Sales of the Radeon RX 5600 XT video card started yesterday and almost all AMD partner companies managed to present their versions of the novelty before that time. But if you follow the news, not everything went as smoothly as AMD would like. Due to the release of the RX 5600 XT, NVIDIA has lowered the price of its popular GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card from $349 to $299, making the latter a slightly more profitable solution than the new product from AMD.

In turn, the “red” giant almost at the last minute before the release of the Radeon RX 5600 XT gave permission to increase the base frequencies of the video card by updating the BIOS. As a result, it turned out that all the prepared marketing materials were outdated even before the start of sales.

Here are all currently released (January 22, 2020) non-reference models of the Radeon RX 5600 XT video card:

AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Number of fansDimensions of the video card
Length x Width x Height
Frequencies
(Game / Maximum)
GDDR6 memory speedAuxiliary power connectors
ASRock PG D2 OC224.0 x 12.7 x 5.31495 / 1620 MHz12 Gbps8-pin
ASRock PG D3 OC329.1 x 12.7 x 5.31560 / 1620 MHz12 Gbps8-pin
ASRock CLD D OC224.0 x 12.7 x 5.31460 / 1620 MHz12 Gbps8-pin
ASUS ROG STRIX OC330.4 x 13.0 x 5.4? / 1640 MHz12 Gbps8-pin + 6-pin
ASUS TUFX3 OC328.3 x 11.6 x 5.4? / 1640 MHz12 Gbps8-pin
GIGABYTE GAMING OC327.9 x 11.4 x 4.91560 / 1620 MHz12 Gbps8-pin
GIGABYTE WF OC222.8 x 11.8 x 4.1?12 Gbps8-pin
MSI GAMING X229.7 x 14.0 x 5.81460 / 1620 MHz12 Gbps8-pin + 8-pin
MSI GAMING229.7 x 14.0 x 5.81420 / 1600 MHz12 Gbps8-pin + 8-pin
MSI MECH OC223.1 x 12.7 x 4.61420 / 1600 MHz12 Gbps8-pin
MSI MECH223.1 x 12.7 x 4.61375 / 1560 MHz12 Gbps8-pin
POWERCOLOR Red Dragon224.0 x 11.8 x 4.01560 / 1620 MHz14 Gbps8-pin
POWERCOLOR Red Devil224.0 x 11.8 x 5.21660 / 1750 MHz14 Gbps8-pin + 6-pin
POWERCOLOR OC223.0 x 9.8 x 4.01560 / 1620 MHz12 Gbps8-pin
SAPPHIRE PULSE225.4 x 13.5 x 4.71615 / 1750 MHz14 Gbps8-pin
XFX THICC II PRO228.0 x 14.8 x 4.41560 / 1620 MHz12 Gbps8-pin
XFX THICC III PRO332.6 x 14.8 x 4.41615 / 1750 MHz12 Gbps8-pin + 6-pin
XFX THICC III Ultra332.6 x 14.8 x 4.41660 / 1750 MHz12 Gbps8-pin + 6-pin

Considering that, in fact, the Radeon RX 5600 XT video card is a cut-off version of the Radeon RX 5700, we can safely say that models with a combination of 8 and 6, or, even better, an 8 and 8-pin auxiliary power connector, will become a more profitable purchase. Thus, of course, in theory, you will be able to overclock your video card to the frequencies of the older models (RX 5700), which is clearly not possible if you choose a card with one 8-pin additional power supply.

Among video cards with 8+6/8+8-pin power, the models from XFX are especially different, namely THICC III PRO and THICC III Ultra. The first has frequencies of 1615/1750 MHz (game/max-boost), and the second has the highest GPU frequency formula at all – 1660/1750 MHz (game/max-boost). However, both of these cards still have not received a new BIOS with GDDR6 frequencies increased to 14 GHz. Therefore, the model from POWERCOLOR Red Devil with its 1660/1750 MHz (game/max-boost) GPU frequencies and 14 GHz memory looks more advantageous.

And the last of the cards of interest at the moment is SAPPHIRE PULSE. Its GPU frequencies are slightly lower than those described above, however, as a rule, the quality of SAPPHIRE products is high enough and quite enough to take even higher frequencies than the company installed at the factory. The frequency formula for SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 5600 XT is as follows: GPU – 1615/1750MHz and memory 14GHz.

It should be understood that in the near future, all AMD partners will have to release an updated BIOS with increased chip and memory frequencies. Nevertheless, at the moment, not all firmwares have been released yet, therefore the above-described video cards are more profitable solutions against the background of competitors.

Our colleagues from TechPowerUP have already tested the SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 5600 XT video card with the new and old BIOS. Check out their performance studies below for Battlefield 5, FarCry 5, and Rainbow Six Siege, or better, head over to TechPowerUP to watch the full benchmark.

On average, the new firmware brings about 10% performance to the RX 5600 XT, which is pretty good overall. However, it should be understood that along with the increase in frequency, the power consumption of the video card also increases:

With the old bios, the power consumption is 136 watts, and with the new one an impressive 176 watts.

As a result, the Radeon RX 5600 XT turned out to be quite an interesting and productive video card, the release of which was slightly overshadowed by the need to update the BIOS, which is not always an easy task for the end-user.

Source: VideoCardz, TechPowerUp

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