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XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC III Ultra Review
(62 Comments) »Introduction
We've reviewed the XFX RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro last week. Today, we have its bigger brother on our test bench, the XFX RX 5600 XT THICC III Ultra. It's a factory-overclocked RX 5600 XT priced at $320, a $40 premium over AMD's baseline pricing, or $30 more than the THICC II Pro. 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.
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, but some vendors choose to add a second power input.
The XFX RX 5600 XT THICC III 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 community feedback received for the RX 5700-series THICC cards. XFX also worked on improving the heatsink's base plate for more efficient heat transfer between GPU and heat pipes. Unlike most other boards on the market, the card is a perfectly dual-slot design. The "III" in "THICC III" denotes a triple-fan setup—the THICC II has two fans. Out of the box, the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC III is factory-overclocked for 1750 MHz boost (compared to 1560 MHz reference) and uses 12 Gbps (GDDR6-effective) memory even though 14 Gbps chips are installed. Thus, memory overclocking headroom should be excellent.
| 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 Ultra | $290 | 2304 | 64 | 1560 MHz | 1620 MHz | 1500 MHz | Navi 10 | 10300M | 6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit |
| XFX RX 5600 XT THICC III Ultra | $320 | 2304 | 64 | 1660 MHz | 1750 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 earlier THICC models we reviewed last year, although there are subtle differences. For example, on the second 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 31.5 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 and one 6-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 300 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. Compared to the XFX RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro, the cooling setup is identical but for the longer main heatsink, which provides a little bit of extra area for heat dissipation.
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.
High-res versions are also available (front, back).
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