After taking a look at Sapphire’s graphics card based on the latest Navi 10 GPU, feel free to check that one out, I’ll put a link in the right top corner, with it I moved away from the so-called big trio, and today I’m continuing this trend with taking a look at the XFX RX 5700 XT RAW II model.
Some of you’ve maybe already seen a couple of reviews of this card, and the reason why am I mentioning this at, well, this card seems to be running a little bit hot, the temperatures are not quite what one could expect out of it.
Jumping right into it to check that out, the GPU temperature was above 70°C, mostly around 73-74°C, which is a bit higher compared to some of the other RX 5700 XT cards that I’ve tested, but still much lower than the reference design, while on the other hand, the junction temperature was roaming around the 90°C mark, usually just a bit above, which is somewhere in the middle, it’s not the highest I’ve seen nor the lowest for an RX 5700 XT GPU. Unfortunately, the video memory and VRM temperatures were also higher than what I usually see with this series, running at 84 to 86°C for the video memory and around 78°C for the VRM’s. This model also supports 0 dB 0 RPM fan mode when the GPU is not under load, so the idle temperature is understandably a bit higher.
XFX RX 5700 XT RAW II – Undervolting is the way to go
I managed to pull those numbers down a bit as I did my overclocking of the card with doing a little bit of an undervolting also. With that, I was seeing on an average degree or two lower temperatures, while also bringing up the performance of the card and lowering down the fans speed to mostly around 1500 RPM, instead of 1700 RPM. I’ve maxed out the video memory frequency to 950 MHz without a problem, and I could have gone with the GPU core clock a bit more, but there was no point in doing that as it required higher GPU core voltage and brought only like 20 to 30 MHz more on the table. In the end I think I’ve achieved a better balance of the card like this.
It’s a little bit weird to say at least, that a card with this, what’s seems to be a beefy cooling setup, consisting out of four heat pipes running through the two-part aluminum fin stack, and which are directly in contact with the GPU block, as well as a separate plates with thermal pads which cool off the VRM’s and video memory, has a problem of keeping everything a bit cooler than it is, it’s not like its vastly underperforming, but it just visually looks, it has that presence, as it could do better. Especially since we have two 100 mm fans which run mostly at, as I said, around 1700 RPM, which is a somewhat of a higher value for a card that has a two fan setup, so there should be a decent amount of airflow.
There’s is an option of loading up a different BIOS for RX 5700 XT RAW II, a low fan speed BIOS profile as the call it, by just moving the switch on the card into other position, but I kept it at the normal stock fan speed BIOS profile with my testing, as I usually do when a card has something like this, because rarely anyone will actually use it and before all, if you’re going to do something like updating the BIOS or switching between versions, you might as well make your own fan profile in MSI Afterburner or some other utility, do you own overclocking and undervolting, especially since a good chunk of it depends on the GPU die potential of your sample and your chassis fan setup, and this way get the most out of your graphics card, rather then just relying on a BIOS change and leaving everything else untouched.
XFX RX 5700 XT a bit too raw?
Other than that, overall I like how the card looks, it’s mostly black and has this angular shape of the outer shell, with these grill like looking details around few parts, and silver inserts on the side sort of like coming out from within of the card. Everything is made out of the plastic here, except for the big metal back-plate, which partially wraps around onto the one side of the card and which looks a bit basic, but it’s still decent enough on a count of this cutout details on it. The one thing that I do mind, is the fact that they went for the glossy looking finish for the fan blades. Why, why? It’s already all scratched up and it really doesn’t look that appealing in my opinion. This is somewhat redeemed with this pretty subtle, but unfortunately, only white glowing LED XFX logo on the side of the card.
For powering XFX RX 5700 XT RAW 2 up, we have an 8 + 6-pin PCI-express power connectors, which also have an empty space between them, so you can tuck away extra 2-pin from the 8-pin, while they have two LED0s which indicates that the power is running through them. Back there you will also find this 4-pin connector, and honestly, I’m not 100% sure for what it is, I can’t find any info on it, I thought It was a PWM connector for a fan or a 12V RGB led header, maybe some of you know what it is? Tell me in the comments down below. Lastly, we have your usually video output array consisting out of three DispayPorts 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0b.
If you have any questions or other concerns about this card, feel free to leave your comment down below in the video, and down there, in the description box to be precise, you can also find my setup which I used for testing this GPU out.
So, what about the performance of this model? Well, it’s a RX 5700 XT graphics card in the end, I’ve already had my hands on a couple of them and I assume majority of you are well aware of its general performance, it’s suited for 1440p gaming, it can handle any game and basically any graphics settings at that resolution, while for those who want to play at high-FPS on their high-refresh-rate monitor, and in that case it’s best-intended 1080p resolution use. 4K is also doable, but I would lower down the graphics settings in order to get a decent frame-rate output.
RX 5700 XT RAW II goes againts hard competition
As for my overclocking settings which I’ve mentioned earlier, the performance here jumps by about 5%, so nothing too exciting, as we’re all already used to seeing that with Navi 10 GPU’s, but I did manage to pull the power consumption down a bit, by about 10-20W, since the card was also undervolted in that case.
As I mentioned, the fans are running on the faster side than what I’m used to seeing in RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 graphics cards reviews, so the acoustics situation isn’t that great, but it’s not that bad either, I was seeing the fans running between 1600 and 1800 RPM’s, mostly somewhere in the middle of that. Like this it’s a bit quieter than the Gigabyte’s model, but that one has three fans running at 1800 RPM at stock, so it’s not hard to beat it noise-wise, while overall, at least for my taste, it’s a bit too loud, but that’s on an open testbed and I’m a noise freak so take that with a grain of salt. You can find a short sound clip of the cards fans under stock and OC load in the video above this, while also showing the sound meter for measurement comparison.
All in all, with all of this information at one place, this model stands on its own, it does have some issues, like almost any other model out there, it performs good in one field, but lacks in other areas, but bottom line it might have a hard time fighting its way through to its potential buyers next to some other partner models on the market which proved to be a bit more rounded up products.
That’s it for this time, I hope this XFX RX 5700 XT RAW II review will let you decided which 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!
