Thecardispoweredbyone6-pin
andone8-pinpowerconnector.CONCLUSION
A verycompetitive
mainstreamcardthathintsat
excitingthingsinthefuture.AMD’s Navi
architecture has
seemed as distant as its
namesake for the longest
time, but the wait is over at
last. The company’s Radeon
RX 5700 XT and 5700 turn
a fresh page for AMD on
the GPU front, ditching the
longstanding Graphics Core
Next (GCN) architecture in
favor of a brand new design
called RDNA.
RDNA is supposed to be
more effi cient and do more
work per clock cycle, and
be overall better suited for
gaming workloads.
According to AMD, RDNA
(or Radeon DNA) is the
start of a serious eff ort to
compete at the highest
echelons of the graphics
card market. However, when
AMD rst announced its new
Radeon cards ahead of E3
this year, it was obvious that
the company was framing
the Radeon RX 5700 XT and
5700 as the start of its return
to the high-end. In other
words, AMD wants to get
there, but it still has some
way to go, which should give
you an idea of where the
new Navi cards stand.
The Radeon RX 5700 XT
features GDDR6 memoryand PCIe 4.0 support,
making it the only consumer
graphics cards at the
moment to support the
latest PCIe standard, along
with the Radeon RX 5700.PCIe 4.0 off ers twice the
interconnect bandwidth of
PCIe 3.0, or up to 16GT/s
per lane, but we’re not yet at
the point where single GPU
con gurations can really
bene t from that.
The Radeon RX 5700 XT
has a sleek, grooved chassis
that kind of evokes some
sort of futuristic body suit.
It’s a huge step up from the
Radeon VII, but it still doesn’t
feel quite as good in hand
as NVIDIA’s all-aluminum
Founders Edition beauties.
Then there’s that funny quirk
in the side of the Radeon RX
5700 XT. At rst it looks likean optical illusion, brought
about by some clever kink
in the grooved lines running
along the card’s side. But
it’s no mirage, and there’s
an actual dent in the side,adding a further bit of
intrigue to the card’s design.
The card is cooled by a
blower fan, which means
it’ll be pretty happy in small
form factor cases since it
dumps air out the back. In
terms of power connectors,
it has one 8-pin and one
6-pin connector, and a
7-phase power delivery
subsystem for overclocking.
AMD is also introducing
a new speci cation called
Game clock. It’s exactly
what it sounds like, and is
intended as an indicator of
the typical boost frequency
you can expect from your
average game. AMD wanted
gamers to be crystal clear
about what they would be
getting from these cards,
so the Game clock helps
set expectations for what
frequencies you should be
getting while gaming. That
said, AMD says you should
still see clock speeds in
excess of the Game clock
pretty frequently.
The Game clock is also
probably best compared
with NVIDIA’s boost clock,
where both refer to
sustained speeds achievable
in game. On the other hand,
AMD’s boost clock is better
thought of as something
like a burst clock, which can
be achieved during spikes
in the graphics processing
workload.
While AMD seemed to
originally be setting upAUGUST 2019 | HWM 69