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
Just checked my database, yes, you get more performance/watt with the new updated specs. You go from 49.77 GFLOPS/Watt to 50.40 GFLOPS/Watt.
I am still puzzled.
If this thing can run higher core clocks and 14gbps on memory just like that,why didn't it before nvidia dropped the price ?
Is this bolstering ?
weren't they just sandbagging your $280 card to sell more 5700s ?
but this is expected.
however,this is just pushing stock performance higher,would decrease oc headroom in favor of out of the box performance.good news,not everybody overclocks.
A good example, in my opinion, would be 5700 flashing to XT.
But thats the key word, TDP. Yes, performance was being left on the table, but to fit a TDP envelope. AMD is specifically going past that here in this move.
I stick with Nvidia - and have since I upgraded from my Voodoo 3 3000 to a Geforce MX400. A long with Intel CPU, I have never been disappointed.
Now I am rolling a 2080Ti FTW3 and a 2080Ti Black.
I love Nvidia's regular updates, bug fixing turnaround and their style.
Cheapest is $389 CAD.........
www.memoryexpress.com/Brand/amd/RadeonRX5600.Offer.aspx
nvidia isn't the market leader, Intel is with IGP... Oh, did you mean innovation? Well, they are leading in some innovative ways, but not in all aspects.
I don't think nvidia forced AMD to do anything, I think they upscoped their card to compete against a higher tier product because they could, and offer it for $20 less than competition. The 5600 was originally (so I have read anyway) set to compete against 1660 series cards, not the 2060. nvidia 1st gen raytracing performance is so bad that you can only play it on lowest setting on 2060 at 1080 res anyway, so that is hardly a selling point for that card. 2nd gen ray tracing on Ampere on 3060 (if they make such a card) might be quite a bit better and worth the consideration compared to an AMD card.
The $300 plus priced 5700 series of cards is not the hottest performing market segment for gamers, the $200-$300 is a much higher selling segment than $300 plus. What you said is like saying nvidia launched the 2080 Ti and AMD gained 5% market share. How many people are running out to spend so much on a video card? Not very many. You also have to give people time to buy products. 5600 cards should have higher sales volume than 5700, though not by significant margins since 5600 is hardly below $300.