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- Not all Radeon RX 5600 XT are created equal, not all will be updated
Not all Radeon RX 5600 XT are created equal, not all will be updated
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With its Radeon RX 5600 XT, AMD has, it seems, maintained a certain vagueness on the exact technical characteristics of its card. Enough to force the brand's partners to communicate on the subject.
Announced at CES, the Radeon RX 5600 XT has been commercially available since the start of the week. At the Las Vegas show, Lisa Su, CEO of the company, gave the technical characteristics of the card, as well as its price. Two components to understand that the Radeon RX 5600 XT would rub against the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti from Nvidia. A few days later, the trade press received its Review copies so as to offer a Review on January 21 – which was our case.
In the meantime, Nvidia has readjusted the price of its GeForce RTX 2060 to a level very close to the future RX 5600 XT. What somewhat counterbalance the plans of AMD, whose newcomer was then complicated. Two solutions for the firm: reduce the price of the card or allow its partners to change the technical specifications. The first choice is quite complicated because, at € 299, the room for maneuver is quite low for the Radeon RX 5600 XT which, sold cheaper, would cannibalize the RX 5500 XT (around € 230). It is therefore quite logical that AMD decided to opt for the second plan.
New firmware not installed on the first cards on sale
The firm has sent journalists a new firmware for the Review cards – Sapphire Radeon RX 5600 XT Pulse and Asus TUF X3 Gaming for the majority. And as much to say that this new firmware does not go hand in hand on the changes. On the Sapphire Pulse, this had the effect of pushing the memory frequency from 1,500 to 1,750 MHz (+ 17%), slightly increasing the threshold of electrical consumption and saving a hundred megahertz on the frequency GPU. Enough to get a frequency in play announced at 1,615 MHz, against 1,375 MHz initially planned (+ 17%) and an even higher effective frequency, measured at 1,740 MHz by us.
However, AMD has not changed the basic technical characteristics of the Radeon RX 5600 XT which is still referenced on its site with the data delivered during the CES. We could then conclude that the brand's partners would be free to offer both basic and boosted cards. During our Review, we then decided to Review the Sapphire card with this hormone-boosted firmware, but also by matching it to the basic specifications. What observe a difference of 16% on average in the games between the two settings. And if the basic version is actually fighting against the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti from Nvidia, the extreme version manages to rise to the level of entry level GeForce RTX 2060.
The problem is that AMD's partners were also warned late. Obviously, the first pallets of Radeon RX 5600 XT came out of the warehouses well before they could update these first batches of cards. Acquirers of the first hour will have cards slower than those presented by the press. No twists and turns since the firmwares are offered for download on the websites of the manufacturers in question. Still it is necessary that users are aware of the presence of said firmware and able to perform the operation alone – most brands, however, offer a fairly simple operation.
Not all RX 5600 XT will be updated
The handling of AMD is also quite intriguing since it also leaves some doubt about the ability of all 5600 XT to rev up. In practice, all the market references will not be boosted in terms of memory. The reason is quite simple and largely explained through a ehealth posted by MSI. Some manufacturers choose the memory they will associate with their graphics card themselves. If it is validated at 1,750 MHz, they will be free to offer firmware allowing them to move up a gear. However, if it is only validated at 1500 MHz, no change is expected and the card will not benefit from any firmware.
MSI thus ensures that AMD often offers GPU + memory packages to its partners. In this case, this memory is specified at 1500 MHz, but AMD indicates that it is supposed to operate at 1750 MHz. Two cases then: the partners offer a firmware without performing a Review or they pass their turn, preferring to play it safe. Sending an update without validation can then raise concerns about stability concerns, especially since you have to be certain that the power supply circuit of the card is well able to support the increase in memory and GPU frequency. .
It is up to each manufacturer to see the risk they wish to take. MSI and Asus for example prefer to play it fairly calmly: cards with 14 Gb / s memory will be sold under another name than those at 12 Gb / s. A way of doing things that we welcome and that AMD would have been inspired to follow. Indeed, we think that it would have been preferable for the firm to clarify the thing from the start, by launching two separate references, 5600 XT and 5600 XTX for example.
In absolute terms, users are not deceived: they will have the graphics card they order. However, the choice of a Radeon RX 5600 XT is quite complex: choosing a boosted version or not request, it will be understood, a careful reading of the technical characteristics at the time of purchase. The situation should become clearer in the coming weeks, as the first lots leave the stock of resellers.
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