[SOLVED] Need advice about GPU

[Avik Basu]

Hi,

I'm looking to upgrade my GPU and I have been looking at the Radeon RX 5600 XT but I have some questions about it. I'm looking at the Sapphire Pulse RX 5600 XT since it seems to be the best all-round 5600 XT at a low price. Is this a good choice? In most of the comparison videos I've watched, the reviewers seem to be using it as the 5600 XT reference. Also, since most of the 5600 XT cards are getting the BIOS update to unlock faster speed it is also making them require more power. Does that make them run hotter than they did before the update? My room can get quite hot during the hotter months, which have already arrived. It can go up to 34°C. But it's a well enough ventilated room. My current GPU gets to about 70°C while gaming.

As an alternative, is the Gigabyte RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6GB any good? The Sapphire isn't available anywhere right, I'm guessing due to the lockdown. Of course, I plan to wait and see if it comes back in stock soon after the lockdown is lifted. But in case it doesn't, is the Gigabyte one worth getting. It is pretty much the same price as the Sapphire but I've noticed its website doesn't show the upgraded specs so I'm not sure if it's getting the BIOS update.

I have noticed that the 5600 XT cards are all 192-bit. My current GPU, the Asus GTX760 DC2 OC, has 256-bit so obviously I'm downgrading there. But will that be a problem playing newer games? I mostly want to play in Very High settings, if not Ultra so I'm worried about it clashing with newer games. I'm mostly worried about Red Dead Redemption 2 which is a pretty resource hungry game. It'd be a shame if I don't get experience it in most of its graphical glory if not all.

Also, if anyone wants to wants to make a case for the 1660 Super, I'm listening. I had been planning on going for that at first since I lean towards Nvidia and also since it's much cheaper than the 5600 XT. But I'm willing to break my preference and go for AMD if it's better, which the 5600 XT seems to be. In a benchmarking site, it said that the 1660 super will bottleneck RDR2 with my system whereas the 5600 XT won't. But I am a bit worried about how it'd work. I've heard AMD has driver issues now and then that keep some games from running. Also, since I haven't used AMD before I don't if certain graphical enhancements that work for Nvidia works for AMD too, or if AMD has an alternate setting, such as Physx. By getting AMD, will I be missing out on those enhancements? Or is AMD worth sacrificing those enhancements?

My specs are:-

AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Asus B450-E Gaming motherboard
G.Skill Trident Z 3200MHz 2x8GB RAM
DELL IN2020M 20inch monitor
Corsair TX650M 650W PSU


Thanks for reading.

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

To be honest i would save abit more and just get the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT because they are 256 Bit and with 8GB grapthics and that be more of an upgrade then what your suggested now but they do need to have 650W PSU and you have one already but another option is 2060 super they be abit less but they do 550W PSU and 8gb and 256 Bit!. But with your current specs upgrading to powerful gpu maybe one day you could upgrade your monitor to 27inch 144hz 2k

 

[jeremyj_83]

Here is a review of the Sapphire Pulse 5600XT https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx_5600_xt/2 It includes the vBIOS update out of the box so it has performance that rivals the RTX 2060.

When you are looking at 192bit vs 256bit, that is the memory bus connection width. While 192bit is lower, the RAM itself is MUCH faster so your memory bus on the 5600XT is faster (336GB/sec vs 192GB/sec).

Performance wise the 5600XT is faster than the 1660 Super by 20% on average. https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2542?vs=2581 The 1660 Super is a good card and uses less power, but isn't as fast either. Physx I don't even know if that is used in anything anymore. Either card will be more than enough for your current monitor. The 1660 Super is a great 1080p GPU. The 5600XT is even faster and can be an entry level 1440p GPU.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Your current GTX 760 has similar performance to the R9 380. Here is a comparison on current games of the jump in performance from the 380 to Pulse 5600XT. https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2549?vs=2581

Pulse 5600XT against RX5700XT - https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2522?vs=2581

 

[Avik Basu]

To be honest i would save abit more and just get the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT because they are 256 Bit and with 8GB grapthics and that be more of an upgrade then what your suggested now but they do need to have 650W PSU and you have one already but another option is 2060 super they be abit less but they do 550W PSU and 8gb and 256 Bit!. But with your current specs upgrading to powerful gpu maybe one day you could upgrade your monitor to 27inch 144hz 2k

As much as I would love to get a 5700 XT, they cost 25% more than the 5600 XT. And the 2060 Super costs 50% more. The only affordable 2060 available here is a ROG Strix 2060 Advanced but it's a 192-bit card with 6GB memory. Same as the 5600 XT or 1660 Super. Of course, I would like to wait a month or two to see if the price on the 5700XT goes down but I doubt it'd go down enough to make me comfortable. I'm already going beyond my budget for the 5600 XT.

Also, I'm not looking to upgrade my monitor any time soon. And if I did I doubt I'd go over 1080p. Of course, 10 years later things might be different and even 4K monitors might be affordable but 10 years later I'll probably be upgrading my GPU again anyway.

Here is a review of the Sapphire Pulse 5600XT https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx_5600_xt/2 It includes the vBIOS update out of the box so it has performance that rivals the RTX 2060.

When you are looking at 192bit vs 256bit, that is the memory bus connection width. While 192bit is lower, the RAM itself is MUCH faster so your memory bus on the 5600XT is faster (336GB/sec vs 192GB/sec).

Performance wise the 5600XT is faster than the 1660 Super by 20% on average. https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2542?vs=2581 The 1660 Super is a good card and uses less power, but isn't as fast either. Physx I don't even know if that is used in anything anymore. Either card will be more than enough for your current monitor. The 1660 Super is a great 1080p GPU. The 5600XT is even faster and can be an entry level 1440p GPU.

Thanks for the review link. It was helpful to understand that specific card instead of just the chipset. I know that the 5600 XT can be as good as the RTX 2060 after the BIOS update. So I'm not worried about that. What worries me is that with the BIOS update pushing the card beyond what it was meant to perform it would run hotter than it's supposed to. Though the review said that it's cooling is good enough to keep it at 70°C I doubt they were testing it in a hot room. But it's something that I'll have to deal with I suppose. If it has a good cooling system then it'll be good at fighting off the heat even if it's a hard fight.

So even though I'd be getting 192-bit, I won't be missing out too much performance-wise?

While I know that the 1660 Super is a good performer, the 5600 XT does outperform it. My only hiccup is moving over from Nvidia drivers, who have never given me any trouble (almost, but nothing game-breaking), to AMD, who can sometimes have game-breaking issues. Of course, I could be remembering things wrong. And if graphical enhancements aren't limited to proprietary tech anymore, such as Physx, then I suppose it wouldn't matter either way.

 

[jeremyj_83]

As much as I would love to get a 5700 XT, they cost 25% more than the 5600 XT. And the 2060 Super costs 50% more. The only affordable 2060 available here is a ROG Strix 2060 Advanced but it's a 192-bit card with 6GB memory. Same as the 5600 XT or 1660 Super. Of course, I would like to wait a month or two to see if the price on the 5700XT goes down but I doubt it'd go down enough to make me comfortable. I'm already going beyond my budget for the 5600 XT.

Also, I'm not looking to upgrade my monitor any time soon. And if I did I doubt I'd go over 1080p. Of course, 10 years later things might be different and even 4K monitors might be affordable but 10 years later I'll probably be upgrading my GPU again anyway.



Thanks for the review link. It was helpful to understand that specific card instead of just the chipset. I know that the 5600 XT can be as good as the RTX 2060 after the BIOS update. So I'm not worried about that. What worries me is that with the BIOS update pushing the card beyond what it was meant to perform it would run hotter than it's supposed to. Though the review said that it's cooling is good enough to keep it at 70°C I doubt they were testing it in a hot room. But it's something that I'll have to deal with I suppose. If it has a good cooling system then it'll be good at fighting off the heat even if it's a hard fight.

So even though I'd be getting 192-bit, I won't be missing out too much performance-wise?

While I know that the 1660 Super is a good performer, the 5600 XT does outperform it. My only hiccup is moving over from Nvidia drivers, who have never given me any trouble (almost, but nothing game-breaking), to AMD, who can sometimes have game-breaking issues. Of course, I could be remembering things wrong. And if graphical enhancements aren't limited to proprietary tech anymore, such as Physx, then I suppose it wouldn't matter either way.

Since you aren't looking to upgrade your 1600x900 monitor, just get the 1660 Super. At that resolution you will be able to push any game at 60fps ultra settings for quite a while. The 6GB VRAM also won't be an issue since the lower the resolution the less VRAM is needed.

 

[drea.drechsler]

.....
While I know that the 1660 Super is a good performer, the 5600 XT does outperform it. My only hiccup is moving over from Nvidia drivers, who have never given me any trouble (almost, but nothing game-breaking), to AMD, who can sometimes have game-breaking issues.
...

The 2020 driver package updates did have some issues early on but AMD fixed that in the March releases. Now it's very stable and only getting better.

Buy confidently based on the best value offering.

 

[Avik Basu]

Since you aren't looking to upgrade your 1600x900 monitor, just get the 1660 Super. At that resolution you will be able to push any game at 60fps ultra settings for quite a while. The 6GB VRAM also won't be an issue since the lower the resolution the less VRAM is needed.

The 1660 Super is definitely pocket friendly. But can I ask why you're recommending it? The 5600 XT easily outperforms the 1660 Super. If it's because of the price then should I wait a bit to see if the price drops or get lucky in a sale? Like I said mentioned before, most GPUs aren't in stock right now most likely because of the lockdown. So I can't buy anything immediately anyway.

Or is it about the performance? With my other components and the resolution of my monitor will it not matter which direction I go?

The 2020 driver package updates did have some issues early on but AMD fixed that in the March releases. Now it's very stable and only getting better.

Buy confidently based on the best value offering.

So which one would you recommend? The 1660 Super runs well and is pocket friendly. The 5600 XT runs better but it'll need a bit of stretching of the pocket but only for the Sapphire Pulse RX 5600 XT and the Gigabyte RX 5600 XT Gaming OC, with the latter coming without the BIOS update. Anything other than those two gets costlier.

I do lean towards Nvidia because of familiarity but I'm not averse to switching to AMD if I get better and lasting performance.

 

[clydee_13]

From what I heard the BIOS update set the RX 5600 XT to compete with the downpriced RTX 2060. So if you are looking to compare it to nvidia cards I wouldn't go for anything lower than that. As for the drivers, until now I only experienced nvidia's drivers with my old 1050ti, which I was very happy with. But I guess on AMD's side it has been getting much better with driver stability.
Personally I just got the XFX RX 5600 XT Thicc III Ultra at a good price, can't tell you yet how it performs though as I haven't finished buying all the parts to put my new build together.
Anyway, unless you want to calculate features like Ray Tracing or DLSS 2.0, I would recommend going for the RX 5600 XT as I did for myself. According to the Benchmarks I checked it outperforms even the RTX 2060 in some cases.

 

[drea.drechsler]

....
So which one would you recommend? The 1660 Super runs well and is pocket friendly. The 5600 XT runs better but it'll need a bit of stretching of the pocket but only for the Sapphire Pulse RX 5600 XT and the Gigabyte RX 5600 XT Gaming OC, with the latter coming without the BIOS update. Anything other than those two gets costlier.

I do lean towards Nvidia because of familiarity but I'm not averse to switching to AMD if I get better and lasting performance.

From all I've seen these cards are close enough in performance it probably won't matter that much. So going for value (what's good for the pocket) is as good a reason as any.

But then, I also like to reward the company that does more for us as consumers. That Nvidia card would be nowhere close to this price if AMD hadn't come into the marketplace with Navi. Being an Nvidia loyalist makes no sense, they are not your friend.

 

[Avik Basu]

From all I've seen these cards are close enough in performance it probably won't matter that much. So going for value (what's good for the pocket) is as good a reason as any.

But then, I also like to reward the company that does more for us as consumers. That Nvidia card would be nowhere close to this price if AMD hadn't come into the marketplace with Navi. Being an Nvidia loyalist makes no sense, they are not your friend.

It's not loyalty but stepping out of a comfort zone. I have always used Intel until last year when I switched to AMD not because Intel was better but because I was used to the brand. But because Ryzen has been so much better I decided to switch to it at the advice of experts like you. I'm ready to do the same now for my GPU. But the budget is an issue which shouldn't be a problem with the Sapphire card unless they decide to drive the price up with the new batch. Also, worrying about it not working out, which is silly because there's no reason for it not to. But that's how the mind works.

 

[jeremyj_83]

The only reason I'm recommending the 1660 Super is due to your monitor resolution. You said you don't plan to upgrade your monitor so at that low of a resolution and refresh rate, a 5600XT is massive overkill.

 

[ttower2020]

So even though I'd be getting 192-bit, I won't be missing out too much performance-wise?

I would not worry about the bit-rate of the card. That has almost nothing to do with actual performance, since the card will have whatever bandwidth it needs for the VRAM to do its job with that card. New GPUs are much faster, in both Cores and RAM, so a lower bandwidth card can still absolutely destroy an older high-bit card. You are actually the first person I have personally heard who is concerned about it. Really, dont worry. If the bandwidth of the VRAM is not high enough, that would reflect in the benchmarks of the GPU. You can safely look at the overall numbers, FPS and temperature, things like that, and not worry about the underlying stats like bandwidth and such if there is an issue like not enough bandwidth, the overall performance of the card would decrease, showing in benchmarks and stress tests. The only stat like that which matters is the clock speed of the cores. usually ~1600-1800MHz.

As far as being worried about temperature, any card with a decent heat sink and two or more fans will likely stay cool enough for you.

 

[Avik Basu]

I would not worry about the bit-rate of the card. That has almost nothing to do with actual performance, since the card will have whatever bandwidth it needs for the VRAM to do its job with that card. New GPUs are much faster, in both Cores and RAM, so a lower bandwidth card can still absolutely destroy an older high-bit card. You are actually the first person I have personally heard who is concerned about it. Really, dont worry. If the bandwidth of the VRAM is not high enough, that would reflect in the benchmarks of the GPU. You can safely look at the overall numbers, FPS and temperature, things like that, and not worry about the underlying stats like bandwidth and such if there is an issue like not enough bandwidth, the overall performance of the card would decrease, showing in benchmarks and stress tests. The only stat like that which matters is the clock speed of the cores. usually ~1600-1800MHz.

As far as being worried about temperature, any card with a decent heat sink and two or more fans will likely stay cool enough for you.

Honestly, I'm not a technical guy so I don't know what most of these numbers mean. I'm just comparing them to each other to find the best performer for me. I just want to find the one that'll let me experience AAA games in all their beautiful graphical glory while still running smoothly. I didn't even care much for FPS until recently when I had to lower the FPS setting in Assassin's Creed Odyssey to 30 FPS for it to run smoothly and it doesn't really bother me. It runs pretty smoothly for me at 30 FPS. I play PUBG Lite with the FPS set to reach 300 and for some matches, I get over 250 max FPS and I just don't see much of a difference when I'm playing at a lower FPS. All said I won't say no to higher FPS, but I don't think around 30-40 FPS would be bad for me.

As for temperature, I know a good heatsink will do the job right and I avoided anything below 2 fans. But recently I saw a review of the Asus TUF Gaming X3 RX 5700 XT OC where they took apart the GPU and found the heatsink to be lacking. That surprised me because not only did I not expect that from Asus for a TUF GPU but I was hoping to go for an Asus TUF GPU of whatever chipset I chose. And as hot and dusty as my room gets I want something that can take on that. Like, seriously, my room can get at least 2-3 degrees hotter than the temperature outside, even with all the windows open.

 

[Avik Basu]

Thanks, everyone for the replies. I really appreciate all the advice.