AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT: performance analysis

Crysis 3, Far Cry 5, Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry

Additional contributions by Richard Leadbetter

Updated on Jan. 22, 2020

We continue testing both the regular and deluxe variants of the RX 5600 XT with our resident PC graphics legend, Crysis 3, accompanied by two titles with more modern game engines: Far Cry 5 and Ghost Recon Wildlands. Our test rig remains identical of course, consisting of a Core i7 8700K running at an all-core turbo speed of 4.7GHz. This is paired with two 8GB sticks of 3400MHz DDR4 supplied by GSkill, with all titles running from super-fast SSD storage to ensure each test runs smoothly throughout. To ensure that the power-hungry 8700K doesn't overheat, a Gamer Storm Castle 240mm AiO liquid cooler is used.

Depending on how you view this page, our performance metrics are presented in one of two ways. If you're reading this on a mobile device, you'll get a table with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements. However, if you're on a desktop or laptop, you get the full-blooded Digital Foundry experience. Play the YouTube videos to see frame-rate and frame-time metrics running in parallel to the video (you can even navigate around the video with the graphs adjusting to match). Beneath that you'll see our barcharts, dynamically generated from the frame-time metrics - mouse over for various stats and press the mouse button to swap over to the more useful percentage differentials.

All performance data is derived from video captures of each graphics card - no internal metrics here, the gold standard in analysis comes from measuring what's actually emerging from the video output of the GPU.

Crysis 3

Crysis 3 remains a mainstay of our GPU testing into 2020, thanks to its ability to flummox even advanced PC hardware seven years after its debut. New graphics card generations often support new engine features to boost performance, so testing a very old game reveals a bit more about the bare metal strength of each card. For example, the GTX 1070 outperforms the much newer GTX 1660 Ti here, despite losing out in other titles.

What about the RX 5600 XT? It's surprisingly smooth sailing, with the card managing 113fps at reference clocks and 121fps on the new performance BIOS. By comparison, the GTX 1660 Ti only manages 104fps, although the RTX 2060 remains the category leader at 123fps. The approximately seven per cent performance boost that the 5600 XT OC enjoys over the standard RX 5600 remains intact at each resolution we tested, with the OC model coming within a couple of percentage points of the RTX 2060.

Crysis 3: Very High, SMAA T2X

Far Cry 5

AMD cards show some of their best work in modern engines like that of Far Cry 5, with the stock RX 5600 XT outstripping even the RTX 2060 at 1080p by a solid three per cent. If you consider the overclocked version, the AMD card is able to beat its competitor by a solid nine per cent - despite costing less in the UK. The difference between regular and OC variants is only moderate here too, with a six per cent gap at 1080p and 1440p, rising to eight per cent at 4K.

Far Cry 5: Ultra, TAA

Ghost Recon Wildlands

Despite the release of Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Wildlands still punches above its weight thanks to its inclusion of a challenging ultra quality preset. The game is rather heavy on compute in particular, making it an interesting test of our competing RX 5600 XT and RXT 2060 graphics cards. It's AMD that comes away with the lead yet again, with the RTX 2060 and RX 5600 XT duking it out at the 60fps line and the RX 5600 XT OC sitting a few fps clear of the fray. Nvidia's GTX 16-series is in also-ran territory here, with the two cards only managing around 52fps in our testing. 1440p gaming isn't really viable at this preset, but the results are still of academic importance. The overclocked BIOS is seven per cent faster than the reference spec model, jumping to a solid 14 per cent at 4K.

Ghost Recon Wildlands: Ultra, TAA

AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Analysis