Why NOT to buy Radeon 5700 XT… Yet – Our Review

[Emily Young]

Two new Radeons compliment AMD’s simultaneous 3rd-gen Ryzen launch, but do they have the performance it takes to keep up with Nvidia’s RTX SUPER cards, or are they just hot air?

 

 

Buy a Radeon RX 5700:
On Amazon: https://geni.us/uW64O
On Newegg: https://lmg.gg/8KV5L

 

Buy a Radeon RX 5700 XT:
On Amazon: https://geni.us/ANSB9Aw
On Newegg: https://lmg.gg/8KV5B

[Daniel644]

damn 5700XT looks like Linus dropped something on the mold and AMD couldn't afford to replace it.

[SenKa]

Another amazing Anthony video as always!

 

You seem to be looking at the Navi cards much more confidently than Steve/GN, I'm not sure if you've seen his review but if you have why do you figure such a differing outlook on the cards? I know Steve is always very critical but the difference is almost staggering to me.

 

Regardless, you are quickly becoming my favorite LMG host and I hope to see you in even more videos coming forward!

[Evanair]

For the 2070S vs 2060S Render, the main difference is the use of the T104 vs the T106. Perhaps this is the change?  I'm wondering how this same test bench stacks up with a 2080 (non-S) card, as they both use the T104 die, though the 2070S disables some features.

 

 

[Daniel644]

12 minutes ago, Evanair said:

For the 2070S vs 2060S Render, the main difference is the use of the T104 vs the T106. Perhaps this is the change?  I'm wondering how this same test bench stacks up with a 2080 (non-S) card.

 

 

EXACTLY they could have put a regular 2080 into the test (surely they have those numbers from their Super review) since the 2070 Super IS a 2080 with disabled cores.

 

 

Also (general comment unrelated to the post I am replying to),

COME ON GUYS, really, REALLY???? STOP with these "performance per dollar weighted graphs" they are meaningless bullshit, trying to level the performance of a card that is so fucking sporadic is just stupid, people need to actually look at what they actually will do with this GPU (or any GPU and compare it with the others) because the performance on these cards is all over the fucking map, in 1 game the 5700 is beating a 2070 Super, in another the 2060 Super is SMASHING the fuck out of the XT, this inconsistency from game to game should scare the shit out of anyone considering buying these GPU's, it has to specifically win in everything you do with it otherwise you have to weight it yourself based on how much you do each thing to determine if it's the better overall value, YOUR "weighting system" isn't the same as someone elses, you don't know where the random users important weight points are, so attempting to weight averages across all programs is worthless because how many people actually use EVERY program you used to create this base statistic? it's almost as pointless as that PCIE 4.0 Bandwidth test that AMD did. This is as meaningless as that time when Paul or Kyle (I honestly forget which one) did that video where they tested a bunch of different games (with several different GPU's along the product stack) at 1080p, 1440p and 4k then averaged the framerate of the 3 resolutions when the higher end cards in the comparison where hitting the game engine framerate caps at 1080p which resulted in lower averages then if they had just thrown out the 1080p results entirely.

[Lathlaer]

1 hour ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

You seem to be looking at the Navi cards much more confidently than Steve/GN, I'm not sure if you've seen his review but if you have why do you figure such a differing outlook on the cards? I know Steve is always very critical but the difference is almost staggering to me.

Because they tested different games for the most part and LTT didn't include OC results where NVIDIA regains the lead because Navi can't OC for shit (both stability and thermal issues).

[Red :)]

2 hours ago, Daniel644 said:

damn 5700XT looks like Linus dropped something on the mold and AMD couldn't afford to replace it.

on the meme thread, that's old news

[WereCatf]

Wow, AMD's video-encoder was fricking terrible. I happen to really like NVENC and it's one of the major reasons I go for NVIDIA-cards. It's also a lot better supported than AMD's equivalent.

[greenhorn]

Thank you Anthony for the well-made video and all the overtime you put in to make it happen!

The 5700XT looks quite nice despite the few instances in which its performance was a bit low, but I suspect that new drivers will iron out some of those. The fact that AMD sent a new driver to the press on Friday makes me think there is still some significant room for improvement there.
As for overclocking, I watched reviewers like GN complaining that this card doesn't do too much there, probably in part also because the drivers still have issues. One review (in German only) that I have linked in the megathread showed a 5700XT overclocked to 2100 Mhz core (using a prototype of a EK waterblock the reviewer managed to get), so there is hope for overclocking yet. That same reviewer ran into issues when trying to overclock the memory, but that may be caused by driver issues.

[RejZoR]

I like Anthony. I like how chill he always is

[bdaleboy34]

Would a 2070 non S be a smart buy if I can find one for a good deal, for high refresh 1080p or 1440p

[lewdicrous]

6 hours ago, Red said:

on the meme thread, that's old news

Thank you, A̶̞̞͉͚̻̱̺͎͖͙̪̋̋n̴̠͍̳̱̞͎̠̮̩̪̯̦̭͐t̷̨̬̟̬̖̻̘̒̀̔̓̽̀̋̌̊͌̕͝ͅḩ̵̟̿̇̍̓̆͗͑̓͘͠ó̵͎̠ņ̷̢̡̛͎͎͚̫̩͇͙͙̐͗̐̈̋̊̋̒̈́̅̕͝͠y̷̰͉̲̱͓͎̘̯̹͔͑͆̀͘.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

what's with LMG's audio lately? this one was so loud... 

[Emily Young]

10 hours ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

You seem to be looking at the Navi cards much more confidently than Steve/GN, I'm not sure if you've seen his review but if you have why do you figure such a differing outlook on the cards? I know Steve is always very critical but the difference is almost staggering to me.

It boils down to a few points:

1. The 5700 is overall pretty good, even with the blower
2. The GPU design itself is good. A little power hungry, but good
3. The 5700 XT reference design CARD kind of sucks. Without undervolting, it's woefully undercooled...
4. BUT the reference cards also don't ramp the fans up beyond around 50%, meaning it can be fixed...
5. ... But the fan noise gets atrocious if it ramps much further than they let it go.

TL;DR custom boards with adequate cooling I think will be perfectly fine. I didn't test OC precisely because the cooling is so bad.

[SenKa]

2 hours ago, GabenJr said:

It boils down to a few points:

1. The 5700 is overall pretty good, even with the blower
2. The GPU design itself is good. A little power hungry, but good
3. The 5700 XT reference design CARD kind of sucks. Without undervolting, it's woefully undercooled...
4. BUT the reference cards also don't ramp the fans up beyond around 50%, meaning it can be fixed...
5. ... But the fan noise gets atrocious if it ramps much further than they let it go.

TL;DR custom boards with adequate cooling I think will be perfectly fine. I didn't test OC precisely because the cooling is so bad.

Curious, did you experience all the driver issues he did with overclocking and frequency reporting?

[Streetguru]

14 hours ago, GabenJr said:

 

I'm guessing you've already seen this video covering that OSB's built in amd encoder is old and crap and that there's better options available that makes navi "Better than a 2080ti*" for those workloads?
 

 

[Emily Young]

2 hours ago, Streetguru said:

I'm guessing you've already seen this video covering that OSB's built in amd encoder is old and crap and that there's better options available that makes navi "Better than a 2080ti*" for those workloads?

5

He says it's around 10-series NVENC level of quality with the new plugin if I'm not mistaken, which is still good but not quite up to par, but he's impressed with the AVC encoder. It's unfortunate that we didn't have the time to do a deep dive like Epos and Wendell did... Perhaps I'll ping him next time I'm doing this and see if he's made any observations, since he's far more focused on that side of things than we are.

[Streetguru]

44 minutes ago, GabenJr said:

 

I also don't know why one would need to output 6 1080p streams at the same time.

[SkyHound0202]

 

Got an Nvidia RTX Super ad on the AMD Radeon 5700 XT review.

 

Apparently that's how AMD lost its "mind share" to its rivals.

[Daniel Z.]

On 7/9/2019 at 3:37 PM, valdyrgramr said:

So, Sapphire kinda rushed the cooler or something?

Doesn’t seem like they rushed it, more like AMD just always uses bad coolers. Other than the Fury X and Radeon VII they’re almost all single fan blowers. 7970, 290X, 390X, 480, 580, Vega 56, and Vega 64. Hell even the 6990 was a single fan cooler.

[Daniel Z.]

Looks like it will be a great card, just waiting for some decent cooled 5700s to come out. AMD should have waited 2 weeks for the partner boards to come out though.

[Kick]

I took this advice, and now that I wish to build in the Fractal Era ITX I'd rather have a blower and they're all sold out. RIP me

[Deputy Dawg]

I took the advice of these influencers and bought a Sapphire 5700XT Pulse and boy do I regret it. The problem is the influences only test once and give their results and views which is fair enough. I've had mine since November 2019 and had nothing but black screen crashes in every game I play since and never been able to resolve it. I so wish I had bought an Nvidia 2070 for just 40 quid more. Nvidia is not the top manufacturer of graphics cads for no reason. I know this is an old thread but someone will search the forum for 5700XT and I think they should be aware that a decision should be based on more than just which card is fastest and cheapest, reliability makes a huge difference. Yes I know other factors may be behind the problem however in the past I've always followed the manufacture with a reputation for reliability and never had these problems. That is why in the near future I believe Intel will reign supreme again.