RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 Review: Navi makes a solid impression

The past two or three years have been a mixed bag for AMD's graphics wing, unlike its CPU division which has been on a role with Ryzen. The last time it had a major successful launch was three years ago, with Polaris GPUs. The pricey and power hungry Vega, while working as a stopgap solution, never quite took the fight to Nvdia's camp. And considering the 7nm Radeon VII was never meant for pure gaming, AMD had to bring something to table that could not only disrupt Nvidia's Turing line-up but pave the way for future Radeon products.

That something came in the form of 7nm Navi GPU, launched back in July along with 3rd generation Ryzen processors. Apart from bringing all the benefits of a process-shrink, Navi features a new and improved RDNA (Radeon DNA) graphic architecture and replaces GCN (Graphics Core Next) based Vega within AMD's product stack.

While RDNA isn't a complete architectural overhaul, many of its aspects have new elements introduced in almost every level. With RDNA, AMD's focus is on improved single-threaded performance and better utilization of fixed-function hardware. That means RDNA is better suited for gaming whereas GCN was better at handling complex HPC type workloads - part of the reason why AMD still keeps the GCN based Radeon 7 around.

Here are some key highlights of RDNA/Navi:

Click to enlarge

The new 7nm process -  Navi is smaller and more efficient with a 2.3X performance per area advantage over its predecessor. Compared to the 14nm Vega, AMD claims a 14% higher performance at same power envelope and a healthy 25% boost clock-for-clock. The increased transistor density also enables higher clock-speed which brings the RX 5700 series in a level-playing field with competing Nvidia cards.

Redesigned Compute Unit (CU) - AMD has doubled the amount of Scalar Units and Schedulers within Navi's CUs, resulting in twice the instruction throughput. Navi's RDNA design now has an adaptive Wave32/Wave64 mode and unlike GCN, each RDNA SIMD can now decode and issue new instruction every cycle which is achieved through executing Wave32 data-flow on SIMD32. Also, two CUs now work as a Work Group Processor (WGP) to better allocate shared resources.

Multilevel Cache Hierarchy - Navi GPU features a more defined and efficient cache subsystem with 512KB of intermediate L1 graphics cache which now handles all data requests from shader arrays and routes the necessary ones to a globally shared L2 (4MB). The L0 to ALU load bandwidth has been doubled speed-up things. Another significant change is the implementation Delta Color Compression (DCC) across the rendering pipeline to increase the effective memory bandwidth. all these improvements work toward reducing latency and power draw.

Navi's new media Engine supports hardware acceleration for faster 8K encoding/decoding of VP9/HEVC videos. It also keeps Vega's Asynchronous Compute engines (ACE) and Primitive shaders, with the later in a more functional form with the added flexibility of being compiler controlled.

Click to enlarge

AMD's latest offering comes in two flavors - RX 5700 XT and RX 5700, both equipped with 8GB GDDR6 memory and PCIe 4.0 support. The "XT" is based on a fully enabled Navi 10 GPU with a total of 2560 stream processor/shader units spread around 40 CUs. The "non-XT" gets a trimmed down version of the same silicon at 2304 stream processors.

Comparison table vs. AMD Radeons cards:

Graphics card	Radeon VII	RX 5700 XT	RX Vega64	RX 580
GPU	Vega 20	Navi 10	Vega 10	Polaris 20
Process	7nm TSMC	7nm TSMC	14nm GloFo	14nm GloFo
Shader cores	3840	2560	4096	2304
Base clock	1400 MHz	1605 MHz	1247 MHz	1257 MHz
Boost clock	1750 MHz	1905 MHz	1546 MHz	1340 MHz
Memory clock	1000 MHz	1750 MHz	953 MHz	2000 MHz
Memory Bus	4096-bit	256-bit	2048-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	1 TB/s	448GB/s	484GB/s	256GB/s
V-RAM	16GB HBM2	8GB GDDR6	8GB HBM2	8GB GDDR5
ROPs	64	64	64	32
Texture Units	240	160	256	144
Power(TDP)	300w	225w	295w	185w
Price	₹ 60,000	₹ 35,000	₹ 30,000	₹ 16,000

RX 5700 XT, as you see, has the fastest clocks among all recnt Radeon GPUs and despite having a narrower memory interface and ~40% lower Shader cores, it outperforms the big Vega64 by at least 15%. We've decided not to include AMD's so-called "Game clock" ratings which sits roughly between the base-clock and boost-clock. In the light of Ryzen's recent clock speed controversies, we don't really feel we need a new third rating to further complicate things!

comparison table vs. Nvidia RTX cards:

Graphics card	RTX 2070 Super	RX 5700 XT	RTX 2060 Super	RX 5700	RTX 2060
GPU	TU104/Turing	Navi 10	TU106/Turing	Navi 10	TU106/Turing
Process	12nm TSMC	7nm TSMC	12nm TSMC	7nm TSMC	12nm TSMC
Shader cores	2560	2560	2176	2304	1920
Base clock	1605 MHz	1605 MHz	1470 MHz	1465 MHz	1365 MHz
Boost clock	1770 MHz	1905 MHz	1650 MHz	1725 MHz	1680 MHz
Memory clock	1750 MHz	1750 MHz	1750 MHz	1750 MHz	1750 MHz
Memory Bus	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit
Memory Bandwidth	448GB/s	448GB/s	448GB/s	448GB/s	336GB/s
V-RAM	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR6
ROPs	64	64	64	64	48
Texture Units	160	160	136	144	120
Power(TDP)	215w	225w	175w	185w	160w
Price	₹ 45,000	₹ 35,000	₹ 34,000	₹ 31,000	₹ 28,000

After some preemptive repricing and repositioning of their respective product stacks, this is how competing AMD and Nvidia's competing graphics cards stand at the moment. With the introduction of Nvidia's super cards, the production of RTX 2070 is now discontinued and as such we haven't included it in the list. The specs are from reference editions, or founder's edition in case of Nvidia cards and the prices are taken from leading Indian e-tailers.

In terms of clock-speed, number of shader cores and memory bandwidth and capacity, the specs of these upper-mid range contenders closely match each other, except the 192-bit, 6GB RTX 2060. This is something we've been missing for last couple of years thanks to AMD's big-die GPUs with HBM, like Vega and Fiji. With a more streamlined architecture and conventional GDDR6, Navi seems to have restored much of the disparities. But does that reflect in the performance? Let's find out.



Performance Analysis: as always, we've been through tons of benchmark data from some of the biggest names in tech-media and both RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 deliver stellar gaming performances. Most reviewers found these cards to be very competitive in terms of price, performance and power consumption and ideal for 1440p gaming. Here some numbers to prove that -

Performance comparison table - all games average percentage:

AnandTech:

RX 5700 XT	RX 5700
Vs. RTX 2070 Super – 5% slower	Vs. RTX 2060 – 12% faster
Vs. RTX 2060 Super – 11% faster

Tom's Hardware:

RX 5700 XT	RX 5700
Vs. RTX 2070 Super – 7% slower	Vs. RTX 2060 – 11% faster
Vs. RTX 2060 Super – 10% faster
Vs. RX Veag64 – 15% faster

TechPowerUp:

RX 5700 XT	RX 5700
Vs. RTX 2070 Super – 12% slower	Vs. RTX 2060 – 5% faster
Vs. RTX 2060 Super – 5% faster
	Vs. RTX 2060 Super – 8% slower
Vs. RX Veag64 – 16% faster

TechSpot:

RX 5700 XT	RX 5700
Vs. RTX 2070 Super – 2% slower	Vs. RTX 2060 – 8% faster
Vs. RTX 2060 Super – 13% faster
	Vs. RTX 2060 Super – 1% faster
Vs. RX Veag64 – 15% faster

Don't forget that these are results from different review sites and thus not inter-comparable. The deviations in the results are due to the difference in used hardware and choice of tested games. While we would very much like to see platform agnostic game developing, unfortunately, that's not the case! In reality, most games are better optimized for one GPU design or other. And we're OK with that as long as things are kept playable across the range.

As things stand now, Radeons do well in Battlefield 1, Battlefield 5, far Cry 5, Strange Brigade, Tom Clancy's The division, Wolfenstein 2, F1 2018, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Games such as Ashes of Singularity: Escalation, Hitman 2, Resident Evil 2, GTA 5, Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Metro:Exodus provide a somewhat middle ground while Forza Horizon 4, Destiny 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy XV, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Fortnite, Monster Hunter: World typically favors team GeeForce. 

Having said that, the performance displayed by the Navi duo doesn't take much interpretation. The RX 5700 XT, which was originally supposed to go against RTX 2070, don't have much competition at its price point as the faster RTX 2070 Super is also ~INR.10K costlier. The 5-8% performance increment doesn't warrant a 25% price hike in our book. At around 10% faster, the XT is well beyond the reach of RTX 2060 Super, all the while costing just a fraction more. So unless you find a great deal on the outgoing RTX 2070, this is the card to have in the 30K-35K range. 

RX 5700 is in a more curious position, at least price wise. With an INR.30K price tag, it's not significantly cheaper than its faster sibling which means it lacks the usually excellent price/performance ratio associated with AMD's second fiddle GPU's (think HD6850, R9 390, RX 570, RX Vega56). It's still delivers 10% more frame rates than RTX 2060 -a card that desperately needs some price reduction to justify its substandard showing. Speaking of which, we can't help thinking that a slight price reduction won't hurt the RX 5700 either. In fact, at a sub-30K price-line, the lil' Navi can be an automatic choice for those planning an upgrade from GTX 970, GTX 1060 6GB or Vega56.

Power consumption is metric that we always keep a keen eye on; after all, power isn't cheap in India, nor is it going to be! Thankfully, it's not going to be a factor while choosing RX 5700 series cards. AMD has covered quite some grounds in making Navi much more efficient than its predecessors. while it's still not "Nvidia good", the energy consumption is in-line of a 2019 component and nothing that a well-built 650W power supply could not handle. RX 5700 is more efficient between the two, thanks to its lower clock-speed but both cards demonstrate excellent power/performance ratio.

Conclusion and verdict: Finally, there are two things that may stop you from grabbing one of these. The first is the fact that Nvidia's offering feature Realtime Ray Tracing and AMD's don't! During our RTX 2060 review, we discussed the matter in-depth. In one hand, it's undeniable that Ray Tracing can add a great deal of realism and immersion into a modern tittle; on the other, it is a question of how much of a performance hit are you willing to accept for that! Also there is the matter of the tech being relatively new and not many AAA tittles supporting the tech at this moment. That may very well change in the future but for now think of it this way - AMD gives you more FPS but Nvidia gives you better looking (and relatively lower) FPS at the same price!

That choice is much simpler in the value-sensitive mid range segments where a gamer on budget goes by the motto of "performance over eye-candy". But when you're splurging north of 30K on a single graphics card, the question of visual perfection becomes more relevant. If you ask me, Realtime Ray Tracing is yet to become a must have feature but in the end it's up-to you to decide.

Availability could be yet another deterrent. A limited stock and poor distribution could trigger the prices of these cards on a upward spiral, -a scenario we Indian consumers are very familiar with! AMD needs to make sure that doesn't happen by working very closely with its channel partners and importers. AMD's quoted price must stick and reflect on the market for our recommendations to stay valid. As always, we'll keep an eye over the situation.

So here we are, time for our verdict! With excellent performance and very competitive pricing, We have no reservation recommending the Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 for high-resolution gaming. In particular, The Radeon RX 5700 XT is the best upper-mid range graphics card for the money.