Navi Dicussion Thread

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-no...40132.html

For the past few days, rumors have circulated that AMD is pulling its reference design 5700-series GPUs from its website and that they will no longer be manufactured. However, AMD and Radeon Technologies Group's Scott Herkelman has denied the reports publically and clarified what exactly would be happening with reference GPUs going forward.
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Additionally, Herkelman stated on Twitter: "We will continue to offer the Radeon 5700 series reference design on AMD.com and select OEM, retail and etailers. However, we are fully transitioning our AIB partners over to their own custom designs." Essentially, there is a stock of reference coolers that exists right now, and once that is gone, AMD is the only company that is guaranteed to sell them, although other vendors can sell them if they want to. So, reference designs haven't been canceled, but they are being made less important by the existence of custom-designed 5700 series GPUs.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-rx...40144.html

AMD explained:

"Instead of setting a conservative, ‘worst case’ throttling temperature for the entire die, the Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs will continue to opportunistically and aggressively ramp clocks until any one of the many available sensors hits the ‘hotspot’ or ‘Junction’ temperature of 110 degrees Celsius. Operating at up to 110C Junction Temperature during typical gaming usage is expected and within spec. This enables the Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs to offer much higher performance and clocks out of the box, while maintaining acoustic and reliability targets."

That won't stop the company's add-in board partners from introducing cooling systems powerful enough to keep junction temperatures below triple digits. Sapphire did just that with the Pulse Radeon RX 5700 XT we reviewed yesterday, actually, and we sincerely doubt it will be the only one. But at least the company made an effort to explain why temperatures high enough to boil water are considered "in spec" for its latest GPUs.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sap...276-7.html

Add-in board partners like Sapphire obviously can’t ameliorate all of AMD’s shortcomings. However, the Pulse Radeon RX 5700 XT does fix some of what we found problematic on the reference design. Dual 95mm axial fans, for example, spin more slowly and make less noise than the single centrifugal fan on AMD’s own Radeon RX 5700 XT. They also cool more effectively, pulling the Navi GPU’s operating temperature down 10°C compared to the reference card. And the Pulse does this in its Performance mode, enabling higher clock rates than we saw from AMD. A second BIOS gives you the freedom to use more conservative frequencies for lower power consumption; fortunately, the difference between them is relatively minor.
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We weren’t particularly enthused about the reference Radeon RX 5700 XT’s $400 price tag compared to a GeForce RTX 2060 Super for the same amount of money. AMD’s card was almost 10% faster than Nvidia’s, yes. But its higher power consumption, hotter GPU, and deficit in ray-traced games tipped the scales the other way for us. The Pulse Radeon RX 5700 XT’s $410 MSRP is even higher. Sapphire does use a Dual-X cooler to rectify the reference design’s runaway temperatures. It’s oh-so-quiet, too. But you’re still being asked to pay more money for even higher power use. And ray tracing is still absent. You need to be OK with these things before any Radeon RX 5700 XT becomes the right choice.

If that’s the camp you find yourself in, then the Pulse Radeon RX 5700 XT deserves an extra half of a point on our scoring scale compared to AMD’s own implementation. It addresses the solvable critiques we had of the reference design with only a minor bump up in price.