XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro Review

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Conclusion

Today AMD has launched its $279 1080p killer, the Radeon RX 5600 XT.  The Radeon RX 5600 XT is geared to dominate the 1080p game space, providing the ultimate 1080p gameplay experience.  This video card should represent an upgrade path for gamers on older video cards such as AMD’s Ellesmere and Polaris GPUs in this price range.  It should also provide gamers an upgrade path from older GeForce video cards like the popular GeForce GTX 1060. 

The Radeon RX 5600 XT provides the latest technologies and AMD’s new RDNA architecture plus 7nm manufacturing process and PCI-Express 4.0 support.  This should bring gamers into a new generation of GPU technology and gameplay experience in the latest games. 

The Radeon RX 5600 XT also provides fierce competition for NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, which used to be the best deal at $279.  However, to preemptively strike the competition NVIDIA recently lowered the pricing on its higher-tier GeForce RTX 2060 (original release) video cards and brought them down to $299.  This price now cuts in on factory overclock, custom Radeon RX 5600 XT pricing.  We reached out to NVIDIA to confirm the pricing and NVIDIA confirms that $299 is the new staying price point for the GeForce RTX 2060. 

Therefore, in this review today we reviewed a factory overclocked XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro for $279 and compared it with the GeForce RTX 2060, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and even a Radeon RX 5700 to get the bigger picture on performance in AMD’s lineup.

Claims

AMD claims that the Radeon RX 5600 XT provides the “Ultimate” 1080p gameplay experience whereas the Radeon RX 5500 XT provides an entry-level 1080p gameplay experience.  That means that with the Radeon RX 5600 XT AMD claims the highest game settings in AAA titles and esports gaming with playable performance. 

We should be able to “max out” games at 1080p with the Radeon RX 5600 XT.  As we all know though, everything depends on the game in question.  Some games are very tough on graphics, some games are easier, some games are optimized better on AMD or NVIDIA and perform better on either one. 

We had some graphically intense games in this review, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Metro Exodus.  With Red Dead Redemption 2 we ran the game at the highest “Ultra” settings at 1080p.  To our dismay, the performance was pretty miserable on the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro.  At 34FPS the game was unplayable.  It was also equally unplayable on the GeForce RTX 2060 and only barely playable on the Radeon RX 5700.  We had to drop the game settings down one notch to “High” in order to achieve playable performance.  On “High” settings it was now more playable at 47FPS on the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro.  This isn’t stellar performance, but it will get the job done.

The second graphically intense game was Metro Exodus.  We ran the game at “Extreme” quality at 1080p.  The XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro was not playable at 37FPS.  Of course, neither was the GeForce RTX 2060.  Only the Radeon RX 5700 was somewhat playable.  We, therefore, dropped the quality setting down one notch to “Ultra.”  This was then playable at 50FPS on the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro.

Third, there was another game that didn’t perform so well either at the highest settings.  That was Ghost Recon Breakpoint.  It has an “Ultimate” graphics option.  However, we got very choppy performance and an unplayable experience on the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro at that setting.  We had to drop the quality down to “Ultra” to get a smooth performance and plenty of performance that was over 60FPS. 

These games prove that trying to run certain games at the maximum graphics settings may not actually be playable at 1080p on the Radeon RX 5600 XT.  The “Ultimate” 1080p gaming experience is going to vary, and is going to depend on how graphically intense the game is, and how optimized it is.  These are AAA titles, but yet the Radeon RX 5600 XT does need to lower the in-game settings in them to be playable, and that’s with a high factory overclocked Radeon RX 5600 XT.

Now, thankfully these games did seem to be the exception.  In every other game, we tested we were able to turn them all up to the maximum in-game settings at 1080p.  Every other game was playable at 1080p with the highest settings on the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro.  All of the performance in the rest of the games was above 60FPS with the highest settings. 

Therefore, it is true that in those games the ultimate experience at 1080p is possible with the Radeon RX 5600 XT.  Our only thought moving forward are future titles to be released, will they be able to maintain that trend, or will they be more like Red Dead Redemption 2, Metro Exodus and Ghost Recon.  The 6GB VRAM may also be a limiting specification as we move forward at 1080p gaming with the highest settings.

The elephant in the Room

Let’s now talk about the elephant in the room, the price reduction on the GeForce RTX 2060.  NVIDIA is tough, it is aggressive, it saw the Radeon RX 5600 XT coming and immediately preemptively struck by reducing the price of the $349 original GeForce RTX 2060 to now $299.  Many would argue that should have been the pricing on the RTX 2060 all along. 

With this price cut, it puts the Radeon RX 5600 XT in throwing territory of the GeForce RTX 2060 now based on price.  Though the Radeon RX 5600 XT has an MSRP of $279, the custom add-in-board partner video cards with custom coolers and factory overclocks will sell higher than that.  We expect to see $300 models, maybe even higher.  Sure, there will be models that are closer to the reference pricing with no thrills and no overclocks.  That’s still just a $20 difference from the RTX 2060 now.

Originally the Radeon RX 5600 XT was supposed to compete with the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti on price.  The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti has an MSRP of $279, so the two would have been price comparable.  However, even with the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti there are rebates that bring pricing down to $249-$269. 

When we look at the actual performance of the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro, which is a factory overclocked RX 5600 XT, it actually holds its own very well.  There are more than a few games where the performance is the same between the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro and the GeForce RTX 2060.  Though they may be a few FPS ahead or behind each other, the actual gameplay experience is the same.  There are only about three games in our testing, Wolfenstein, Need for Speed and Ghost Recon where we would consider the GeForce RTX 2060 significantly faster.  Otherwise, the two cards are neck-and-neck. 

Now, you do have to keep in mind that this is achieved with a factory overclocked Radeon RX 5600 XT, up against a stock RTX 2060 FE.  If you take a factory overclocked RTX 2060, that difference may become more significant in favor of the RTX 2060.  The only counter to that is the hope that the Radeon RX 5600 XT can be overclocked very high manually since it is based on the Radeon RX 5700 GPU. 

Let’s put it this way though, the Radeon RX 5600 XT kills the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti.  If NVIDIA had not lowered the pricing on the GeForce RTX 2060 then the Radeon RX 5600 XT would be a clear winner.  It would have destroyed the GTX 1660 Ti and provided RTX 2060 performance at $70 less in price.  That would have been an incredible value and win for AMD.  AMD must be really mad NVIDIA lowered the price of that RTX 2060, it really stuck a nail under AMD’s tires on that one.

Power Efficiency

One point we really want to drive home is how power efficient the Radeon RX 5600 XT is compared to its performance. Out of all the video cards tested it required the least amount of power to get its job done.  For the lowest power draw, it performed as good as a GeForce RTX 2060.  The GeForce RTX 2060 actually had the highest power draw and required that 18% extra power just to keep up with the factory overclocked Radeon RX 5600 XT. 

For the first time in a long time, AMD is the one with the more power-efficient video card for the performance delivered.  You just don’t know how impressive that is.  This is a very important point about the Radeon RX 5600 XT that needs to be emphasized.  Power efficiency isn’t all about the manufacturing process, it is also a combination of GPU architecture.  With the Radeon RX 5600 XT, it looks like AMD is hitting all the right cylinders.    

New BIOS

The night before the launch we received a new BIOS from XFX. This new BIOS officially brings the game clock specification up from 1460MHz to now 1560MHz as the new specification for the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro. The price cut on the GeForce RTX 2060 played a part in this. Unfortunately, we did not have time to re-test everything the night before the launch. Therefore, we will perform a follow-up review article showing the new performance that will go up on Wednesday.

Until then, we did manage to test the new clock speed on the previous page. We found that it now hits above 1700MHz while gaming, instead of 1600MHz before. The average was 1727MHz, versus 1599MHz. That is an 8% clock increase. This will benefit performance, by how much though is yet to be seen.

In our follow-up, we will talk about this, and we have also asked XFX some pointed questions about video cards already on the shelves for the launch without this BIOS. The fact is, there will be two levels of performance with this video card now, those that purchase it in the store or on day one and get the original performance we have shown here today, or those that get the card with the new BIOS applied and thus faster performance. It’s a bit of a mess, but we will see what XFX has to say about that in our follow-up. One thing remains though, manual overclocking will always and still be the best way to maximize the performance of your video card.

Final Points

Overall, we are extremely impressed with the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro.  XFX has given it a factory overclock boost up to 1460MHz (now 1560MHz) versus 1375MHz on the reference design.  However, thanks to the board power target and cooling this XFX video card runs at an average near 1600MHz while gaming (above 1700MHz with the new BIOS.)  That’s a lot more performance than a reference video card, giving you a high degree of Radeon RX 5600 XT performance out-of-the-box.

Then, when you consider XFX is not raising the price on the video card and keeping it at $279, the same as the reference price, at Newegg, we find this to be a very aggressive positioning against the GeForce RTX 2060. If this had a high price premium and was over $300, it might not be such a great deal. But if XFX can keep that price under $300, and down around $279 as it will at the launch, combined with the new BIOS clock speed performance, this will end up being a strong competitor.  

The THICC II Pro design has been improved and, in our hands, feels very robust.  The video card feels solid and seems to be constructed well.  The video card is also silent, no noise issues at all.  Our only note (we have nothing to compare this with yet) is the potentially higher GPU temperature.  However, this can be improved with a more aggressive fan profile.  In its default configuration, it is nothing to worry about. The benefit is a silent video card.

When we overclock the video card, we will turn the fan speed up and see what we can get.  We are highly looking forward to overclocking on the Radeon RX 5600 XT since it is based on the Radeon RX 5700.  We are hoping there is a ton of headroom left in the GPU, but we will have to see.  XFX’s THICC II cooler seems robust enough for us to do high levels of overclocking as long as we raise the fan speed.

If you are looking for a cheaper alternative to NVIDIA’s now lower-priced RTX 2060, give the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro a whirl.  You will certainly want to apply the new BIOS for more performance, which is compelling at $279. Look for Radeon RX 5600 XT’s with the highest factory overclock you can, or, with robust coolers for overclocking if you want the best out of it.  Everything is going to come down to pricing and making sure you find a good deal that competes with factory-overclocked RTX 2060s.  The pricing is going to be close between the two, but you may be able to find Radeon RX 5600 XT’s potentially cheaper.

At this point, we are going to reserve our award until we do our follow-up review with the new BIOS applied and see what the new performance comparisons are like. That said, we do feel this card is going to be award-worthy from us based on the fact that it has a price that is not inflated and provides an above reference card performance with its very high factory overclock.                  

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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