# ASUS Radeon RX 5700 XT TUF EVO



## W1zzard (Jun 26, 2020)

Our ASUS RX 5700 XT TUF EVO review takes a look at the new cooler design, which fixes the memory temperature problem of the original TUF without the "EVO". The card is very solid and runs quietly with excellent GPU temperatures and idle-fan stop.

*Show full review*


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## 1d10t (Jun 27, 2020)

Nice improvement from original TUF, sound is now audible and temperature is somewhat under control.
Funny Evoke and Gaming X support Fan Stop, my Mech OC would crash if I force it.


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## ShurikN (Jun 27, 2020)

1d10t said:


> Nice improvement from original TUF, sound is now audible and temperature is somewhat under control.
> Funny Evoke and Gaming X support Fan Stop, my Mech OC would crash if I force it.


Aren't the Evoke and Mech literally the same card but with different fan shrouds?


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## Anymal (Jun 27, 2020)

After all of years of development, experienced Asus still cant do it in first.


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## Caring1 (Jun 27, 2020)

The pictures of the packaging don't display EVO on them, so how is a buyer meant to know?


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 27, 2020)

Wow, it took them long enough. I'd wager this is too late to make any difference. 5700XT sales have dropped right off because who is going to buy an AMD flagship card this close to the next-gen launch?

This is at least the cooling performance one would expect from a triple-slot, full-length, extended height card. How they screwed up the first version of this makes the XFX THICC stupidity seem like _competence._


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## HD64G (Jun 27, 2020)

Great new feature in this review with the framerate analysis. Thanks @W1zzard for your hard work!


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## Vayra86 (Jun 27, 2020)

HD64G said:


> Great new feature in this review with the framerate analysis. Thanks @W1zzard for your hard work!



This. This data is awesome, and that FPS distribution one is a really cool one too.

As for the card... yet another release that underlines AMD really needs to get its sh*t together and tighten up their deals with OEMs. What's the point of this? Its late and its not substantially better than whatever already exists. Maybe for Asus, but otherwise..


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 27, 2020)

Am i weird for thinking that '_possible driver issues_' should be added to the negatives?


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## W1zzard (Jun 27, 2020)

Caring1 said:


> The pictures of the packaging don't display EVO on them, so how is a buyer meant to know?


I double checked for you, it's listed twice on the package











A big fat sticker "EVO - now improved" would be useful indeed


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## TKnockers (Jun 27, 2020)

I had 5600xt strix and 5700xt pulse.... now i have vega 64 nitro... based on graphs posted here in this review vega 64 and 5600xt are neck to neck in ac odyssey and 5700xt is much ahead... that is not true based on my experience. Vega 64 and 5700xt are neck to neck and 5600xt is much slower.. btw 5600xt strix was top version oced to the driver limit, pulse 5700xt was also oced and vega 64 nitro is on power saver quiet bios 210w...  I have ryzen 3600x with 32 gb 3200mhz ram. In ac odyssey if using internal benchmark one can't have correct results unless vol.clouds are turned off completely because weather changes from run to run impacting performance severly depending on sunny or cloudy weather.


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## W1zzard (Jun 27, 2020)

TKnockers said:


> In ac odyssey if using internal benchmark one can't have correct results unless vol.clouds are turned off completely because weather changes from run to run impacting performance severly depending on sunny or cloudy weather.


don't use the integrated benchmark, i'm not


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## TKnockers (Jun 27, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> don't use the integrated benchmark, i'm not


Performance will vary even on the same parts of the game (in game not necesarrily benchmark) with the same gpu depending on the weather system.... clouds on ultra vs very high cause roughly 30 percent perf hit depending on parts of the game. Go figure..When you playthru and the weather is sunny you'll have much higher fps than while playing thru the same area in rainy cloudy weather. My experience so far is... 5700xt severly crippled by poor drivers...I tried at least six of them and even with 60 plus fps in many games it just stutters. Odyssey was terrible. 5600xt on the other hand...I had nothing but positive experience and asus strix is an awsome card. One of the coldest and most quiet gpus I've ever had. But it lacked some punch at 2560x1080p.. vega 64 nitro...so far nothing but praise. Performance wise 5700xt level without stuttering.


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## W1zzard (Jun 27, 2020)

TKnockers said:


> When you playthru and the weather is sunny you'll have much higher fps than while playing thru the same area in rainy cloudy weather.


benchmark only in sunny weather


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## TKnockers (Jun 27, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> benchmark only in sunny weather


Yes I know, just like you did with all gpus..


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## TheLostSwede (Jun 27, 2020)

TKnockers said:


> Yes I know, just like you did with all gpus..


I thought you knew that @W1zzard lives on a private island in the Maldives... It's always sunny there.


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## W1zzard (Jun 27, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> I thought you knew that @W1zzard lives on a private island in the Maldives... It's always sunny there.


I wish, getting hot here in Germany, and all this benching doesn't help with room temps


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## INSTG8R (Jun 27, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> I wish, getting hot here in Germany, and all this benching doesn't help with room temps


Im dying to play with my new 3700X rig but it’s unbearable. But a fellow member sold me on this last night   it was an instant buy. I have a heat pump that does AC but just one room literally answering my prayers and he wa# showing me his room temp at 16C. cant wait to get it 





						CoolAir - Official Website
					

Summer 2020: New Personal Air Cooler Brings Revolution on Cooling Devices Summer may be a beautiful season, but long hot days in the heat can become a nightmare. You may even find it difficult to cope with daily routine, particularly when you’re trying to work, relax, or sleep. Does this sound...




					www.coolair-original.com


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## TheLostSwede (Jun 27, 2020)

INSTG8R said:


> Im dying to play with my new 3700X rig but it’s unbearable. But a fellow member sold me on this last night   it was an instant buy. I have a heat pump that does AC but just one room literally answering my prayers and he wa# showing me his room temp at 16C. cant wait to get it
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Way off topic now, but here's a similar product that launched on Indiegogo.

















Keep in mind that these things don't work in humid places, since they use water vapour for the cooling effect, also known as a swamp cooler.


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## INSTG8R (Jun 27, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> Way off topic now, but here's a similar product that launched on Indiegogo.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah it’s just hot here humidity isn’t a big issue.


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## Legacy-ZA (Jun 27, 2020)

A little late, yes? The new generation of GPU's are almost here.


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## rskyline (Jun 27, 2020)

So Which would be better, the Strix or this one? I just got the Strix because it matches my theme, but I think this is a good contender too.


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## W1zzard (Jun 27, 2020)

rskyline said:


> So Which would be better, the Strix or this one? I just got the Strix because it matches my theme, but I think this is a good contender too.


If you don't care about price, the STRIX is better


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## rskyline (Jun 27, 2020)

Yeah I know Asus are kinda overpriced but since I was looking for that brand to match my build I got the Strix, it was like $20 more. Thanks for the reply.


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## Anymal (Jun 27, 2020)

Why asus radeon if sapphire pulse is 400eur in de?


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## rskyline (Jun 27, 2020)

Anymal said:


> Why asus radeon if sapphire pulse is 400eur in de?


In my case it matches my Mobo.


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 27, 2020)

As a rule of thumb, Asus' flagship products are *always* good, and sometimes even the best on the market. They're never cheap though, so you have to decide if you're willing to pay the premium for the brand when other stuff is up to 25% cheaper for no obvious reason other than not having the ASUS markup.

Their midrange stuff is always overpriced and quality/stability/performance are absolutely not guaranteed. Occasionally - and this really is _an exception to the rule_ - you'll find a midrange ASUS product that is priced competitively and best-in-class, but unless you know exactly what to buy and what to avoid, it's easier to just avoid anything non-flagship from ASUS unless you are specifically looking for "mediocre and overpriced".


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## Fluffmeister (Jun 27, 2020)

Hmm, where is @IceShroom ? he loves to berate AIBs using *3 slot, 3 fan coolers on "apparently" efficient Nvidia cards.*


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## Dave65 (Jun 28, 2020)

To little to late, id sooner give money to my X mother in law.


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## 1d10t (Jun 28, 2020)

ShurikN said:


> Aren't the Evoke and Mech literally the same card but with different fan shrouds?



Yeah same card, but strange enough different BIOS. I tried to use RBE and MPT but edited BIOS cannot be flashed. 
I was quite shock after came back to AIB after long hiatus since R9 290 reference , only to find that reference is much easier to tinker with.


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## cucker tarlson (Jun 28, 2020)

88 on memory,good luck with that in the summertime inside a case.



HD64G said:


> Great new feature in this review with the framerate analysis. Thanks @W1zzard for your hard work!


framerate distibution is very interesting too.way cooler and more informative to show min fps in this way.


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## W1zzard (Jun 28, 2020)

cucker tarlson said:


> 88 on memory,good luck with that in the summertime inside a case.


will be fine, it's still 2°C better than ref, and plenty of headroom


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## rskyline (Jun 28, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> If you don't care about price, the STRIX is better


Sorry to come back, but what about between STRIX and Nitro+? Strix is being working great here, but I'm kind of concern about thermals, all temps looks good, Junction stays around 95 Junction on AC Oddisey, but if you run Furmark, a couple of minutes after it will reach 110 Junction. Should I go ahead and change my Strix for a Nitro+?


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## TKnockers (Jun 28, 2020)

Anymal said:


> Why asus radeon if sapphire pulse is 400eur in de?


Not the same gpu but close enough... i had 5700xt pulse. Aside all driver issues, the card had terrible buzzing sound every now and then while fans were spinning up or down... so build quality not so great. I had 5600xt strix... awesome card great build quality, silent as tomb.


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 28, 2020)

rskyline said:


> Sorry to come back, but what about between STRIX and Nitro+? Strix is being working great here, but I'm kind of concern about thermals, all temps looks good, Junction stays around 95 Junction on AC Oddisey, but if you run Furmark, a couple of minutes after it will reach 110 Junction. Should I go ahead and change my Strix for a Nitro+?


Both are good cards, and they run at their limits due to heavy overclocks/overvolts.

If you are concerned about thermals just use the AMD driver to drop the peak clock and power limit slightly, but if you have the time to spare, use OCCT or similar to work out how far you can manually undervolt your card. Chances are good that you can reduce temps by 20 degrees without losing any performance, just by tuning the voltages better.


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## rskyline (Jun 28, 2020)

Chrispy_ said:


> Both are good cards, and they run at their limits due to heavy overclocks/overvolts.
> 
> If you are concerned about thermals just use the AMD driver to drop the peak clock and power limit slightly, but if you have the time to spare, use OCCT or similar to work out how far you can manually undervolt your card. Chances are good that you can reduce temps by 20 degrees without losing any performance, just by tuning the voltages better.


Thanks for that man I'm gonna give that a try. I really like the Strix and the way it looks. Also I saw it has 2 fan headers and the nitro+ doesn't. I'm actually using one of those.


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 29, 2020)

rskyline said:


> Thanks for that man I'm gonna give that a try. I really like the Strix and the way it looks. Also I saw it has 2 fan headers and the nitro+ doesn't. I'm actually using one of those.


FYI the "auto undervolt" in the driver is pretty useless. If this is your first attempt to undervolt your 5700XT, then I can recommend the OCCT method. If you follow these instructions you'll be done in about 5-10 minutes.

Download OCCT and run the 3D test with shader complexity 8 to load up your GPU:






Then open the AMD driver and:

Set Tuning Control to manual
Enable the GPU Tuning slider
Enable the advanced control slider
Set the frequency to 1910. That's the median speed a Strix will average anyway (varies a bit depending on application/game) but you won't be losing much performance, if any, at 1910.
Start voltage at 1100mv and hit apply, check OCCT for errors.
Keep reducing by 25mv, until you see errors
Add 75mv to whatever value gave you errors, apply, and then save it as a preset.
Run some games, make sure it doesn't crash.




If you're a nerd like the rest of us, run a repeatable benchmark with your new undervolt and then again with the defaults to see if you've lost any performance. If you have, you can either live with it for the tradeoff in lower temps and noise, or you can set the frequency up to, say, 1950 and try again.

For what it's worth, my reference card will generate errors in OCCT at 1850MHz and 945mv. I would expect you can run 1910MHz at under 1000mv but it's the silicon lottery; your mileage may vary!


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## rskyline (Jun 29, 2020)

Chrispy_ said:


> FYI the "auto undervolt" in the driver is pretty useless. If this is your first attempt to undervolt your 5700XT, then I can recommend the OCCT method. If you follow these instructions you'll be done in about 5-10 minutes.
> 
> Download OCCT and run the 3D test with shader complexity 8 to load up your GPU:
> 
> ...


Woah man, thank you so much for this, it's a great guide and everything is clear and well explained. I'll definitely save this info and give it a try later. Do you recommend the Asus app for controlling the GPU (GPUTweak) or it's better to use amd driver app?


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 29, 2020)

rskyline said:


> Woah man, thank you so much for this, it's a great guide and everything is clear and well explained. I'll definitely save this info and give it a try later. Do you recommend the Asus app for controlling the GPU (GPUTweak) or it's better to use amd driver app?


I'd recommend uninstalling the ASUS app. As a rule of thumb, you never want multiple applications running that perform the same function. The very *best-case scenario* is that they DON'T conflict with each other. More likely is that they'll fight and give you grief.

Honestly, the AMD driver is probably the best tuning app for a 5700-series card. There's no reason to muddy the waters with third-party software - and Asus in particular has a pretty ropey record when it comes to tuning utilities. In saying that, I haven't used GPUTweak so can't comment on that exact utility.


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## rskyline (Jun 29, 2020)

Chrispy_ said:


> I'd recommend uninstalling the ASUS app. As a rule of thumb, you never want multiple applications running that perform the same function. The very best-case scenario is that they DON'T conflict with each other. More likely is that they'll fight and give you grief.
> 
> Honestly, the AMD driver is probably the best tuning app for a 5700-series card. There's no reason to muddy the waters with third-party software - and Asus in particular has a pretty ropey record when it comes to tuning utilities.


Gotcha. I'll definitely give a quick clean to my GPU drivers/utilities and I'll start fresh just with amd software.


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 29, 2020)

I just watched the hardware unboxed review and teardown of the Strix 5700XT.

Their conclusion is that it's a really high-quality board design with an excellent cooler, let down by voltage tuning that is far too aggressive for no good reason.

That means it should respond really well to manual undervolting.


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## Anymal (Jun 29, 2020)

W1zzard said:


> benchmark only in sunny weather


I would like to address the fan overshoots you care to mention in your conclusions in your latest reviews which I appreciate very much.
5700 red dragon - Some fan-speed overshoot
5700 xt nitro+ - Quiet BIOS has some fan-speed overshoot
evga 2060 ko - Fan-stop temperature too low, fans spin up periodically
5600 xt red dragon - Wrong fan-control configuration, RPM overshoot as the card heats up
5500 xt strix - Wrong fan-control configuration, RPM overshoot as the card heats up
5600 xt phantom d3 - Wrong fan-control configuration, RPM overshoot as the card heats up

What is the reason for that? My 1080 Ti Strix OC also do that sometimes.


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 29, 2020)

Anymal said:


> I would like to address the fan overshoots you care to mention in your conclusions in your latest reviews which I appreciate very much.
> 5700 red dragon - Some fan-speed overshoot
> 5700 xt nitro+ - Quiet BIOS has some fan-speed overshoot
> evga 2060 ko - Fan-stop temperature too low, fans spin up periodically
> ...


Two factors:

The OEM has no idea what your ambient room temperature is going to be. The ideal fan curve has to be tailored for the worst-case scenario of a really warm room, which means that the fans will be too aggressive for a well-cooled 22C room in a colder climate or with air conditioning.


RPM Overshoot is a common side-effect of delayed-average readings. OEMs don't link the fan speed directly to GPU temperature because your GPU temps fluctuate rapidly and you would hear the fan speed rising and falling all the time if there was no smoothing. OEMs smooth out the fan speed changes by sampling several seconds of GPU temperature and taking an average. Unfortunately this average sample adds a time-delay that can cause the fans to react too slowly to sudden GPU temperature spikes; This means the temperature keeps on rising and slingshots the fan controller much further up the fan-speed/temperature curve until the average temperature sample matches the current GPU temperature again. Better fan control uses a more complex algorith that combines a shorter sampling period to average, but adds hysterisis to limit how fast the fans can change speed.


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## W1zzard (Jun 30, 2020)

Anymal said:


> What is the reason for that?


The reason is AMD's stupid fan control mechanism on Navi and a failure to properly communicate to AIBs how it works, so many of them didn't configure their BIOS properly. I've personally worked with several of them to help fix their fans.

This shouldn't happen on NVIDIA, because they use a different fan control algorithm. Some small overshoot is possible, as @Chrispy_  explains


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## Anymal (Jun 30, 2020)

Why the hell they changed fan control mechanism with Navi if it worked on Vega and older gpus? How stupid, fan control is common for all gpus no matter amd or nvidia. Thousands of hours for gpu development and than aib shits on it.


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## W1zzard (Jun 30, 2020)

Anymal said:


> Why the hell they changed fan control mechanism with Navi if it worked on Vega and older gpus? How stupid, fan control is common for all gpus no matter amd or nvidia. Thousands of hours for gpu development and than aib shits on it.


Because AMD cards were known to be noisy in the past, so they thought they'd be smarter than the engineers before them.. now there really is no fan "curve" anymore, it's just some constraints and the fan algorithm (tries) to do the rest



Anymal said:


> and than aib shits on it.


not a fault of the AIBs


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## Anymal (Jun 30, 2020)

Not all of your 5700 series reviews has fan overshoot stated in conclusion. Maybe is aib fault.


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## W1zzard (Jun 30, 2020)

Anymal said:


> Not all of your 5700 series reviews has fan overshoot stated in conclusion. Maybe is aib fault.


In some way it is, because they didn't change the right settings, problem is AMD didn't tell them how to use the settings to get the correct result


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 30, 2020)

I have to admit, my Zotac 2060S has an awful fan curve with audible, irritating fan overshoot using the auto fan algorithm. I made a simple fan 'curve' that runs 30% under 60C and 60% above that.

Meanwhile, my reference 5700XT overshoots only when it's overwhelming the cooler on full boost. Undervolted - even just a little bit so that reported power user is down by 20W - the fan algorithm is good enough that i never notice the fan speed changes.

@W1zzard - Do you think the problem is that Navi exposes more temperature data than any other GPU before and vendors are just inexperienced? It would seem that AMD themselves know how to get the fan speeds right (after a shaky launch issue on the vanilla 5700) but the vendors are maybe inexperienced. Maybe I'm being naive but I can't help but feel that the issue isn't that complicated - you have a peak junction temperature that needs to stay under 110C and ideally at 95C target but it fluctuates too fast - so you average and apply some hysterisis to avoid oscillating either side of a target temperature. This isn't a new problem and it's not reinventing the wheel, it's just no longer acceptable to link that temp directly to the fan speed curve.

It sounds like you've had in-depth discussions with OEMs on this - I'd love to hear more detail about how they used to do things and what they did to fix the overshoot issues.


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## rskyline (Jul 1, 2020)

Chrispy_ said:


> FYI the "auto undervolt" in the driver is pretty useless. If this is your first attempt to undervolt your 5700XT, then I can recommend the OCCT method. If you follow these instructions you'll be done in about 5-10 minutes.
> 
> Download OCCT and run the 3D test with shader complexity 8 to load up your GPU:
> 
> ...


So I found an incoonvenience, not related to this guide or the outcome (I was able to keep the GPU cooler by ~10 C, which is great, but the GPU fans won't do the 0db, so they will run all the time, I don't really care about the sound anyway and I bet they last even if they are nonstop, and the second thing is that I've added a bottom fan as intake to help the GPU to get more cool air. Without ASUS app is just off all the time, is there any workaround you know to not get the asus app?


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## Chrispy_ (Jul 1, 2020)

You mean you lose idle fan stop without the ASUS app? That's a shame, but not really a deal-breaker unless you can hear the fans at idle.

In which case, Asus' BIOS/Software team are even more idiotic than I thought they were.


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## W1zzard (Jul 1, 2020)

Chrispy_ said:


> You mean you lose idle fan stop without the ASUS app?


I never install any software for my reviews, fan stop works perfectly without ASUS app.


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## Colddecked (Jul 1, 2020)

ShurikN said:


> Aren't the Evoke and Mech literally the same card but with different fan shrouds?



Same PCB.  Slight difference in heatsink (same number of heat pipes, Evoke's has a coldplate while Mech is Direct heat pipe), evoke has a metal backplate while Mech's is plastic (and actually caused blackscreens on mine).



1d10t said:


> Yeah same card, but strange enough different BIOS. I tried to use RBE and MPT but edited BIOS cannot be flashed.
> I was quite shock after came back to AIB after long hiatus since R9 290 reference , only to find that reference is much easier to tinker with.



You tried flashing to an Evoke?  I know Evoke bios has 5w more power limit compared to Mech, and I figured it would would since same pcb... hmm..


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## rskyline (Jul 1, 2020)

Chrispy_ said:


> You mean you lose idle fan stop without the ASUS app? That's a shame, but not really a deal-breaker unless you can hear the fans at idle.
> 
> In which case, Asus' BIOS/Software team are even more idiotic than I thought they were.



Yeah my main concern is to be able to control the ext fan coming from the GPU fan header.



W1zzard said:


> I never install any software for my reviews, fan stop works perfectly without ASUS app.



I'm gonna double check that, maybe is because I modified the fan curve on Radeon settings?


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## Warrax (Jul 2, 2020)

Hello *W1zzard, *could you include also power consumption after overclocking (average, peak maximum) into the charts? I'm watching your reviews more than 10 years, and this thing was missing for me for all those years. Not sure, if someone didn't suggested it earlier, or you have some specific reason to not include it, but sometimes, card maximum and peak power consumption raise so much after overclocking, that it is not worth to do.


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## W1zzard (Jul 2, 2020)

Warrax said:


> Hello *W1zzard, *could you include also power consumption after overclocking (average, peak maximum) into the charts? I'm watching your reviews more than 10 years, and this thing was missing for me for all those years. Not sure, if someone didn't suggested it earlier, or you have some specific reason to not include it, but sometimes, card maximum and peak power consumption raise so much after overclocking, that it is not worth to do.


Great suggestion, I'll look into that for future reviews


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## Anymal (Jul 2, 2020)

Some features should stay Patreon only.


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## IceShroom (Jul 3, 2020)

Fluffmeister said:


> Hmm, where is @IceShroom ? he loves to berate AIBs using *3 slot, 3 fan coolers on "apparently" efficient Nvidia cards.*


Well efficient card dont need that much cooling unlike hot and power hungry Radeon cards. Or Nvidias cards not really efficient at all.


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