Friday, January 17th 2020
AMD Allegedly Bolstering Radeon RX 5600 XT in Response to RTX 2060 Price Cut
AMD has allegedly changed the specifications of its Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card through a BIOS update being pushed to manufacturers, according to an HKEPC report. According to the report, AMD has increased clock-speeds of the RX 5600 XT to 1615 MHz gaming and 1750 MHz boost, versus 1375 MHz gaming and 1560 MHz on AMD's CES press-event slides detailing the card. Confirmation of this comes from the product page of Sapphire's RX 5600 XT Pulse graphics card, which doesn't bear any "OC" marking in either the product name or box art, but yet has an updated specs tab, referencing the new clock speed.
Increased GPU (engine) clocks isn't all, Sapphire also increased memory clock speeds from 12 Gbps to 14 Gbps (a 15% increase in memory bandwidth). Also, the typical board power ("power consumption") value has gone up from 150 W to 160 W, indicating a possible power-limit increase. These last-minute changes could probably significantly change the performance numbers of the RX 5600 XT in a bid to make it more competitive to the GeForce RTX 2060. Earlier today, it was reported that NVIDIA formally cut prices of the RTX 2060 down to $299, which would put it within $20 of the RX 5600 XT with its launch price of $279.
Sources:
HKEPC, VideoCardz
Increased GPU (engine) clocks isn't all, Sapphire also increased memory clock speeds from 12 Gbps to 14 Gbps (a 15% increase in memory bandwidth). Also, the typical board power ("power consumption") value has gone up from 150 W to 160 W, indicating a possible power-limit increase. These last-minute changes could probably significantly change the performance numbers of the RX 5600 XT in a bid to make it more competitive to the GeForce RTX 2060. Earlier today, it was reported that NVIDIA formally cut prices of the RTX 2060 down to $299, which would put it within $20 of the RX 5600 XT with its launch price of $279.
98 Comments on AMD Allegedly Bolstering Radeon RX 5600 XT in Response to RTX 2060 Price Cut
Unless these can continue to be easily accessible via overclocking, and not hardware locked.
Now AMD is officially issuing an artificially lower spec product in the 5600xt while withholding full engineered performance to see nvidia's response before unlocking performance, seemingly only if needed. If AMD did not need to unlock this performance then they probably wouldn't either since that would increase their yield and lower production costs.
This limited duopoly situation only looks to be magnifying these business practices.
so now AMD will just make the 5600XT look even better at stock settings ;-).
I doubt this does either of what you claim, but please, provide some proof and then we can discuss it. Right now, you're just flinging muck to see if it'll stick.
You can call it bad business practice and that I can agree on, but that's a different matter entirely. However, as you've pointed out, we only have two choices when it comes to buying graphics cards...
I can agree on the last point and it's been a rotten situation for too long, but no-one is willing to step up and compete with Nvidia. I doubt Intel will be the knight in shining armour that people have been waiting for.
Intel on the other hand...lol. Hopefully they can get up and running again, it would be great to see a proper 3-player game in these spaces.
I do not see Intel looking to compete with nvidia short term on the desktop, that wouldn't seem to be in their best interest and where they could make the most profit from.
Competition is a beautiful thing, isn't it?
Truth be told, it will be priced right...
www.amazon.com/XFX-1750MHz-Express-Graphics-Rx-57XL8LBD6/dp/B07XVMXBQW/ref=pd_cp_147_1/261-6075723-2899132?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07XVMXBQW&pd_rd_r=66329dac-bca4-4803-a354-402e43fb83e8&pd_rd_w=YaD5v&pd_rd_wg=wtUUo&pf_rd_p=0e5324e1-c848-4872-bbd5-5be6baedf80e&pf_rd_r=GCGHF5WWHKY53P3KCRSW&psc=1&refRID=GCGHF5WWHKY53P3KCRSW
Nvidia is feeling the heat of a resurging AMD and will probably try to serpond more often than what we have used to in the past. If Nvidia leaves AMD to enjoy a nice income from GPUs, while getting all that success in CPUs, in a couple of years will have to face a competitor as strong as itself. So, Nvidia is responding and AMD reacts in any way it can, either that is price cuts or new BIOSes just days before the release of a new product .
... but as I said, I don't think many will shake a stick at the current price point. ;)