD’s upper limit. But TFLOPS is not everything. With 25% more performance per core thanks to improved architecture, the RX 5700 XT performs similarly to 12 TFLOPS GCNs – equivalent to Vega 64. On the other hand, Nvidia should theoretically make better use of TFLOPS, even though the 2070 only has the 2070. 7464 TFLOPS but it’s only slightly slower than AMD’s chip. And Nvidia is preparing to launch a “super” version of its RTX GPUs, and the higher clockspeeds will put Nvidia back at the top.

Finally, we have to talk about price and performance. This is where AMD is really weaker. $449 is theoretically cheaper than Nvidia’s RTX 2070, but the card is almost 9 months old, and is currently selling for around $450. Same price, but AMD does not have ray tracing and Tensor core, while consuming more power.

Talking about the Radeon RX 5700 configuration, the main change lies in the 4 CUs being disabled. That reduces the number of cores to 2304, and the clockspeed is lower. However, the card still holds 8GB GDDR6 and clocks at 14GT/s. Performance is now 7.95 TFLOPS, so it’s almost 20% behind its older brother. However, the TDP is also reduced to 175W instead of 225W, only slightly higher than the 160W TDP of the RTX 2060.

The Radeon RX 5700 also drops the price to $379, and with better performance than the RTX 2060, the value at first glance seems to be higher. Nvidia has always emphasized ray tracing and DLSS, but the 2060 isn’t great for ray tracing, and we still don’t have a game that takes full advantage of ray tracing. Battlefield 5, Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Justice and Quake 2 run fine on RTX, but the framerate is significantly affected while the game quality does not improve much. Quake 2 RTX has changed the most in terms of graphics, but that’s a game from 1997. Of course, the game of 1997 must look very different when upgrading the engine to 2019.

The problem is that the RTX 2060 has an official price of $349, with many cards at even lower prices. Specifically, the cheapest RTX 2060 starts at $320. Again, Nvidia has more features (though they’re not really efficient right now), less power consumption, and a better price.

AMD still has the RX 5700 XT card, 50th anniversary edition. It is gold plated and clockspeed is slightly higher, at $499. This card has a limited sale.

There’s a lot we can talk about architecture and configuration, but every decision comes down to performance, features, and price. And with the rumors and leaks from months ago, we can safely say that they are all false. Not only the wrong name, but the configuration with the price is also wrong. If you were hoping AMD would come up with a competitive $249 RTX 2060 or RTX 2070, that’s not going to happen.

The Radeon RX 5700 and the RDNA architecture are AMD’s step forward. They are the first PCIe 4.0 graphics cards for the general public. But if you just look at the performance, Navi is only on par with Nvidia’s Pascal architecture, which is 3 years old and manufactured using the 16nm process. The GTX 1080 might be a bit slower than the RX 5700 XT, based on AMD’s numbers. Meanwhile, the GTX 1070 is only slightly slower than the RX 5700, but the GTX 1080 and 1070 consume only 180W and 150W.

Comparing Navi with the current Turing Nvidia architecture, things are even worse. RTX 2060 is 6 months old, 2070 is 10 months old, built on 12nm technology, and still consumes only 160W and 175W. Nvidia wins in terms of features and power consumption, while the 2070’s price is a bit steep, and the 2060 is more favored.

A problem that RTX 20-series GPUs have is also happening with RX 5700 cards: convincing gamers that they really need to upgrade. If you are using a GTX 1070 or higher or an RX Vega card, you can safely continue to use your current card. But if the GPU is slower, why not upgrade to a 2060 or 2070 for the same price, or a 1070 or 1080 a few years ago? If these are mid-range GPUs with such performance, these are great options, but unfortunately they are aimed at the high-end market.

Like the Ryzen 3000 CPUs, the Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 will be available in July 7, 2019.

By PC Gamer