EVGA's cost-effective GeForce RTX 2060 KO graphics card debuted at CES, at an attractive price of USD $299, a pricing that very likely had the blessings of NVIDIA. This card may very well be the first of many RTX 2060 custom-design cards by NVIDIA partners to compete with AMD's new Radeon RX 5600 XT being launched at $279. AMD claims performance leads over the price-matched GTX 1660 Ti, which held NVIDIA's fort under the $300 price-band, until now.

Over the weekend, EVGA formally launched the RTX 2060 KO, and already offered pre-order discounts on both its own web-store, and popular U.S. retailer Newegg, with the base RTX 2060 KO going for $279, and the factory-overclocked RTX 2060 KO Ultra priced at $299, with a $20 "instant rebate." This would put the RTX 2060 KO price-matched with the RX 5600 XT, and it would be interesting to see if AMD can respond with lower prices (which would then pancake both NVIDIA's and AMD's product-stack south of $250). EVGA is expected to ship the first orders of the RTX 2060 KO from this week.

At CES, we went hands-on with the EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 KO graphics card, and its price came as the biggest surprise: USD $299. This could very well be NVIDIA's first response to AMD's Radeon RX 5600 XT: a new line of RTX 2060 graphics cards under $300, with RTX support being the clincher. The EVGA card looks like it's severely built to a cost. A 20-ish centimeter length, a simple twin-fan cooling solution, and just three connectors, including a legacy DVI-D. It still has a full-length back-plate. The KO ticks at NVIDIA-reference clock-speeds for the RTX 2060. EVGA is planning a premium KO Ultra SKU with factory-overclocked speeds comparable to the RTX 2060 iCX, priced at a small premium. EVGA says that the RTX 2060 KO will launch next week (January 13 or later).

PowerColor at CES 2020 took the opportunity provided by AMD's announcement of the RX 5600 XT graphics cards to showcase their offerings on that SKU. Based on a graphics card that AMD announced would be targeting the $279 price point, PowerColor will be launching two SKUs based on the Navi silicon: RX 5600 XT Red Devil and Red Dragon.

The RX 5700 XT Liquid Devil is based on PowerColor's RX 5700 XT started shipping back in November 25th.

AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su at the company's 2020 International CES address announced the company's e-sports flagship graphics card, the Radeon RX 5600 XT. This card is designed to dominate the sub-$300 market-segment that's been led by NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1660-series. Based on 7 nm "Navi" silicon, the RX 5600 XT has surprisingly powerful specs: 2,304 stream processors across 36 RDNA compute units, which is the same as the RX 5700, but with some cost-cutting in the way of memory: 6 GB of GDDR6 across a 192-bit wide memory interface, and 12 Gbps memory speed. The GPU has a gaming engine clock of roughly 1500 MHz. Other key specs include 144 TMUs and 48 ROPs.

Designed with a 150 W typical board power target, the card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. The RX 5600 XT is designed to provide 1080p e-sports gaming at high refresh-rates, or 1440p gaming at reasonable graphics settings. In its presentation, AMD showed the RX 5600 XT beating the GTX 1660 Ti that leads NVIDIA's GTX 16-series. With a price of USD $279 SEP, which is on-par with that of the GTX 1660 Ti, AMD looks to bring some serious competition to the $200-300 market-segment. Available January 21, 2020.

Not content to let AsRock call out all of the enthusiast's attention for today, XFX has (perhaps not so inadvertently) leaked their upcoming interpretation of the AMD RX 5600 XT. Named the THICC II PRO STAGING (that's somewhere between a mouthful and two), it apparently features the same cooling solution as the RX 5500 XT THICC II PRO as well as a similar color scheme - black and bronze. According to XFX, the RX 5600 XT does indeed feature 2304 Stream Processors and 6 GB of 12 Gbps GDDR6 in a 192-bit memory configuration.

The graphics card isn't actually that bad of a looker with its rounded edges and almost full-black industrial design. XFX are quoting a game clock at 1460 MHz, which is higher than what has been leaked as the AMD reference. Video output includes 1x HDMI and 3x DisplayPort. XFX offers a three year limited warranty on the graphics card.

Here's the first press-shot of an upcoming Radeon RX 5600 XT custom-design graphics card, this one from ASRock. The RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming OC appears to combine a compact PCB with a long triple-fan cooling solution that's 29 cm in length. The cooling solution features an aluminium fin-stack heatsink that's ventilated by a trio of 80 mm spinners. The card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, indicating a significantly lower power draw target than the RX 5700-series. The card's box confirms 6 GB of GDDR6 memory, and factory-overclocked speeds, which according to VideoCardz are 1560 MHz gaming.

From an older report, we know that the RX 5600 XT is designed to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. It's armed with 2,304 stream processors, 144 TMUs, possibly 48 ROPs, and a 192-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface holding 6 GB of memory, which ticks at 12 Gbps. The RX 5600 XT appears to be carved from the 7 nm "Navi 10" silicon, with a quarter of its memory interface disabled. AMD is expected to debut the card at its International CES 2020 presser, later this month.

AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card features the same exact stream processor count as the $350 RX 5700, according to a leaked specs sheet of a an AIB partner's custom-design graphics card. With a stream processor count of 2,304, it's safe to assume that the RX 5600 XT is based on the same 7 nm "Navi 10" silicon as the RX 5700 series. What set the RX 5600 XT apart from the RX 5700, besides lower clock-speeds, is the memory subsystem, which is severely stripped down. The Radeon RX 5600 XT will be equipped with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit wide memory interface. What's more, the memory ticks at 12 Gbps, compared to 14 Gbps on the RX 5700 series.

With these specs, the RX 5600 XT has 288 GB/s of memory bandwidth at its disposal, same as NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. In contrast, with 8 GB of 256-bit GDDR6 running at 14 Gbps, the RX 5700 enjoys 448 GB/s. The specs sheet suggests that AMD has also dialed down the engine clock-speeds (GPU clocks) a bit, with up to 1620 MHz boost, up to 1460 MHz gaming, and 1235 MHz base. With these specs, it's highly likely that the RX 5600 XT outperforms the GTX 1660 Ti and gets close to the RTX 2060. It all boils down to pricing. The RX 5500 XT is a decent GTX 1650-series alternative with a lukewarm price thanks to NVIDIA's aggressive product-stack management by getting its partners to lower prices of the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Super. It would be interesting to see if AMD can outfox NVIDIA in the sub-$300 market.

AMD's upcoming RX 5600 XT will bring about a much needed power increase over the current baseline RX 5500 series, slotting smoothly between it and the mainstream, high-performance RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT. New benchmarks spotted by Videocardz place AMD's upcoming graphics card (which could feature a 6 GB VRAM with higher capacities likely to be offered as well) some 35% ahead of the RX 5500, as well as on the overall performance level of AMD's RX Vega 56. That AMD card debuted at $399 and now has performance 8% to 15% higher than NVIDIA's current GTX 1660 SUPER, exactly where AMD would want the RX 5600 XT's performance to land.

Other details come courtesy of another publication, where Igor Wallosseck over at Igor's Lab says that AMD could be looking at harvesting the Navi 10 dies that power the company's RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 by disabling one of four Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACEs). These four ACEs are found two each on one of Navi's Shader Engines (SEs), and disabling one ACE and subordinate hardware from the full Navi 10's 40 RDNA Units, 2,560 Stream Processors (SPs), 160 texture mapping units (TMUs) and 64 render output units (ROPs) would make up for an RX 5600 XT with 30 RDNA CUs, 1,920 SPs, 120 TMUs, 48 ROPs and expected 3 MB of L2 cache. AMD could be looking to position the AMD RX 5600 XT in the $249 price range, since top tier RX 5500 XT tend to go for $200.

GIGABYTE is readying a new brand-extension for its graphics cards lineup, called EAGLE. It will join the company's existing brand extensions, namely Aorus Gaming and WindForce series. Regulatory filings by GIGABYTE with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) sees the company launching as many as 30 individual SKUs, spanning nearly every current-generation GPU. On the AMD front, we have cards based on the RX 5700 XT, RX 5700, RX 5500 XT, and the yet-unannounced RX 5600 XT, with its 6 GB of memory.

The NVIDIA lineup includes all its GTX 16-series and RTX 20-series SKUs, with the exception of the RTX 2080 Ti. The inclusion of RTX 2070 and RTX 2080, SKUs believed to have been passively retired with the advent of the RTX 2070 Super and RTX 2080 Super, is interesting. It shows that NVIDIA hasn't given up on the two. The RTX 2070's second-coming in particular, was reportedly triggered by supply shortages in the RX 5700 series, giving NVIDIA room to sell something around the $400-450 mark, bang in the middle of the RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super.

AMD's Radeon RX 5600-series could see the company take on the top-end of NVIDIA's GeForce 16-series, such as the GTX 1660 Super and the GTX 1660 Ti. A report from earlier this month pegged a December 2019 product announcement for the RX 5600-series and subsequent availability in the weeks following. Regulatory filings by AMD AIB (add-in board) partners with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) shed more light on the product differentiation within the RX 5600 series. The filings reveal that the RX 5600 and RX 5600 XT feature 6 GB and 8 GB sub-variants.

The regulatory filing by ASUS references products across its ROG Strix, TUF Gaming, and Dual lines of graphics cards. As mentioned in the older report, we expect AMD to carve the RX 5600 series out of the larger "Navi 10" silicon, by disabling many more RDNA compute units than the RX 5700, and narrowing the GDDR6 memory bus to 192-bit for the 6 GB variants. AMD has an opportunity to harvest "Navi 10" chips down to stream processor counts such as 1,792 (28 CUs) or 2,048 (32 CUs). It also has the opportunity to use cost-effective 12 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips.

AMD is expected to bolster its mid-thru-performance segments of graphics cards with a few new product announcements in December. To begin with, the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which maxes out the 24 RDNA compute units on the "Navi 14" silicon, could see an early-December announcement, possibly ahead of the mid-December release of the RX 5500 to the AIB (add-in board) retail channel. Next up, is the new RX 5600 series, which enables AMD to capture $200-$300 price-points, competing with the likes of the GeForce GTX 1660 Super and GTX 1660 Ti.

There's no word on how what silicon the RX 5600 series is based on, but VideoCardz reports that the series topping RX 5600 XT has 6 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit wide memory interface. We expect that the RX 5600-series will carved out of the "Navi 10" silicon by disabling many RDNA compute units and narrowing its memory bus. Given that the RX 5500 XT has 1,536 stream processors and the RX 5700 has 2,304, AMD's wiggle room is somewhere between the two, with stream processor counts of 2,048 or 1,920 being plausible for the RX 5600 XT, and 1,792 for the RX 5600, if it exists. Availability of the RX 5600 series is slated for January 2020.Image Courtesy: PCGamesN