Radeon RX 5700/ RX 5700 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 July 9, 2019

Our barrage of tests continues with a classic GPU stressor, Crysis 3m and two recent Ubisoft titles, Far Cry 5 and Ghost Recon Wildlands. Our test system remains the same obviously, 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 solid state storage. To ensure that the power-hungry 8700K doesn't overheat, a Gamer Storm Castle 240mm all-in-one 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 simple table with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements, giving you a quick way to see how fast each GPU is in each game we tested. However, if you're on a desktop or laptop, you get our results as we truly intended, with live frame-rate and frame-time stats running once you hit play on the YouTube video of our test scene. Beneath that you'll see our barcharts, which are dynamically generated from the frame-time metrics. Remember that you can mouse over the charts 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 DF favourite for testing hardware performance, and it proves illuminating here once again. As AMD claimed, the RX 5700 series do indeed outperform Nvidia's RTX 2060 and 2070 models, with a six per cent lead for the cheaper card and a dead heat in the upper-tier race. The Super series takes no prisoners though, with each card leading its Navi competitor by a decent margin - but remember, these GPUs are significantly more expensive than the AMD cards we're comparing them to. The 5700/XT lead over 2060/2060 Super remains in place though, but the differentials are definitely becoming closer and tighter in this one.

Crysis 3: Very High, SMAA T2X

Far Cry 5

Far Cry 5's lakeside benchmark is one of our favourites to run, thanks to its tranquil setting and robust performance requirements. This is also one of the better outings for the RX 5700, claiming a solid 17 per cent win over the base RTX 2060 as well as a marginal victory over the more expensive RTX 2060 Super. That's at 4K, but we similarly competitive performance at lower resolutions too. The RX 5700 XT is also competitive but misses out on an outright victory, coming a few fps shy of meeting the 2070 Super at each resolution we tested at - but the card is $100 cheaper. This is clearly a strong result for AMD overall.

Far Cry 5: Ultra, TAA

Ghost Recon Wildlands

The developers of Ghost Recon Wildlands must have had a good time when building out their graphics settings menu, with four relatively normal quality presets - low, medium, high and very high - followed by the insanity that is ultra. Of course, that's the one we've picked for our graphics card tests and like Crysis 3 we expect it to crush graphics cards for years to come. The RX 5700 series cards exceed 60fps at 1080p, but step up to 1440p and even the XT model only averages 57fps. At 4K, we're looking at a console-quality averages of 32fps and 36fps for the regular and XT models, respectively. That's actually higher than the Super cards can manage, but only by a few fps. At 1080p or 1440p, where most people will be considering ultra, the trend holds up: AMD's latest almost always meets or beats its more expensive Super counterpart. Altogether, this is an outright performance win for Team Red.

Ghost Recon Wildlands: Ultra, TAA

AMD Radeon 5700/ Radeon RX 5700 XT Analysis