AMD’s new Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card is now available, but how does it compare
against Nvidia’s RTX 2060? I’ve compared 15 different games at 1080p and 1440p resolutions
to help you decide!
Just a few days ago Nvidia announced that the price of the RTX 2060 is dropping down
to $300 USD, an obvious move to compete with the upcoming 5600 XT, which will be starting
at $280 USD. It’s yet to be seen how many models of 2060 will actually lower down to
this price though, but the founders edition and a few others are available for 300.
AMD also made an interesting move that you may not have heard about. When the 5600 XT
was announced recently at CES 2020, the specs listed it with a 150 watt TDP and effective
memory speed of 12 Gbps. A few days ago I received a BIOS update for the Sapphire Pulse,
which increases the TDP to 160 watts with higher clock speed, and memory to 14 Gbps,
so essentially they’re overclocking the card.
While this may sound great because it’s essentially free performance, as this was
a late change I’m thinking it’s likely that if you buy a retail card early on you’ll
probably need to apply the update yourself, as presumably these things were with retailers
ready to go before the update was available. It’s also not clear yet which models will
get the update, because if you have an entry level 5600 XT that doesn’t have adequate
cooling then it might not be possible.
It’s a pretty weird situation, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the mess results in some reviews
showing lower 5600 XT performance than others, as they’re kind of splitting it into two
different specs. I’ve done all of my 5600 XT vs RTX 2060 comparison testing with the
new BIOS update in place, but we’ll also check out performance with the old BIOS later
so you can see the difference it makes.
The system that I’m testing with has an Intel i7-8700K CPU overclocked to 5GHz on
all cores in an MSI Z390 ACE motherboard, along with 16GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 memory in
dual channel. You can check the links in the description for details on all of the components
as well as for up to date pricing.
Testing was done with the latest Windows 1909 fully up to date, and with the latest versions
of Nvidia and Radeon drivers available at the time of testing, so with all of that out
of the way let’s get into the results.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare was tested in campaign mode. I’ve got the 1080p results
on the lower half of the graph, and the 1440p results towards the upper half. In this test
it’s a win for the 5600 XT, which was scoring around 3% higher average FPS over the 2060
at 1080p, increasing to an 8% lead at 1440p.
It’s a different story in Control, this time the 2060 was coming out ahead of the
5600 XT. In terms of average frame rate, the 2060 was 6% faster at 1080p, and 10% ahead
at 1440p.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using the games built in benchmark tool, and the 5600
XT was back in the lead here, granted only with a slight 1.6% lead at 1080p, increasing
a little to 3% at 1440p.
Battlefield V was tested in campaign mode, and was another win for the 5600 XT, at least
in terms of average FPS, as the 2060 was ahead in terms of 1% low performance, so less dips
and a little more consistent.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the games benchmark tool, and the results
were very close here, with the 2060 just a single frame ahead of the 5600 XT at both
1080p and 1440p resolutions.
Apex Legends was tested with all graphical settings at maximum, and this game really
seemed to prefer the RTX 2060. At 1080p the 2060 was almost 5% faster, and this rose to
a bigger 10% boost at 1440p. In terms of 1% low performance, at 1080p it was the same
with either card, then at 1440p there was a nice 11% boost with the 2060.
Borderlands 3 was tested with the game’s benchmark tool, and unlike the last game,
this one seemed to really favour the 5600 XT. At 1080p, there was a large 16% higher
average frame rate on the 5600 XT, lowering a little to a 13% lead at 1440p.
Fortnite was tested using the replay feature, with the exact same replay file used for all
testing. This was another win for the 5600 XT, which was 6.6% ahead of the 2060 in average
FPS, increasing to a 10% lead when we step up the resolution to 1440p.
PUBG was also tested using the replay feature, with the same replay file again. I’ve found
this game to preference the green team in the past and that was no exception here. At
1080p the 2060 was 6% faster than the 5600 XT in terms of average FPS, lowering a little
to a 4% lead at 1440p.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested using the built in benchmark. The results were extremely
close together in this test, honestly within margin of error territory without an obvious
clear winner.
The Witcher 3 saw some interesting results, the average FPS was higher with the 2060 in
my test, however there was a larger improvement to the 1% low performance with the 5600 XT.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint was tested using the built in benchmark, and the 2060 was ahead
again in terms of average FPS, granted the difference was quite small, with just a one
to two FPS lead over the 5600 XT. There was a bigger difference noted in the 1% lows though,
where the 2060 saw bigger 7 to 8% gains.
Overwatch was tested in the practice range, so while not quite the same as actual gameplay,
it allows me to perform the same test pass more accurately which is ideal for comparison
purposes. At 1080p the 1% low results were very similar, however the 5600 XT had a 5%
higher average frame rate, increasing to an 8% boost at 1440p.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the games benchmark tool. The results were a bit strange
here, at 1080p the averages were almost the same, with a higher 1% low on the 5600 XT,
but then at 1440p the 2060 now had better 1% low performance and also with a 4% higher
average frame rate, but in the end I doubt you’d notice these differences when actually
playing.
I’ve tested CS:GO with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, because that one time I didn’t
include it people got mad. The 5600 XT was clearly ahead in this game, with a 10% lead
at 1080p, rising up to the biggest improvement out of all games tested at 1440p with a 20%
higher average frame rate.
Over all 15 games tested the RX 5600 XT was just 1.7% faster than the RTX 2060 at 1080p.
As you can see though it really depends on the specific game, but out of this selection
I usually test with the 5600 XT was winning more than it lost. In many games the results
aren’t actually that far apart, I think you’d have a hard time actually noticing
a practical difference in many cases.
At 1440p the average improvement seen with the 5600 XT increases slightly to 2.2%. The
results at this resolution varied more so than at 1080p, with some games like Apex Legends
and Control favouring the 2060, while Fortnite, Borderlands 3 and CS:GO really seemed to prefer
the 5600 XT.
Despite the 5600 XT performing better in the majority of games, the 7nm architecture seems
to be more power efficient. I’ve tested a couple of games, in The Witcher 3 the 2060
was actually outperforming the 5600 XT in terms of average FPS, however in Call of Duty
the 5600 XT was performing better, but in both instances the system with 5600 XT installed
is still using less power from the wall.
As both cards have different cooling solutions I haven’t looked at thermals as it would
be less of a fair comparison.
Now for the final difference, the price. You can find updated prices linked in the description.
At the the time of recording, the RX 5600 XT is launching at $280 USD, while Nvidia
recently lowered the price of the RTX 2060 to $300 USD, which is around 7% more money.
As we’ve seen, on average the 5600 XT was performing better in most games, granted it
will depend on the specific game, but it was doing this while using less power than the
2060, but perhaps most importantly we’re getting all this for less money too, so it’s
looking like a nice all round win for the 5600 XT.
To be fair though, I don’t yet know the actual price of the 5600 XT Pulse I’m testing
with here, I wouldn’t be surprised if the 280 price point is for entry level cards that
aren’t capable of the BIOS update to boost performance, however this is also the lower
end of the price scale available for the 2060 too.
A benefit the RTX 2060 has is, well, right there in the name, RTX. If you care about
ray tracing, you’re currently out of luck with AMD’s options. Despite the first RTX
cards launching in 2018, we still only have a handful of games with the feature, but this
is expected to increase in the future. In my personal opinion, ray tracing is meant
to be a cherry on top, something you use when you’re already using high settings to make
things look even better, but when doing this on the 2060 in many cases performance does
get reduced significantly, so often you’ll be using RTX with lower graphical settings,
which to me doesn’t really seem worthwhile.
It varies by game, but for actually getting good performance with many titles with ray
tracing enabled you’ll probably want to look at the 2070 or 2080. Purely with ray
tracing in mind, I wouldn’t personally consider the 2060, but that’s just me, so I wouldn’t
factor that in when picking between these two options. By the time it’s more widely
available we’ll probably have better performing hardware from both AMD and Nvidia than the
entry level 2060 experience. If you care about ray tracing, then between the 5600 XT and
2060 the 2060 is your only real option, however as we’ve seen it costs more, uses more power,
and doesn’t perform as well on average in the games I’ve tested.
Before we wrap up, let’s take a look at how the 5600 XT performed before the BIOS
update. I’m not sure if all cards will have the update available, so this data may or
may not be useful.
In Red Dead Redemption 2 we can see that with the old BIOS, the 5600 XT was behind, however
with the new BIOS in place the performance improvement was quite significant, and without
it the RTX 2060 would have performed better in this game.
In Call of Duty Modern Warfare, the 5600 XT with old BIOS was a little behind the 2060
at 1080p, though it was slightly ahead at 1440p, but either way with the update in place
it’s clearly out in front.
In control the 2060 was still coming out ahead of the 5600 XT even with the new update applied,
but without the update it would have been a much bigger loss.
As I’m making this video before the launch of the 5600 XT, I don’t know if all 5600
XT graphics cards will get this update. If they don’t, well as we’ve just seen that
kind of changes the story. Given the 5600 XT won by such a close margin in the 15 games
I’ve tested, I wouldn’t be surprised if the 2060 ended up coming out in front if we
were comparing it to the original 5600 XT spec.
It would have been better if AMD just took advantage of the overclocking headroom and
offered this performance out of the box from the start, but instead it looks as if they’ve
scrambled last minute to counter the price drop of the 2060, and if customers are expected
to update the BIOS on their new GPU then that’s going to be a pretty crap out of box experience.
If they’ve replaced the 5600 XT cards on shelves before they went on sale with updated
versions, then I’ve got much less of a problem with that, but yeah right now it’s just
too early for me to know, we’ll have to see how things develop from here.
So with all of that in mind which would you pick? The Radeon RX 5600 XT, or Nvidia RTX
2060? Let me know in the comments, and if you’re new to the channel consider subscribing
for future comparisons and tech videos like this one!