AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Graphics Card Review

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

High-FPS gaming generally loves faster memory, which is one of the reasons the 1660 SUPER can sometimes outperform the technically superior 1660 Ti. In the 5600 XT’s case, the 14Gbps memory put the Pulse card at the top of both the 1080p and 1440p results. At 1080p, the scaling is rather boring, and overall, it appears all of those GPUs could handle 144Hz (we’d still not go with a low-end card if competitive gaming is important).

It’s not the focus of this review, but since we’ve brought up the 5500 XT a few times, it definitely should be here. Whereas that card doesn’t always manage to beat out the RX 590, it easily managed it using both resolutions here, and by a rather significant margin. Despite having a lower bandwidth rating, the performance goes from 8Gbps on the RX 590 to 14Gbps on the RX 5500, so we’re seeing clear advantages from faster memory here.

Rainbow Six: Siege

At both tested resolutions in Siege, we’re seeing a massive difference between the reference-clocked RX 5600 XT and the Sapphire Pulse boosted one. Again, we’re dealing with high-FPS here, but if your goal is to maximize your 144Hz monitor, you’ll obviously want to make sure you have as much extra breathing room as possible. A 148 FPS average at 1440p doesn’t mean it’ll never dip below 144Hz, so you have to keep that in mind (we haven’t recorded minimums here because they haven’t been consistent enough).

In CS: GO, the RX 5500 XT outpaced the RX 590 by quite a bit, but the situation changes in Siege, where the older RX 590 actually manages to be the better-performing card. It could be that this game just happens to be really optimized for the Polaris architecture, so hopefully the newer RX 5500 XT can take the lead here at some point in the future.