While we are waiting for further news on AMD's RX 5500 GPU for desktop, our attention turns back to the RX 5700 XT which launched in July. We've reviewed a number of partner cards since then, and today we are looking at ASRock's flagship offering – the RX 5700 XT Taichi X OC+. With an eye-catching design, triple-fan cooler and heavily overclocked core, the Taichi aims to rival the likes of the PowerColor Red Devil and Sapphire Nitro+. Can it come out on top?
While the cooler design and snazzy RGB lighting are undoubtedly eye-catching features for the ASRock RX 5700 XT Taichi X, arguably the most interesting area for this card is its pricing. Currently selling at £469.99 from Overclockers UK, this is the most expensive RX 5700 XT card I have reviewed so far, with a £90 price premium over AMD's MSRP. That puts this card very close to RTX 2070 SUPER territory, so can the Taichi justify its price? We find out today.
RX 5700 | RX 5700 XT | RX Vega 56 | RX Vega 64 | Radeon VII | |
Architecture | Navi | Navi | Vega 10 | Vega 10 | Vega 20 |
Manufacturing Process | 7nm | 7nm | 14nm | 14nm | 7nm |
Transistor Count | 10.3 billion | 10.3 billion | 12.5 billion | 12.5 billion | 13.2 billion |
Die Size | 251mm² | 251mm² | 486mm² | 495mm² | 331mm² |
Compute Units | 36 | 40 | 56 | 64 | 60 |
Stream Processors | 2304 | 2560 | 3584 | 4096 | 3840 |
Base GPU Clock | Up to 1465MHz | Up to 1605MHz | 1156 MHz | 1274 MHz | 1400 MHz |
Game GPU Clock | Up to 1625MHz | Up to 1755MHz | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Boost GPU Clock | Up to 1725MHz | Up to 1905MHz | 1471 MHz | 1546 MHz | 1750 MHz |
Peak Engine Clock | n/a | n/a | 1590 MHz | 1630 MHz | 1800 MHz |
Peak SP Performance | Up to 7.95 TFLOPS | Up to 9.75 TFLOPS | Up to 10.5 TFLOPS | Up to 12.7 TFLOPS | Up to 14.2 TFLOPS |
Peak Half Precision Performance | Up to 15.9 TFLOPS | Up to 19.5 TFLOPS | Up to 21.0 TFLOPS | Up to 25.3 TFLOPS | Up to 28.1 TFLOPS |
Peak Texture Fill-Rate | Up to 248.4 GT/s | Up to 304.8 GT/s | Up to 330.0 GT/s | Up to 395.8 GT/s | 432.24 GT/s |
ROPs | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
Peak Pixel Fill-Rate | Up to 110.4 GP/s | Up to 121.9 GP/s | Up to 94.0 GP/s | Up to 98.9 GP/s | 115.26 GP/s |
Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB HBM | 8GB HBM | 16GB HBM2 |
Memory Bandwidth | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 410 GB/s | 483.8 GB/s | 1 TB/s |
Memory Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 2048-bit | 2048-bit | 4096-bit |
Board Power | 185W | 225W | 210W | 295W | 300W |
Core spec of the RX 5700 XT is well-known at this point – the GPU is based on TSMC's 7nm process and is made up of 40 Compute Units, each housing 64 Stream Processors for a total of 2560 shaders. Alongside that, the card is outfitted with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, operating over a 256-bit bus for 448GB/s total memory bandwidth.
Where things differ versus the reference card is with clock speed. The Taichi X has a rated game clock of 1935MHz, almost 200MHz higher than the reference card. For further comparison, both the PowerColor Red Devil and Sapphire Nitro+ have game clocks of 1905MHz, so we should see the Taichi run slightly faster – but we look at actual clock speeds later in the review.