72 PCWorld AUGUST 2019REVIEWS AMD RADEON RX 5700 AND 5700 XT
- EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 power
supply ($230 on Amazon at go.pcworld.
com/mxmc) - Corsair Crystal 570X RGB case, with
front and top panels removed and an extra
rear fan installed for improved airflow ($130
on Amazon at go.pcworld.com/crst) - 2x 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs
($78 each on Amazon at go.pcworld.
com/smev)
We’re comparing the $350 Radeon RX
5700 and $400 Radeon RX 5700 XT against
Nvidia’s new $399 GeForce RTX 2060 Super
and $499 RTX 2070 Super Founders Edition
cards, of course. We’ve also included results
from the Founders Edition models of Nvidia’s
original RTX 20-series lineup: The $350 RTX
2060, $600 RTX 2070, $800 RTX 2080, and
$1,200 RTX 2080 Ti. Note that aside from the
RTX 2060, all other non-Super Founders
Edition cards come overclocked and are more
expensive than reference models for each
respective GPU. We also tested AMD’s
comparable Radeon options: the $700
Radeon VII (go.pcworld.com/rdv2), $500
Vega 64, and $400 Vega 56.
All prices cited are launch MSRP. You can
often find these cards cheaper on the streets
these days.
Each game is tested using its in-game
benchmark at the highest possible graphics
presets, with VSync, frame rate caps, and all
GPU vendor-specific technologies—like AMD
TressFX, Nvidia GameWorks options, and
FreeSync/G-Sync—disabled, and temporal
anti-aliasing (TAA) enabled to push these
high-end cards to their limits. If anything
differs from that, we’ll mention it. We run each
benchmark at least three times and list the
average result for each test.
We’ve added a couple of new games to
our testing suite (The Division 2, Far Cry:
New Dawn) and removed a handful of
others (Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry 5, Ashes
of the Singularity: Escalation, Middle-earth:
Shadow of War). We’re hoping to add
Metro Exodus to the mix in future reviews
but were unable to do so for this one due to
severe time constraints.GAMING PERFORMANCE
BENCHMARKS
The Division 2
Let’s start with the latest games. The
Division 2 is one of the best looter-shooters
ever created, and the luscious visuals
generated by Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine
make it even easier to get lost in post-
apocalyptic Washington D.C. The built-in
benchmark cycles through four “zones” to
test an array of environments, and we test
with the DirectX 12 renderer enabled. It
provides better performance across the
board than the DX11 renderer, but requires
Windows 10.
The Radeon RX 5700 trounces the original
GeForce RTX 2060, while the Radeon RX
5700 XT surpasses the equally priced RTX