Review – Gigabyte Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G

The Radeon RX 5600 XT is AMD’s latest addition to its RX 5000 series graphics card lineup that was announced back at CES 2020. It’s positioned in between the RX 5500 XT and RX 5700, which AMD claims to be the best model for 1080P gaming in the current lineup.

We managed to get our hands early on one of the Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G for this review, one of the Radeon RX 5600 XT available from Gigabyte.

Specifications

Unboxing

There’s not much going on here at the front of the box, but you can expect all the features available on RX 5000 series cards i.e FidelityFX and FreeSync 2 HDR. Also, you can tell from the familiar icons, that the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G comes with support for RGB Fusion 2.0, WindForce cooling and it’s factory overclocked.

Additional information on features available on the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G can be found at the back of the box i.e the WindForce 3X cooling system, direct touch Copper heat-pipes, RGB lighting, backplate and output options.

Drivers CD and user’s guide is the usual thing we get inside the accessories box nowadays, as most of the manufacturers stopped giving out PCIe Y-splitter cable and DVI-D to VGA adapter for quite some time. But to our surprise, the only thing that comes inside the accessories box for the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G accessories box is only the user’s guide.

The Gigabyte Radeon RX 5600 XT

Just like the rest of the board partners, Gigabyte released 2 versions of the Radeon RX 5600 XT after the official announcement by AMD. The Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G we have here is one of it, and it’s equipped with the triple-fan WindForce cooler that many of us are already familiar with.

Alternate spinning middle fan, a thick Aluminum heatsink with Copper heat-pipes that is in direct contact with the GPU die is part of the iconic design of the WindForce 3X cooling system by Gigabyte.

Despite the size of its heatsink, the Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G is still considered as a dual-slot card which isn’t much of an issue in terms of clearance if you’re using a standard ATX case for your system.

As for the power requirement, you will need a 350W power supply with at least one single 8-pin PCIe power connector for the Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G.

This is probably the only RGB element you’ll find on the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G and can be disabled using the RGB Fusion 2.0 software in case if you don’t need any RGB lighting in your system.

A metal backplate is included with the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G as well, something that is commonly seen graphics card in the mid-end tier above. The thickness is fairly reasonable, not too thin and enough to provide some form of rigidity enhancement for the PCB itself.

For the output options, the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G offers a total of three DisplayPort and one HDMI port. The layout is pretty standard for a mid-range card nowadays and will suffice for most users – most gamers won’t really use more than 2 of these options available.

Test System Setup

The test is done using the following setup under an ambient temperature of 30°C:

The test is done separately for games that support both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 at the resolution of 1920×1080, 2560×1440, and 3840×2160.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

Grand Theft Auto V

Far Cry 5

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Battlefield V

Metro Exodus

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2

Temperature

During our initial test with the old BIOS, the performance isn’t as good as what we’ve expected and it runs almost as hot as an RX 5700 when it’s stressed with FurMark test for an hour-long run, at 92°C. In case if you already got yourself one and it runs as hot as what we’ve mentioned earlier, just head on to the official product page to get the latest FA0 BIOS and you’re good to go.

With the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G updated to the FA0 BIOS, the highest temperature recorded after 4 hours of FurMark stress test is at 82°C. If the card is used only for gaming, the average temperature recorded throughout our gaming benchmark test is at 69°C to 72°C. Increasing the fan speed to 50% will give you an even better result of 67°C average temperature, with only a very minimal sacrifice on the acoustic performance.

Final Thoughts

At the time this review is written, there are still no RTX features available on all the existing RX 5000 series card and it puts the series in a tough position if we were to compare it to the RTX series from the green camp, features wise, side by side.

If we put aside the NVIDIA exclusive RTX-only features, the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G has the amount of raw power to perform almost on par with a GeForce RTX 2060. The power requirement is surprisingly low as well – even lower than a RTX 2060, and the minimum 350W power supply for the card makes it a reasonable upgrade for a budget-friendly gaming system.

As for the price, the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G is priced at RM 1,539.00 on Gigabyte’s official store at Lazada, which is almost the price of some lower-cost GeForce RTX 2060 models from other board partners. For those who don’t really need the RTX features, the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC 6G is probably one of the considerable options to go for. Personally, we will still prefer the extra RTX feature which will come in handy at some times, rather than not having any of it.

Pros

• Well performing cooler
• Metal backplate included
• Radeon Image Sharpening, FidelityFX for better image quality, hassle-free
• Performs almost on par with a GeForce RTX 2060
• Reasonable power requirement for its performance
• Support for PCIe 4.0

Cons

• Manual BIOS update is required for first batch release
• Lack of support for real-time ray tracing on RTX enabled games
• Price is almost the same as some GeForce RTX 2060 models