Discussion Well, my son's RX 5700 experience has been a good one thus far.

[King_V]

So, I was looking for an RX 5600 XT for my son's machine, since he games at 2560x1080, and his PowerColor RX 580 8GB, while managing OK, did struggle with some of the games he plays.

Well, I couldn't turn it down when I saw the MSI RX 5700 Evoke OC when, after rebates, comes to only $3 more than the least expensive 5600. How could I say no?

It arrived Friday, we installed it Saturday, and my son's got about 10 hours on it so far. Just to be safe, even though we had the Radeon drivers in there, we did it as follows:

• DDU to remove drivers
• remove RX 580
• install RX 5700
• boot up
• install latest WHQL drivers (Adrenalin 20.2.2)

We've set Chill to run in the 30-75 range.

Thus far, he's played:

• 7 Days to Die - EDIT: on this one, with everything set to max, the GPU sometimes approaches full utilization.
• Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
• Mordhau
• PAYDAY 2
• Roblox
• Rainbow Six Seige

Obviously a wide range on the demanding/non-demanding scale of things, and not a single problem. When the action's high, the FPS never dips below the 75 fps cap we've set in Chill. No crashes, no blank screens, no trouble at all.

Hopefully that trend continues.

 

[tennis2]

I had a REALLY hard time not purchasing the Evoke 5700XT for $335 on March 5. I know MSI fixed the VRAM thermal pad sizing issue discovered by Gamers Nexus and are offering free re-works to people with the original size ones. At the time, the 20.2.2 driver with the black screen fixes hadn't been released yet. I'm also gravitating toward the RDNA2 GPUs upcoming.

Obviously since you've got Chill going, your frequency and temps are probably fairly low. Any comments on the cooler in general? Hard to trust all the riffraff reviews on sites like Newegg and Amazon.

 

[WildCard999]

Mod may need to change this from Question to Discussion.

Glad to hear it's working out well though especially with the driver issues early on with the 5700 (XT). With newer Nvidia GPU's supporting Freesync I swapped out my RX 580 for the 1660S (& also to help my friend create a good build for low cost for his son) but kind of wished I took a look at the RX 5600 XT or even RX 5700 as I saw your other post about issues with Freesync/Nvidia and newer drivers although I have yet to experience those issues (fingers crossed).

 

[King_V]

I was able to edit it to Discussion. I originally did so when trying to post the thread, but forgot that trying to change that icon causes a spontaneous page reload, causing it to reset back to Question.

I'm a little meh about the whole gold thing. Kinda neat, kinda blah Still, it reflects some of the pulsing red LEDs in my son's PC case pretty well, giving it a strange (but kind of cool-looking) silver and red kind of look. I probably would've preferred a more AMD style of black-and-red motif, but, for the price, I put aside any piddling little concerns about the gold shroud.

Thus far I can say that it's pretty quiet in that case. His case has three front fans and a rear fan, and they're reasonably quiet - I had to actually put my ear near the case to notice the card's fans. In Roblox, I believe, the temps stay low enough that the fans generally stay off, kicking in briefly every now and then. But the GPU Utilization is crazy low in that game (I don't think it even hits 20%).

I'll be able to provide a bit more feedback if he hammers it with some of the graphically demanding games. Still, his case has great airflow, so, if there WERE any potential issues, the case could be compensating for that.


@WildCard999 - yeah, that Nvidia/FreeSync issue is . . maddening. Let me know if you do happen to run into anything odd. I'm thinking that it has to be some kind of strange corner-case. Your monitor's a 40-75 FreeSync range, I think? At least if the specs for the non -W versions are the same as yours. I'd definitely be interested in seeing if you find any issues, or if it's all smooth sailing for you as time goes on.

 

[WildCard999]

@WildCard999 - yeah, that Nvidia/FreeSync issue is . . maddening. Let me know if you do happen to run into anything odd. I'm thinking that it has to be some kind of strange corner-case. Your monitor's a 40-75 FreeSync range, I think? At least if the specs for the non -W versions are the same as yours. I'd definitely be interested in seeing if you find any issues, or if it's all smooth sailing for you as time goes on.

It's either 40 or 48-75hz but usually stays in the 55ish FPS range for my more demanding titles like AC: Odyssey or Division 2 but with Freesync it's smooth as long as it stays within range which it does. I never really cared to use NGE (Nvidia Geforce Experience) but I've been kind of lazy lately so I've been using it to "optimize" the games and it appears to actually be working well but that could be due to the lower refresh rate. Last time I used it I had a 1080P/144hz monitor and it never properly optimized anything and was a mess but that was a couple of years ago.

I'll be quite mad if support stops it though and if I'm forced to go back to a AMD GPU to use Freesync. It's not that I don't like AMD, its just that I still play games that utilize Nvidia PhysX such as the Batman/Borderland games and love those effects especially for Batman.

Getting back to your issue have you tried a different cable or connection? I had issues with HDMI and it was stutter as hell (with and without Freesync) and when swapped to a decent DP cable my issues went away.

 

[King_V]

Yep, I've been using DP. Swapped cables, and swapped which of the GPU's output ports I was using. No change. This was when I was still trying to figure out if it was a GPU or a PSU issue.

As with you, I also unchecked Geforce Experience any time I installed drivers.

 

[WildCard999]

As with you, I also unchecked Geforce Experience any time I installed drivers.

I used to uncheck it during new driver installation but not anymore, just too lazy to finagle with settings to get that perfect graphic/FPS mix but maybe later on it will be required when my hardware becomes a bit more dated. The only thing I manually change which is not in the Nvidia settings oddly enough is on newer titles for DX12 rendering which usually gives you a bit more FPS if your using a newer GPU.

 

[King_V]

Update:

On 7 Days To Die, my son has confirmed that he has "almost everything" maxed out. The GPU spikes to 100% in certain limited scenarios, but it doesn't seem to stay there for more than a few seconds. GPU temp hasn't exceeded the mid-to-upper 60s C, GPU Junction Temp maxed out around 75 degrees C. The fans peaked in the mid-1200s. I didn't notice any noise from them, though I didn't lean in close to the case, either. And I tend to be picky about noise.

I don't know how well/poorly optimized this game is, but a brief search suggests it tends to hit the GPU hard at times, confirming what I've seen.