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
These perf/dollar drops are all they really are. They could have just stuck to Pascal and Vega for all we care, for the most part. I mean, yes, the cards are architecturally newer, but why would we care if the bar isn't moved from what we already had available. Our cards drop in value anyway, a lot of time has passed.
I think we will see much more price movement until Ampere hits, which will then make all of those purchases practically worthless due to a notable jump in the whole stack, also in featureset. You have been warned.Yep. I get the impression Navi was really picked up seriously when Raja was getting out of the picture and they now realize they have fallen behind due to their Vega adventure. Their RT move and the new console release are very much related, we could perhaps even say it is Nvidia who provided the canvas for what the new console gen had on offer.
In a way the PC is dictating the direction of gaming nowadays. For online, it is Esports and the crowd that generates that is responsible. Minecraft (already has an RT makeover!) also originated on PC and other hits like the MOBA and PUBG too. The next one is the return of strong SP experiences and those work very well with the RT push. Ironically the internet gave single player its new mojo, as it got new exposure through the Let's plays and popular reviewers and all that. We can more readily 'share' our SP experiences too. It all fits right in.
[Sarcasm, note]Well, for starters, there are reference clocks/specs even if there are no actual cards. As you should have gleaned by the article, it appears these were shipped to reviewers with the reference clocks.
"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."
They don't say when this went out it. One could suspect back two weeks ago because I'm sure these cards are in transit to the retailer as we are 4 days away now.
I guess we'll wait to see if this happened when review come out on the 21st.
For now, I've heard at least one model sent to reviewers was sent with the wrong clocks and updated. I've also heard other models may be getting other updates, but none of those were said to match the difference on the reference clocks to proper. :)
I see the memory bump as significant. I see this just as part of "competition" when when your vying with an actual competitive product.
Only the naive people believe in these jebaited BS. AMD has positioned the first Navi prices according to certain competitior products, but when the competition responded with performance gains for the same price, AMD had to position their cards with lower prices. Simple as that!
The same is happening now, Nvidia when cutting the price of the RTX 2060, forced AMD to work on the RX 5600XT, in order to improve the competitiveness of the card. Be it performance increase through clocks or price reduction. This time they chose the first route, because it was probably the easiest. It´s the same Navi 10 chip and so they had some scope to increase clocks and avoid lowering the price.
Go to 5000 series and you can see just how much better it is than the 5700. I'm still a bit surprised.
according to steam survey 2060s sold twice as many units as 5700/xt combined,2070s three times as many.
yeah,they jebaited the crap out of nvidia's thunder.cause apparently pricing it at $400 right away wouldn't be the same.
And yeah, jebaited, do we really believe business is conducted through twitter posts?! Please.
we're at a time when a Fury X equivalent would actually be good,just 10-20% behing the 2080Ti and same feature set.
JHH has already mentioned consoles as their point of reference.
www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-claims-RTX-2080-Max-Q-is-faster-than-PS5-Xbox-Series-X.448695.0.html
ampere might go through some price adjustments when new gen consoles drop,but think about what it means for dGPUs when they go against a product with a +5 year life cycle.you can't pick on rtx 2060 super having trouble hitting 60 fps consistently at 1080p RTX when your own $400 card does not support it at all,and does not compensate for it neither in traditional performance (5% stock vs stock) nor in vram capacity (same) nor in temps and noise (same or worse) nor in overclock headroom (same or worse,it's a silicon lotery really how much navi user can achieve with UV and turing user can achieve with oc).