I know it kinda doesn't make sense, but I liked it. The title, that is. Anyway I am making a post to share a small bit of my thoughts on the two new Graphics Cards AMD just released on the 7th of July. I've only just taken the time to read some reviews and take it all in, as I was actually going to Dorset at the time and the entire thing was extremely stressful and when I got back I just didn't have the ability to cope with the stress of the excitement (yes it's a thing) of reading some new Hardware Reviews. So here's my bunch of crap on the RX 5700 series.
RX 5700 XT
This card looks really good on the market right now. The new revised pricing at $399 (~£370-399) is nice, and this card does offer some great value in my opinion. So the primary competition in performance is NVIDIA's RTX 2070 Super card, which provides slightly more (I am seeing around 5% on average) performance, and includes hardware-enabled DXR (Ray Tracing) features but... it costs one hundred bucks (or about a hundred quid) more. That's a lot of money for 5% in games that aren't going to use DXR... so, like, most of them.
I usually have mixed feelings about the RTX situation and would argue for RTX, but only if the price difference is minimal, say like 20 or 30 pounds or something. I'm all for trying out new tech but 100 pounds is too much if the card isn't meaningfully faster, which it kinda isn't honestly. Sure there's games where it's faster but others where it's not and I am going to say here that the RX 5700XT is definitely a compelling option at 400 pounds. But what about the 2060 Super?
The price competition is the 2060 Super. The 5700XT is a faster card at the same price. But also remember you are not getting hardware DXR with the 5700XT, which you might want to consider. This is a bit more complex a question for me, as I might want to consider trading a little bit of raw performance in most games for the ability to use hardware DXR in games like Metro Exodus.
RX 5700
Okay so this card is $349 with the updated price and abour £330-340 here in the UK. I am going to say one thing right now:
RTX 2060 (6GB) is officially dead to me.
With that out of the way, let me continue. At the same price as the 6GB RTX 2060, the RX 5700 just completely kills that card. I mean it has 2GB more video memory and is considerably faster (more than 10% many times). The RTX appeal of the non-super 2060 just isn't there, I've seen really bad things about this card and RTX and stuttering. I know that's anecodtal but my own experience with a 6GB GTX 1660 was somewhat negative in games I play (Fallout 76, Far Cry 5 +HD Textures), so it would be worse on a card with the same capacity but more GPU power. And that was without RTX so...
6GB on a £300+ card in 2019? No thanks, NVIDIA. So what about the 2060 Super? This one is a bit tougher as the latter doesn't have the 6GB disadvantage and could potentially offer acceptable performance in RTX (also because of that 8GB). But it's also $50 more expensive, and doesn't consistently offer more performance than the 5700. I think honestly I would say the 5700 is a compelling alternative if you don't want to use RTX, so like, most gamers.
Closing my Thoughts
I think AMD has done really well with the Navi 10 launch, and the updated prices are very nice. I think perhaps AMD intended to launch at these prices from the start, but baited NVIDIA to launch their cards first with the higher prices. Who knows.
Anyway RX 5700 series powered by the brand-new RDNA-equipped "Navi 10" graphics processor look to provide really compelling alternatives at a lower price to the bulk of NVIDIA's "mid-range" product lineup. But you gotta ask yourself, are you okay paying 400 USD for a card that has no capability to hardware-accelerate DXR in 2019? Yes, the games today are not that varied, but the games of 2020 are likely to have this feature in much more use, NVIDIA is pushing it a lot. So, to me, it is a bit more complex when you add in the DXR functionality.
I think 2070 Super is a bad choice right now, despite initially thinking it was good. The 5700XT price cut changed that for me. But I see the 2060 Super as a possible choice because it's a decent entry to hardware DXR, something that the equally-priced 5700XT and cheaper 5700 do not have.
So I think it comes down to what you want to do going forward. If you plan to try our DXR in current games or the ones coming next year in 2020, NVIDIA 2060 Super might actually be a good choice for your 1920x1080p monitor.
If not? Well, it's clear. 5700 series has you covered :D.
What is Sash going to get?
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Nothing, because I have to save up for next year. :<
Thanks for reading you lovely people!
(It means a lot to me! <3)