PCWorld – August 2019

(Joyce) #1
AUGUST 2019 PCWorld 79

AMD’s new RDNA graphics architecture, the
Radeon RX 5700 series managed to surpass
Nvidia’s vaunted power efficiency and draw
even with GeForce in games that previously
favored Nvidia. That’s a big freakin’ deal.
AMD even managed to fix its atrocious
reference cooler!
The Radeon team have a lot to be proud
of here. We can’t wait to see what AMD does
with RDNA next.
The one trick the new Radeon GPUs don’t


perform? Real-time ray tracing, which currently
requires dedicated hardware to achieve
acceptable gaming frame rates. Only Nvidia’s
RTX GPUs offer that. But while ray tracing is
gaining traction, it’s still in its infancy, with the
cutting-edge lighting features only available in
a handful of playable games at the moment.
Given that; the Radeon RX 5700 offering a far
superior memory configuration to the 6GB RTX
2060; and both AMD GPUs outpunching their
RTX 2060 counterparts by significant margins,
it’s hard to recommend the GeForce offerings
over AMD’s 7nm tandem.
If you can’t resist the siren song of
real-time ray tracing, though, the GeForce
RTX 2060 Super would be the better
option. The $500 GeForce RTX 2070 Super

The Radeon team have a lot to
be proud of here. We can’t wait
to see what AMD does with
RDNA next.

Free download pdf