Introduction

Just last week, AMD launched the Radeon RX 5600 XT to capture the sub-$300 graphics market. At a starting price of $279, it sits between the RX 5500 XT 8 GB and RX 5700. The RX 5500 XT, which launched just weeks earlier, is plenty capable for 1080p gaming, much like the GTX 1650 Super. What AMD was lacking in its product stack, however, was a product to compete with the GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 Super. This is where the Radeon RX 5600 XT steps in with the promise of future-proofing your 1080p setup for the next few years.

AMD originally intended for the RX 5600 XT to take the sub-$300 crown by beating the segment leader, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, without interference from the RTX 20-series. NVIDIA didn't let this happen, and upon seeing AMD's hand at the 2020 CES keynote address, it sought to outmaneuver the red team by lowering the starting price of its GeForce RTX 2060 to $299 in hopes of higher performance and RTX ray-tracing luring buyers away from the RX 5600 XT. AMD responded with an unexpected last-minute revision of the RX 5600 XT specs in which it dialed up GPU clock speeds by 10 percent and memory clock speeds by over 16 percent in a bid to outperform the RTX 2060.



For AMD's board partners, this specs change couldn't have come at a worse time, with employees away from work on Chinese New Year. Not only is it inopportune timing, but the spec is also unimplementable on its cheapest RX 5600 XT cards whose coolers and VRM were purpose-built for the original spec. AMD board partners are hence revising only their faster factory-overclocked cards, those with components that can cope with the new configuration.

Today, we have for review the PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Devil, which is the company's flagship variant for the RX 5600 XT series. It features a triple-slot, dual-fan thermal solution, dual BIOS and is clocked at 1660 MHz game clock and 14 Gbps memory (1750 MHz). The Red Devil currently retails for $310, a $30 premium over the AMD MSRP.