Today, AMD released their Radeon RX 5600 XT, which is based on the same Navi 10 silicon that powers the Radeon RX 5700 Series. We have two launch-day reviews for you: Sapphire RX 5600 XT Pulse and ASUS RX 5600 XT STRIX TOP. Cards from PowerColor and MSI have arrived too, but too late to be covered today.

AMD originally intended for the Radeon RX 5600 XT to go up against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1660 Super and GTX 1660 Ti. On Thursday last week, (!) they informed us that a specs change was coming through a BIOS update that unlocks additional performance. On the same day, we received the updated BIOS, which increases GPU clock, memory clock, board power limit, and GPU voltage. I've covered graphics card launches for well over a decade and such a thing never happened before. All parties involved always had plenty of time to work towards the launch with known products and specs. In the following days, several board partners reached out to me, asking for feedback on whether they should follow AMD's lead or stick with the announced specs. This just shows how much confusion was created overnight—with just three business days left to launch. Since this is a hard launch, RX 5600 XT cards will be available at retailers today, which created another problem. Production boards were already shipped, most of them already in their destination country, so reworking the BIOS in the factory was out of the question. I talked with nearly all board partners, and they all decided that customers will have to flash the BIOS themselves after purchase. Whether this will entail a 1-click updater to run or a more complex WinFlash-based mechanism is still unknown to some partners. While a GPU BIOS update will be child's play for many, it is a huge deal for less experienced gamers, and the chance of things going wrong is not zero. It's also a fundamental change from the "it just works" mechanics consumers are used to. They'll now have to first learn about the fact that such an update exists, do some research, and spend their time changing the product to bring it to its official specs. Remember, we're talking about a $300 purchase that's considered premium by the vast majority of the market. AMD could have postponed the launch a bit to give partners more time to get things in order. Let's just hope they are generous with RMAs and supportive of cases where something goes wrong with the BIOS flash. Thankfully, some cards, such as the ASUS STRIX, include a dual-BIOS to survive a bad BIOS flash, but not all cards have it.

AMD provided us with the following statement: "Based on ongoing testing with our board partners, we have raised the GPU core and memory frequencies for overclocked Radeon RX 5600 XT SKUs to take advantage of increased thermal and electrical headroom built into partner's custom designs. The updated VBIOS has been made available to our board partners for inclusion in select OC SKUs at launch. AMD is dedicated to disrupting the market with industry-leading compute products, and the new VBIOS makes the Radeon RX 5600 XT an even more powerful contender for high-performance 1080p gaming. Previously announced product specs are unchanged, as they remain AMD's recommended reference design specs." AMD also confirmed that "RX 5600 XT does not replace RX 5700".

This also clarifies that not all RX 5600 XT cards will receive a BIOS update. Rather, it is a per-model decision by the board partners, which of course makes sense as not all cards will be able to handle the higher clocks and heat. It also creates a huge performance range for RX 5600 XT to sit in. Based on our testing that range seems to be around 10%—a performance spread that's usually covered by two or three different models with clear naming differences. That's the reason why we tested both the old and new BIOS to get a feel for what to expect. As a result, it's no longer feasible to fire up your favorite shopping comparison engine, type in "RX 5600 XT" and buy the cheapest model listed. At the end of the day it is what it is. While things could have certainly been planned and executed much better, the end result for gamers is that they get 10% free extra performance.

Overall, when averaged over our testing suite at 1080p resolution, we see the RX 5600 XT (with the BIOS update) beat the NVIDIA RTX 2060—an important win. The card also slightly beats AMD's aging Radeon RX Vega 64, which is just as important a victory. The NVIDIA GeForce 16-series is far behind as the GTX 1660 Ti is 17% slower and the GTX 1660 Super is 18% slower. AMD's next-fastest SKU, the Radeon RX 5700, is only 7% faster though, and much more expensive. NVIDIA's RTX 2060 Super is 10% faster than the RX 5600 XT. With the old BIOS things were drastically different as the card could only match Vega 56 and wouldn't even beat the GTX 1070 Ti, so I can understand why AMD decided to change things overnight. Overall, the RX 5600 XT is a great card for 1080p gaming with plenty of headroom for future titles, but it can also handle 1440p well, maybe not at Ultra details in every single game, but it'll be a very decent experience overall.

ASUS basically reused their Radeon RX 5700 XT STRIX cooler and PCB design. Back in our review we were impressed by how well the card handled Navi's heat output, and the RX 5600 XT is no different. Actually, the card is way overengineered for the heat output of the RX 5600 XT, which of course has a beneficial effect on temperature and noise levels. In our testing, the ASUS card runs extremely cool—only 58°C with the performance BIOS and 67°C with the quiet BIOS. The card also achieved very impressive secondary temperatures, like hotspot, memory and VRM. What makes this feat even more remarkable is that the card is ultra-quiet at the same time. We measured 28 dBA for the performance BIOS and unbelievable 27 dBA for the quiet BIOS, which makes this the quietest RX 5600 XT we tested so far, but the differences are small, impossible to notice subjectively. Big kudos also go to ASUS for massively overbuilding their card's VRM design. It's the same as on the RX 5700 XT STRIX TOP: 10 phases for the GPU and 2+1 phases for memory. With those noise levels the card actually beats all competing NVIDIA cards I'm aware of. Yes, you read right, AMD is now quieter than NVIDIA! ASUS also included the highly-popular idle-fan-off capability with their card, which completely shuts off the fans in idle, browsing, productivity, and light gaming. Some competing NVIDIA cards lack that capability, too.

The secret sauce behind these impressive thermals is that AMD undervolted their Navi 10 GPU. Normally, the GPU is designed to run at 1.15 V to 1.20 V. On the RX 5600 XT, it ticks at 0.9 V before the BIOS update and 1.0 V after the update. This brings with it tremendous power savings at the cost of maximum operating frequency, but limited frequency is actually something AMD wants. Both RX 5600 XT and RX 5700 have the same shader count as the difference is only in frequency and memory bus/capacity. A heavily overclocked RX 5600 XT could thus match or even beat the more expensive RX 5700, cannibalizing the latter. That's why AMD was happy with such low operating voltages, which also improves performance per watt. While the new BIOS update does cost some efficiency, the ASUS STRIX with its huge VRM still aces that test and delivers performance per watt that beats pretty much the whole NVIDIA Turing lineup. Another big surprise: AMD can match NVIDIA Turing's power efficiency! People who are upgrading from an older graphics card won't have to worry about upgrading their power supply, too, which would incur additional expenses.

Back when NVIDIA launched the RTX 2060 with 6 GB VRAM, the Internet was full of hate. Now, AMD does exactly the same, and it still makes perfect sense for me. 8 GB VRAM on a card that's targeted at 1080p/1440p isn't worth it, especially if you have to meet a certain price point to make the card attractive. Looking through our performance results, I can identify only a single clear case: Assassin's Creed Origins. Here, we see the RX 5600 XT fall behind at 1440p, but all the other games are running fine. If you absolutely must have 8 GB VRAM, then be ready to pay for it: RX 5700 and RTX 2060 Super have you covered. It's not something I would do in this case where money matters.

The next and certainly bigger controversy will be real-time raytracing support. NVIDIA's RTX 2060 supports hardware accelerated raytracing, but RX 5600 XT does not. While proliferation of RTX is limited today, several big titles with RTX support are coming out this year. Next-gen consoles will also have support for hardware raytracing, which will further push game developers to embrace the new technology. Still, I would say raytracing isn't the most important capability to have in this market segment right now. On the other hand, the RTX 2060 is barely more expensive than the RX 5600 XT, and it has that unique selling point, making this a close call.

ASUS isn't 100% decided yet on pricing, but it looks like it'll be somewhere between $330 and $340, which is simply much too expensive. Sure, the card has an insanely big cooler (for a RX 5600 XT), but it doesn't make all that much of an difference unless you stare at temperatures in GPU-Z all day. Yes, noise levels are impressive, but the $289 Sapphire Pulse is pretty much equal, and the same goes for performance, where both cards are nearly identical. Since overclocking is limited by the slider range in Wattman, you're not gonna get more OC potential out of the card, either. The ASUS STRIX does tick all the feature checkboxes: adjustable RGB lighting with 5-pin output, dual BIOS, additional fan headers for two case fans—all that can't be for free. I still find that price too high.

Comparing the RX 5600 XT board design with the $299 EVGA RTX 2060 KO we reviewed yesterday, we can immediately see huge differences in manufacturing cost. AMD's VRM uses much more expensive components, and the overall complexity is higher, too. The PCB itself is also more expensive, typically a 12-layer PCB is used for the RX 5600 XT, whereas the RTX 2060 can make do with just 6 layers. All this suggests that NVIDIA is better prepared for a price war with AMD. The big unknown is ASIC pricing: NVIDIA's 12 nanometer Turing is bigger in die size, but cheaper to make per mm² than AMD's 7 nanometer Navi.
At the end of the day, for you as customer, all this doesn't make any difference, though. You now have two very similar options that both have comparable average performance, with very similar pricing, and power/heat/noise is no longer a clear win for NVIDIA, either. I wouldn't be surprised if competition will heat up even more in this segment. The Radeon RX 5700 non-XT and RTX 2060 Super will become more difficult to sell, too, because their performance uplift doesn't justify the higher cost unless you absolutely must have 8 GB of VRAM. That's why I think pricing for these two SKUs might be coming down soon, too. Looks like 2020 will be an interesting year for graphics hardware.

If you don't feel like a computer expert and "BIOS update" is something you've never done, and it scares you, then I'd strongly recommend holding off with your RX 5600 XT purchase until the currently fluid situation has stabilized and we know if there's any gotchas to watch out for. The next batches of cards that will reach retailers will all come with the right BIOS installed, but nobody knows when that will happen or how to distinguish them on shopping sites. I also uploaded all the BIOS files here for you to take a look at.

You might be wondering why this review's name was updated from "STRIX OC" to "STRIX TOP" after posting. ASUS just informed us that the sample they had originally sent was the "STRIX OC" (1560 MHz Game, 1620 MHz Boost, 12 Gbps memory), but using the new BIOS turned the card into the "STRIX TOP" (1670 MHz Game, 1750 MHz Boost, 14 Gbps memory), which is a new SKU specifically for overclocking the memory. The "STRIX OC" regular users buy will also receive a BIOS update (1670 MHz Game, 1750 MHz Boost, 12 Gbps memory), so GPU clocks match the TOP, as only memory speed remains at 12 Gbps. The STRIX TOP will ship to retailers after Chinese New Year, with the correct BIOS preinstalled.