XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro Review

Name: XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro
Brand: XFX

W1zzard

on Mar 17th, 2020,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: XFX

(16 Comments) »

Introduction

We have with us the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro graphics card, a factory-overclocked RX 5600 XT priced at $290, a mere $10 premium over AMD's baseline pricing. Launched this January, the RX 5600 XT turned out to be an ace up AMD's sleeve. It is designed to disrupt the sub-$300 graphics card market where the lack of ray tracing among NVIDIA's GTX 16-series offerings levels the playing field with AMD. After some pre-launch specifications revision and drama because the required BIOS update wasn't preinstalled, AMD designed the RX 5600 XT to beat the entire GTX 16-series and go on to trade blows with NVIDIA's then-$350 GeForce RTX 2060. NVIDIA later got some of its partners to launch cost-effective RTX 2060 cards at $300.

The Radeon RX 5600 XT is designed to dominate AAA gaming at 1080p with frame rates approaching three figures, while also being able to game at 1440p with fairly high details and around 60 FPS. This lets you future-proof your 1080p setup for at least the next three or so years, or gives you the ability to get a 1440p display later this year. The RX 5600 XT has been an entirely partner-driven launch with no reference-design card from AMD. However, some cards, such as the XFX THICC II in this review, feature a "close to reference" PCB design. AMD intended for the RX 5600 XT to need just a single 8-pin PCIe power connector for well under 200 W of maximum power draw. This review's XFX RX 5600 XT THICC II also features faster 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips.

AMD carved the Radeon RX 5600 XT out of the 7 nm "Navi 10" silicon by giving it an identical core configuration as the RX 5700, but narrowing the memory bus. 36 out of 40 RDNA compute units are enabled, amounting to 2,304 stream processors, 144 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The memory interface is narrowed to 192-bit (compared to 256-bit on the RX 5700 series), and the card is endowed with 6 GB of memory (same as the NVIDIA RTX 2060). With a much lower power limit than the RX 5700, the RX 5600 XT can make do with a single 8-pin power connector.

The XFX RX 5600 XT THICC II is a custom-design card that features the company's new THICC board design with a few very important changes. The cooler shroud is made more airy, acting on tons of feedback received from the RX 5700-series THICC cards. XFX also worked on improving the heatsink's base plate for more efficient heat transfer from the GPU to the heat pipes. This is also the first RX 5600 XT that's perfectly 2-slot. The "II" in THICC II denotes a dual-fan setup. The company also has a premium triple-fan product in its stack. The XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II is factory-overclocked for 1620 MHz boost (compared to 1560 MHz reference) and uses 12 Gbps (GDDR6-effective) memory. The card itself features 14 Gbps memory chips, so there's a fair bit of memory overclocking headroom.

Radeon RX 5600 XT Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX 590	$200	2304	32	1469 MHz	1545 MHz	2000 MHz	Polaris 30	5700M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
GTX 1660	$200	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	2000 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1070	$300	1920	64	1506 MHz	1683 MHz	2002 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX Vega 56	$260	3584	64	1156 MHz	1471 MHz	800 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1660 Super	$230	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	1750 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1660 Ti	$270	1536	48	1500 MHz	1770 MHz	1500 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1070 Ti	$450	2432	64	1607 MHz	1683 MHz	2000 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX 5600 XT	$280	2304	64	1375 MHz	1560 MHz	1500 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
XFX RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro	$290	2304	64	1560 MHz	1620 MHz	1500 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2060	$300	1920	48	1365 MHz	1680 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 5700	$330	2304	64	1465 MHz	1625 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
GTX 1080	$500	2560	64	1607 MHz	1733 MHz	1251 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5X, 256-bit
RTX 2060 Super	$400	2176	64	1470 MHz	1650 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64	$375	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$700	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT	$380	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit

Packaging

The Card

Visually, XFX's card looks very similar to the RX 5700 XT THICC II we reviewed in September, though there are subtle differences. For example, on the 2nd photo (back of the card) you see ventilation holes near the bottom—on the RX 5700 XT, these were closed, so airflow is improved now. The dominant colors are black and gray, with a high-quality metal backplate on the back in matching colors.

Dimensions of the card are 26.0 x 13.0 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include three standard DisplayPort 1.4a and an HDMI 2.0b.

XFX is including a dual BIOS feature with their card; the default BIOS is called "performance" and the second BIOS is "quiet". The switch is much easier to reach now compared to the RX 5700 XT Series.

The board uses one 8-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 225 watts of power draw.

AMD's Navi generation of GPUs no longer supports CrossFire. DirectX 12 does include its own set of multi-GPU capabilities, but the implementation requires game developers to put serious development time into a feature only a tiny fraction of their customers might ever use.

Disassembly

XFX is using four heatpipes and a copper base on their cooler. This piece of the cooler also provides cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry. Note how the memory cooling pads sit on a separate metal piece, which leads to higher, but perfectly safe memory temperatures. Compared to earlier 5700 XT Series cards, this memory cooling plate has been upgraded to copper and no longer has a separating foil between it and the main heatsink.

XFX has designed a very nice cooler configuration that partially wraps around the card, which gives it a more solid, industrial look and feel.

The backplate is made out of metal; it adds to the card's aesthetic and protects components on the PCB when handling the card.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles or forum posts.