# XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT Ultra THICC II



## W1zzard (Sep 9, 2019)

The XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT Ultra THICC II is one of the highest-clocked Navi custom designs out there. It is cooled by a large triple-slot, dual-fan thermal solution that runs quieter than the AMD reference card and includes idle fan stop. With $440, pricing isn't unreasonable, either.

*Show full review*


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## dj-electric (Sep 9, 2019)

Hey, look, here's another cooler that can't beat the 409$ Sapphire Pulse in thermals and noise.


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## jabbadap (Sep 9, 2019)

Looked good, until I read temp and noise page...

But yeah if you make a card consuming as much power as is rtx 2080 ti, it will be as hard to cool. This coolers performance is actually pretty close to EVGA RTX2080ti XC Ultra.


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## ppn (Sep 9, 2019)

jabbadap said:


> Looked good, until I read temp and noise page...
> 
> But yeah if you make a card consuming as much power as is rtx 2080 ti, it will be as hard to cool. This coolers performance is actually pretty close to EVGA RTX2080ti XC Ultra.




Even more so when 300 watts are dissipated by 30% the size of 2080Ti, 251 vs 754 mm2


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## xkm1948 (Sep 9, 2019)

Hey W1zzard, did you have BSOD or instability problems that are currently haunting some Navi users?


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## ernorator (Sep 9, 2019)

"No hardware-accelerated raytracing"  as cons is lake "not nvidia" as cons


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## The Quim Reaper (Sep 9, 2019)

As much as I'm an Nvidia GPU user I do have to admit that when it comes to AIB card aesthetics, they consistently wipe the floor with their designs, compared to AIB Nvidia cards.


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## ZoneDymo (Sep 9, 2019)

ernorator said:


> "No hardware-accelerated raytracing"  as cons is lake "not nvidia" as cons



Thats like saying Nvidia invented Ray Tracing...dont give them too much credit pls.


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## MAXLD (Sep 9, 2019)

dj-electric said:


> Hey, look, here's another cooler that can't beat the 409$ Sapphire Pulse in thermals and noise.



Well, the Pulse also runs the core with less ~100MHz... You have to wait for the Sapphire Nitro+ with higher OC clocks to make a true evaluation of the cooler. 
Sapphire Pulse: 1670 MHz / 1815 MHz  (base / boost)
Asus STRIX:  1770 MHz / 1905 MHz
Powercolor: 1770 MHz / 1905 MHz
XFX THICC: 1730 MHz / 1980 MHz
only the MSi Evoke is around the same clocks with 1690 MHz /	1835 MHz. Then again, the MSi cooler seems to have been tweaked too harshly, making it unnecessarily loud.

That said, considering the small difference (vs OC versions) in fps, thermals and price, the Pulse is still the strongest contender for the "better deal" prize (probably even against her Nitro+ sibling. We'll see.)


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## Ravenas (Sep 9, 2019)

ZoneDymo said:


> Thats like saying Nvidia invented Ray Tracing...dont give them too much credit pls.



True. I think consideration needs to be put in to W1zz comment on that being a con though. Is raytracing on a card meant for 1440p actually viable? How much FPS loss will be incurred due to turning on raytracing for only a select number of games at 1440p?


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## potato580+ (Sep 9, 2019)

look at this dope , anyway the worthly side abt raden 5700 is the price+performance value, basicly this model ruined what value term is, i wont go so high $440 if so i would rather get pricey nvidia rx2070 super


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## Ravenas (Sep 9, 2019)

potato580+ said:


> look at this dope , anyway the worthly side abt raden 5700 is the price+performance value, basicly this model ruined what value term is, i wont go so high $440 if so i would rather get pricey nvidia rx2070 super



You would pay $60 dollars more for a card that gets you 4-8 more avg. FPS at 1440p, and still doesn't play 4k at 60FPS?


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## dj-electric (Sep 9, 2019)

MAXLD said:


> Well, the Pulse also runs the core with less ~100MHz... You have to wait for the Sapphire Nitro+ with higher OC clocks to make a true evaluation of the cooler.
> Sapphire Pulse: 1670 MHz / 1815 MHz  (base / boost)
> Asus STRIX:  1770 MHz / 1905 MHz
> Powercolor: 1770 MHz / 1905 MHz
> ...



That's not how things work. The pulse runs actual speeds north of 1880Mhz. Those frequencies are like NVIDIA's, they get surpassed in actual work
Look at the pulse compered to the thicc ultra in performance relative to the RTX 2070S, they are virtually identical in speed, with some minor 2% difference. Throwing all that for a hot mess and 45W to the card is insanity. XFX's THICC II Ultra is criminally inefficient for its architecture and lithography. This card is almost 2014 maxwell level of performance pet watt.


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## potato580+ (Sep 9, 2019)

yes simply becouse i dont own any 4k monitor, only have dell 1080p and acer vgo 2k, and i think my cpu doesnt match highend gpu, so 4k is useless for me, am still good palying game in 1080p even on 720p, i got bunch oldscool game list waiting to be finishing,just dont have much time playing game these day


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## Ravenas (Sep 9, 2019)

potato580+ said:


> yes simply becouse i dont own any 4k monitor, only have dell 1080p and acer vgo 2k, and i think my cpu doesnt match highend gpu, so 4k is useless for me



Just my thoughts I guess but when you are playing a graphics intensive game like monster hunter world at 64 fps or 65 fps, respectively, I don't see the $60 value add. To each their own.


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## tomc100 (Sep 9, 2019)

I would switch over to AMD if they would reduce the power consumption and heat.


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## potato580+ (Sep 9, 2019)

Ravenas said:


> Just my thoughts I guess but when you are playing a graphics intensive game like monster hunter world at 64 fps or 65 fps, respectively, I don't see the $60 value add. To each their own.


yes couldnt agree more, i know the feel high framerate experince, is hard to go back to 30fps if we alr playing in high 60-240hz


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## Deleted member 158293 (Sep 9, 2019)

If it consumes that much more power than a standard card, any info on how it does with undervolting?


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## Joss (Sep 9, 2019)

dj-electric said:


> Hey, look, here's another cooler that can't beat the 409$ Sapphire Pulse in thermals and noise


Yes, the Sapphire Pulse seems to be the sweet spot of all 5700 XT cards; and that on just 25.5 x 13.5 cm.
Kudos to their brilliant heatsink/secondary heatsink design.


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## mahirzukic2 (Sep 9, 2019)

yakk said:


> If it consumes that much more power than a standard card, any info on how it does with undervolting?


I hate it that nobody does this in their reviews. This is like one of the things you have to go for (if you are any tech savvy user at all which you should be if you are reading this site) when buying this card series, just like the vegas (both the 56 and 64) as well as rx 580s.

What the FU*K?


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## MAXLD (Sep 9, 2019)

dj-electric said:


> That's not how things work. The pulse runs actual speeds north of 1880Mhz. Those frequencies are like NVIDIA's, they get surpassed in actual work



The proportion is the same if you check the clocks reached by each in their respective reviews. Pulse goes up to ~1930MHz... while both the STRIX and the THICC reach ~2050MHz, for example. That's around the said 100+ MHz difference. The XFX even runs almost all the time at 1.20V when the Pulse wanders around at quite lower 1.1x values. Therefore, the beefier Sapphire Nitro+ is going to be the better comparison card for these higher OC'ed ones. 
I'm not defending the THICC, it's not definitely the one I would buy. Until we see the Nitro+, so far, the Pulse seems the 5700 XT card to get, since it's predictable that the Nitro+ will probably behave something like the Asus or so (bit more performance and bit worse on noise/thermals).


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## TheGuruStud (Sep 9, 2019)

Why is it overvolted? Doesn't navi run at 2ghz on stock voltage?


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## jabbadap (Sep 9, 2019)

TheGuruStud said:


> Why is it overvolted? Doesn't navi run at 2ghz on stock voltage?



Stock 5700xt averaged 1.887 GHz and this one averaged 1.994 GHz, so over 100 MHz more clock speeds for gaming. Vanilla 5700XT was all ready over the chip optimum voltages, this just exaggerated those even further. Navi can be superb on perf/W as 5700:s shows.



ernorator said:


> "No hardware-accelerated raytracing"  as cons is lake "not nvidia" as cons



If competing graphics cards at the same price range have HW for accelerated ray tracing, then it's is a clear con to not having them. AMD _will_ have HW accelerated ray tracing capable gpus in the future and until then, it's a missing feature for their cards.


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## Animalpak (Sep 9, 2019)

50 degree at idle and 77 during load... ??  Even with that giant heatsink. 

Decent performance for an enthusiast card but energy consumption and the heat produced are still a weak point of AMD graphics cards

They put a little sun inside that card or what ?


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## jabbadap (Sep 9, 2019)

Animalpak said:


> 50 degree at idle and 77 during load... ??  Even with that giant heatsink.
> 
> Decent performance for an enthusiast card but energy consumption and the heat produced are still a weak point of AMD graphics cards
> 
> They put a little sun inside that card or what ?



It's more like a problem of XfX cramming clocks and powerlimit to the max, than anything what amd does(Well AMD allowes AIBs to do that, but I see that more as a plus than a con). If one could run this with i.e. Powercolor Red devil bios or even bios with same configuration, it would most certainly run quite cool and quiet.


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## TheinsanegamerN (Sep 9, 2019)

Disappointing. The cooler works fantastic, but it is defeated by XFX's horrible tuning of the card. Why is it drawing so much power? This is the same company whose flagship 480, the XFX 480 GTR black, not only ran faster then a reference card but drew less power in the process. They seem to have done the complete opposite here.



Animalpak said:


> 50 degree at idle and 77 during load... ??  Even with that giant heatsink.
> 
> Decent performance for an enthusiast card but energy consumption and the heat produced are still a weak point of AMD graphics cards
> 
> They put a little sun inside that card or what ?


Why are you blaming this on AMD?

The card does not spin its fans on idle. This is hardly the first GPU to do this, and ALL of them hover around similar idle temperatures. Nothing out of the ordinary there, and is the choice of the AIB, not AMD.

Second, at load this GPU is pulling 285+ watts of power, peaking at ~300. 77C under such conditions is just fine. Go look at nvidia cards with comparable power draw, and you will find similar temperature results. Again, not the fault of AMD, just simple physics, especially given 7nm is much denser then 14nm, and with such a small die its amazing they're able to remove this much heat at all.

Finally, look at the power consumption more closely. This card is drawing 65+ watts more power then the reference design, and running at a higher voltage. The temp and power usage results are the result of XFX not tuning their card right, not AMD themselves.

Stop blaming AMD for XFX's shortcomings and physics. Nvidia is going to have the exact same problem with 7nm whenever they get there.


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## Deleted member 158293 (Sep 9, 2019)

mahirzukic2 said:


> I hate it that nobody does this in their reviews. This is like one of the things you have to go for (if you are any tech savvy user at all which you should be if you are reading this site) when buying this card series, just like the vegas (both the 56 and 64) as well as rx 580s.
> 
> What the FU*K?



Easy there...

IMO Undervolting should always be standard procedure, especially for AMD aggressive binning process which uses higher voltages to improve yields.  But I guess it's not mainstream enough.  Haven't gotten around to buying a 5700 yet, but will post about it when I do.


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## moob (Sep 9, 2019)

I've posted this before but since nothing has changed I feel like potential buyers should be aware of XFX's awful security on their RMA page: http://www.xfxsupport.com/Account/Register.aspx

They're still using an unsecured website in 2019. That's inexcusable and they'd lose my patronage for that reason alone.


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## Anymal (Sep 10, 2019)

I believe there is a mistake in the end of conclusion:

Going more expensive, we have the ASUS RX 5700 XT STRIX and of course NVIDIA's RTX 2060 Super cards. That's why I feel a more appropriate price for the 5700 XT Ultra THICC II would be $420–$425. XFX does offer the non-Ultra THICC II at exactly the same price point, but lower out of the box clocks—I'll check on whether I can get a sample.


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## W1zzard (Sep 10, 2019)

Anymal said:


> I believe there is a mistake in the end of conclusion:
> 
> Going more expensive, we have the ASUS RX 5700 XT STRIX and of course NVIDIA's RTX 2060 Super cards. That's why I feel a more appropriate price for the 5700 XT Ultra THICC II would be $420–$425. XFX does offer the non-Ultra THICC II at exactly the same price point, but lower out of the box clocks—I'll check on whether I can get a sample.


Not seeing it?


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## Turmania (Sep 10, 2019)

I know it is an inefficient and loud design.Pulse seems to be the best go to option.but something about this design makes me ignore my senses.


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## Chrispy_ (Sep 10, 2019)

Have the drivers for Navi improved yet in terms of undervolting and better-behaved fan-speed curves? 

The review of the 5700XT left me thinking that AMD are pushing it too far in terms of clocks and voltage. It's noisy and hot with some weird Windows sleep/resume display errors.
The review of the 5700 left me thinking that AMD rushed that SKU. The fan profile is messed up and the voltage curve doesn't exist. It's just locked stupidly at one voltage for all states 

I've ordered one for compute testing but can't help but feel it's probably premature.


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## jabbadap (Sep 10, 2019)

Turmania said:


> I know it is an inefficient and loud design.Pulse seems to be the best go to option.but something about this design makes me ignore my senses.



Well the non Ultra Thicc should be a lot quiter card, unless XfX botch the vbios on that one too. I would not compare this to Pulse anyway, upcoming Toxic is more like a direct competitor.


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## CapNemo72 (Sep 10, 2019)

I wouldn't put "Lack of Ray tracing" as something bad.
As it is now, hardware-accelerated SELECTIVE ray tracing it is in its beta (or even alpha) phase. 
Whoever buys now card with RT, it is to be a beta tester, not future proof.
Next year will come GPUs from at least AMD and Nvidia with RT in hardware and will be much stronger offers compared to the ones today for probably less money. Intel might join the party too.
People who are working on nextgen consoles are already working on AMD's version of RT.

So, at the end of 2020, RT might be a feature that every new GPU should have, but today, it is just an expensive option.


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## Anymal (Sep 11, 2019)

W1zzard said:


> Not seeing it?


More expensive options 2060 Super cards?


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## W1zzard (Sep 11, 2019)

Anymal said:


> More expensive options 2060 Super cards?


Custom designs go above $400. I'll reword


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## Anymal (Sep 11, 2019)

Great review BTW, as always. In my top 3 review sites.


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