ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 Review - The First Real Custom Design

Name: ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3
Brand: ASRock

W1zzard

on Apr 13th, 2020,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: ASRock

(25 Comments) »

Introduction

We have with us the ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3, the company's premium, factory-overclocked RX 5600 XT offering. This is a card of many firsts. It has a PCB that is designed specifically for the RX 5600 XT (most other cards reuse RX 5700-series boards). It pairs this tiny PCB with a large triple-slot, triple-fan cooling solution that offers idle fan stop and is designed for low noise as it can handle the heat output of the RX 5600 XT with ease.

AMD designed the Radeon RX 5600 XT to dominate the sub-$300 market segment by offering the highest performance in this class at a starting price of $279. The competition between AMD and NVIDIA is more balanced here because NVIDIA's GTX 16-series lacks ray-tracing hardware, leaving it to compete with AMD on its terms. Before launch, AMD showed off graphs of the RX 5600 XT significantly outperforming the GTX 1660 Ti, forcing NVIDIA to coax its partners into designing cost-effective versions of its GeForce RTX 2060 at $299. In a last-minute response to this move, AMD revised the specifications of the RX 5600 XT, giving partners the freedom to deploy 10%–15% higher GPU clocks and faster 14 Gbps memory compared to its stock 12 Gbps. Soon after launch, ASRock released an easy 1-click BIOS updater for their Phantom Gaming D3 that enabled these new specifications. We used these specifications in all our testing of the card. ASRock provides full warranty for the higher memory clocks.

Under the hood, the RX 5600 XT uses the 7 nm "Navi 10" silicon with mostly the same core configuration as the RX 5700, but with a quarter less of its memory size and bandwidth. This 6 GB 192-bit GDDR6 setup gives the card about 288 GB/s of bandwidth at 12 Gbps. AMD's performance target for the RX 5600 XT hence is 1080p gaming at high frame rates (90 FPS or more), while retaining the ability to play today's games at 1440p with fairly high details at around 60 FPS.

ASRock chose to give this card a single 8-pin PCIe power input configuration and 14 Gbps memory after the post-launch BIOS update. The new BIOS runs the GPU at up to 1750 MHz boost, around 1670 MHz game clocks, and 14 Gbps for the memory. The cooling solution for this card is designed for cards of a higher segment, with its chunky triple-slot aluminium fin-stack heatsink and three fans, which will definitely help with noise and temperatures. ASRock is pricing the RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 at $290, a small $10 premium over AMD's $280 baseline.

Radeon RX 5600 XT Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX 590	$200	2304	32	1469 MHz	1545 MHz	2000 MHz	Polaris 30	5700M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
GTX 1660	$200	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	2000 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1070	$300	1920	64	1506 MHz	1683 MHz	2002 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX Vega 56	$260	3584	64	1156 MHz	1471 MHz	800 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1660 Super	$230	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	1750 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1660 Ti	$270	1536	48	1500 MHz	1770 MHz	1500 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1070 Ti	$450	2432	64	1607 MHz	1683 MHz	2000 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX 5600 XT	$280	2304	64	1375 MHz	1560 MHz	1500 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3	$290	2304	64	1560 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2060	$300	1920	48	1365 MHz	1680 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 5700	$330	2304	64	1465 MHz	1625 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
GTX 1080	$500	2560	64	1607 MHz	1733 MHz	1251 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5X, 256-bit
RTX 2060 Super	$400	2176	64	1470 MHz	1650 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64	$375	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$700	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT	$380	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit

Packaging

The Card

ASRock's RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 uses a mostly black color theme with red highlights. On the back you'll find a high-quality metal backplate in matching colors.

Dimensions of the card are 28 x 11 cm.

Installation requires three slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include three standard DisplayPort 1.4a and an HDMI 2.0b.

The board uses one 8-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 225 watts of power draw.

AMD's Navi generation of GPUs no longer supports CrossFire. DirectX 12 does include its own set of multi-GPU capabilities, but the implementation requires game developers to put serious development time into a feature only a tiny fraction of their customers might ever use.

Disassembly

ASRock is using three heatpipes on their cooler. The main heatsink also provides cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry.

The backplate is made out of metal; it adds to the card's aesthetic and protects components on the PCB when handling the card.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles or forum posts.