AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT review: reference and OC models compared

AMD continues its focus on the entry-level space with the release of the Radeon RX 5600 XT, a graphics card intended to sit between the RX 5500 XT and RX 5700 with strong 1080p performance at $279. Like so many recent graphics card launches though, the run-up to launch has been far from quiet, with both AMD and Nvidia repositioning their graphics cards to try and take a decisive advantage in the important sub-$300 price category.

AMD originally announced the 5600 XT as a competitor to the GTX 1660 Ti, offering higher frame-rates at the same price. In response, Nvidia has dropped prices on the next graphics card up, the RTX 2060, bringing their entry-level ray tracing GPU to $299. Now we're seeing the counterplay from AMD - and rather than dropping prices themselves to retain their value leadership, Team Red has chosen to boost performance instead.

This takes the form of a new BIOS update available for some overclocked RX 5600 XT models, which features significantly higher core clock and memory clocks at the expense of a nominally higher TDP. As you can see in the table below, these upgrades go far beyond what we'd normally expect to see from an overclocked card, with the projected performance gain placing the RX 5600 XT OC in nearly the same ballpark as the $349 RX 5700.

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