Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT

Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT

Let's run down the more common reference specifications and features for both cards. Both GPUs are based on 7nm NAVI-10, the regular Radeon RX 5700 is a bit cut down in specifications, we'll call this version NAVI 10 PRO. The XT model has everything enabled. Both cards offer HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.4, PCIe Gen 4.0 support and both come with an 8 and 6-pin PCIe PEG power connector as well as 8GB GDDR6 graphics memory. You'll see that the XT model has had a redesign, a shroud with a bit of a bump or dent if you like to call it that, it looks pretty though. However, it is the same style blower cooler residing under there as we have seen for years. Interesting to know is that these GPUs are not using thermal paste, but similar to the Radeon VII a graphite thermal pad is being used. Graphite thermal pads conduct heat much better than silver enhanced paste. The board power design for the respective cards are 180 Watt and 225 Watt, both come with a 7-phase digital power delivery design. These specifications are of course based on the reference products. AIB board partners will release their customized products and have the freedom to design as they please. Let's briefly dissect the two cards separately.
 

Radeon RX 5700 XT

The first 'more premium;' model is the XT, it is aimed at an audience that game at a monitor resolution of 2560x1440. The NAVI 10 series is going to replace the Vega lineup, which will slowly fade out of the market. Why?, well, these cards sit right on top of that performance, even slightly better and we feel that Vega 56/64 is a too expensive to fab product series due to that HBM2 memory used. The Radeon RX 5700 XT has the full shader cluster-enabled and is a fully enabled ship, that totals up towards 2560 stream/shader processors. It has 64 ROP partitions and 160 Texture units. You'll notice a peak Boost clock up-to 1.9 GHz, with the average gaming clock hovering in the 1.75 GHz domain. The card will be tied towards 8GB GDDR6 memory (256-bit memory bus). At 14 Gbps that brings in a solid 448 GB/sec of memory bandwidth. The board power design of this card is 225 Watts.
 

Radeon RX 5700

The next model is positioned slightly lower mainstream 2560x1440 solution. The RX 5700 (we call this the NAVI 10 PRO SKU) has had a bit of a trim and cut-down in the shader cluster engine, it totals up towards 2304 Stream/Shader processors. So 2304:64 shaders per node means that it has 36 Shader nodes (Compute units) compared to the 40 on the XT model. Other than a few changes like clocks, we're really looking at a rather similar product overall. With its 8 GB 256-bit memory, it as well has 64 ROP partitions and 144 Texture units. You'll notice a Boost clock up-to 1.7 GHz, with the average gaming clock hovering in the 1.6 GHz domain. The card also will be fitted with 8GB GDDR6 memory (256-bit memory bus). At 14 Gbps that brings in a solid 448 GB/sec of memory bandwidth. This card will have a board power of 180 Watt. The design of the non-XT model is a bit styled like the Radeon VII. 

Let's place the most common denominators in a table and compare a bit back and forth with Polaris just to get you an idea where we're headed with this new release.

Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary edition

AMD also announced a 50th-anniversary edition of the 5700 XT at 449 USD. It is introduced with a higher boost frequency. The card has a game boost of 1830 MHz en a peak boost of 1980 MHz. We doubt this card is anything more than a bit of marketing hype though. perhaps we'll see a couple of thousands of units available globally. Other then that, you should not pay any attention to it.

Raytracing?

No. Ever since the beginning, Raytracing was never mentioned in any presentation, the Navi cards do not have native hardware support for it, despite what the competition is doing. We do think (currently) that is an advantage for AMD, as they can fab smaller and less expensive silicon, making the product more affordable as to what NVIDIA is offering with the GeForce RTX series. AMD, however, has hinted that the NAVI GPUS to follow NAVI10 (Big Navi) will get some sort of hardware accelerated Raytracing functionality. But the general consensus is simple, the time is not right to go full on Raytracing and this AMD sticks to an evolved unified shader engine.