After finally putting a few of RX 5700 XT in my graphics card reviews bag, that being MSI’s RX 5700 XT Gaming X model and Gigabyte RX 5700 XT Gaming OC model, feel free to check them out on my channel page, today I’m going to take a look at my first non-XT model – MSI RX 5700 Gaming X model.
The RX 5700 version of the Gaming X model is basically a mirror model of its stronger brother, and when I say that, I think I’m not over-exaggerating, because their weight is exactly the same in one gram, while putting them side by side and taking a closer inspection of their component layout, video output layout and overall build from start to finish, everything really looks to be like that, so the only thing what’s probably different is that they’ve just slapped a different GPU die on it. Although, some would say that two GPUs are completely the same.
MSI RX 5700 Gaming X 8G – cheaper, but still strong
I’m not actually saying that this a bad thing, on the contrary, it’s an excellent thing, because if you consider that this cooling solution and design turned out to be more than a great pair for the RX 5700 XT GPU, the card was running whisper quiet and much cooler than the reference design, some would say that it’s maybe even an overkill for it, it is easy to guess the outcome where you put such cooler on an even less demanding GPU in terms of the TDP, what RX 5700 Gaming X 8G is.
With all that said, I won’t go too deep into analyzing it since I already covered it in detail with my review of MSI’s RX 5700 XT Gaming X model, feel free to check it out in the right top corner of this video, you’ll still get that completely new shroud which is a first for MSI with this Navi Gaming X series, and which brings in this sleek and clean looking design, except for that red detail around the fans which is a bit questionable, very capable and massive cooling solution, which besides the GPU, makes direct contact with the memory and power delivery system, while everything is finished off with two 95 mm Torx 3.0 fans on the top and this very attractive and cool looking metal plate on the back. Again, as I mentioned, this cooler design turned out to be more than an ideal pair for this GPU considering what I saw with its stronger brother.
Actually, so much so, that I did my overclock by undervolting it. Yes, you’ve heard that right, I’ve overclocked the card together with undervolting it.
Since this is, in essence, the same GPU like the one they put on the RX 5700 XT series, the 1850 MHz limit which AMD imposed was a piece of cake for this amount of voltage in combination with this cooler design, as the full-grown version of this GPU found in the RX 5700 XT goes way above that frequency, over 2 GHz when overclocked. Knowing that, I’ve maxed the core clock setting, lowered down the power limit and core voltage to a point where it doesn’t affect the core clock significantly or at all, and bumped up the memory clock to 910 MHz, although the limit is a bit higher than that, but my sample wasn’t stable at 930 MHz. With everything set like this, the card runs even cooler and quieter, but let us just first glance over the stock results before I continue checking out results for this overclock and undervolt fusion.
RX 5700 Gaming X is even quieter than its bigger brother
Under full load and stock settings the GPU temperature was anywhere around 60 to 65°C, same as with the stronger XT counterpart, but with around 300-400 RPM lower fan speed, while the junction temperature was roaming around 75 to 85°C depending on the title, usually closer to that lower mark. That’s a great results results by itself, no question about it, but let’s check out what I got with the combination of undervolting and overclocking the GPU. Here you can see that the temperature dropped by few degrees across all of my testing scenarios, as well as the junction temperature, which was now staying m, while the GPU clock was mostly just below the 1800 MHz, which was about 100 MHz more on compared to the stock results.
The total power draw, or to be precise the difference between idle and load state of only the graphics card was around 10W with this setup, so that’s around 200W of power consumption instead of the stock 210W.
This got me thinking, why don’t vendors make products on the same basis, if the GPU allows it, with a good cooling solution they could easily tweak it that it has lower power consumption, less heat output and more performance, but I assume that AMD would be too happy about it. Tell me in the comments down below what do you think about this idea?
As for the stock, out of the box performance, overall the RX 5700 brings in anywhere in between 10-20% less performance compared to the RX 5700 XT, while with this MSI’s RX 5700 Gaming X model it’s a bit better since it’s factory overclocked. Overall, it’s ideal for 1440p gaming, even 4K if you go easy on the settings, while it’s ideal for 1080p high refresh-rate gaming. As for the overclocking rates, that got me an additional 5% of performance gain, pretty much on spot average results in terms of what I’m usually seeing when it comes to overclocking a Navi card.
RX 5700 undervolting for even better performance
As I already mentioned, the card is whisper-quiet, running mostly around 900 RPM, sometimes a bit above, depending on the game, but bottom line, you won’t hear it running in a chassis, as I didn’t on an open testbed sitting right next to me. Here’s a short sound clip of the card under load, while also showing the sound meter for measurement comparison.
All in all, it’s really hard to find any bad remark about this model, OK, maybe the fact that they’ve put a really modest RGB lighting on it, you only have this pretty usually MSI logo on the side and nothing more on a such big and attractive model like this one, although some of you would probably consider this as plus, while the Mystic Light software utility for controlling it is now in its who knows what revision and of course the version that I used with the RX 5700 XT Gaming X doesn’t work with the non-XT model, and this… what is this?
Putting that aside, altogether this model is a top contender for sure, the only real obstacle in getting it lays in the fact that it will cost you a bit more compared to your average example of an aftermarket RX 5700 model, but for those who are in search for a really efficient and really quiet cooling on a Navi based GPU, this should definitely be on your shortlist.
That’s it for this time, I hope this MSI RX 5700 XT Review will let you decided which Navi card to buy, if you have any question feel free to hit me in the comments section of my YouTube video listed above, you can contact me via my social media channels!
