Introduction

The XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT Ultra THICC II is the company's flagship custom-design graphics card based on the new 7 nm AMD RX 5700 XT Navi graphics processor. This card arrives hot on the heels of AMD's add-in board partners launching custom-design Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards a little over two months following the July 7th launch of Navi. The Ultra THICC II is an updated version of the THICC II that launched just a few weeks ago, coming with higher clock frequencies out of the box. It is priced at $440, right in the middle of NVIDIA's RTX 2060 Super and RX 2070 Super. Unlike the AMD reference design, a triple-slot, dual-fan cooler is used, which should significantly improve temperatures and noise levels.

The Radeon RX 5700 XT is AMD's first true performance-segment graphics card in over two years since the RX Vega series. It's based on the brand new "Navi" architecture that leverages the 7 nm silicon fabrication process and brand new number-crunching machinery AMD calls RDNA compute units. These constitute the biggest update to AMD's GPU design since the very first Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture circa 2013. Together with clock speeds, RDNA is designed to bring about massive IPC improvements over GCN. The silicon also has a number of architectural changes. An interesting series of price adjustments and product launches ensure that even at its starting price of $399, it offers a bit more price-performance than NVIDIA.



AMD had originally planned to launch the Radeon RX 5700 XT at $449 and the RX 5700 at $399, with the two cards beating the $499 NVIDIA RTX 2070 and $349 RTX 2060 respectively. This forced NVIDIA to refresh its lineup with the new RTX 2070 Super at $499 and the RTX 2060 Super at $399. The RTX 2060 Super in particular was carefully crafted not to cannibalize the RTX 2070. AMD seeped into this imbroglio of NVIDIA and slotted the RX 5700 XT at $399 and the RX 5700 at $349, at which prices they outclass the RTX 2060 Super and original RTX 2060 respectively. NVIDIA didn't adjust prices of its RTX 2060 Super or RTX 2070 Super any further, and we hence have a fair bit of headroom between the RTX 2060 Super and the RTX 2070 Super in which AMD's board partners can launch custom-design RX 5700 XT cards with factory-overclocked speeds and other goodies, such as quieter coolers.

At the heart of the Radeon RX 5700 XT is the 7 nm "Navi 10" silicon with an impressive 10.3 billion transistors crammed into a 251 mm² die. Unlike the "Vega 20", Navi is a more traditional GPU in that the package only has the GPU die and is surrounded by memory chips. AMD opted for cost-effective 256-bit GDDR6 memory over exotic design choices such as HBM2. At a memory frequency of 14 Gbps, Navi enjoys a healthy memory bandwidth of 448 GB/s. It also features the latest-generation PCI-Express gen 4.0 x16 host interface with full backwards compatibility for older generations of PCIe, so you can pair it with AMD's new Ryzen 3000 processors on an X570 chipset motherboard. The buzz-words "7 nm" and "PCIe gen 4.0" are extensively used in AMD's marketing, as if to suggest that Navi is a generation ahead of NVIDIA's Turing, which is built on 12 nm and has PCIe gen 3.0.

Packaging and Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Documentation
• 2x PCIe power cable

The Card

XFX's card looks really good thanks to a modern understated look that mostly uses straight lines and curved edges. The dominant colors are black and gray, with a high-quality metal backplate on the back in matching colors. Dimensions of the card are 29.5 x 13.0 cm.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


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

AMD took the opportunity to update the display controllers handling these outputs by leveraging DSC 1.2a (display stream compression), which unlocks very high resolution and refresh-rate combinations over a single cable. Among the single-cable display modes supported are 8K 60 Hz (which took two DP 1.3 cables until now), 4K 240 Hz, and 1080p as high as 360 Hz. On top of these, the outputs support HDR and 30 bpc color-depth for better color accuracy in creative applications.


The board uses one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 300 watts of power draw.


XFX is including a dual BIOS feature with their card; the default BIOS is called "performance" and the second BIOS is "quiet". I'm not happy with the placement of the BIOS switch as it's impossible to reach with your fingers due to the shroud blocking it—you have to use a pen or similar object to change the switch setting.


AMD's Navi generation of GPUs no longer supports CrossFire. DirectX 12 does include its own set of multi-GPU capabilities, but 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 pad sit on a separate metal place, which leads to higher, but still safe memory temperatures.


Once the main heatsink is removed, an elaborate system of shroud components becomes visible. I think this is the first time I have seen such an approach—it is refreshing and looks great because the cooler "wraps" around the card, giving it a more solid, industrial look and feel.

On the next page, we dive deep into the PCB layout and VRM configuration.