In-Game Benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 9 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of if turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. In total, each video card is tested 48 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start off with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier to read the result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, and then over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors.

So how did the ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming perform? Well AMD promoted the RX 5600 XT as their ultimate 1080p card where the RX 5500 XT is a standard 1080p and the 5700 series of cards are for 1440p. So my main focus is on 1080p where the card did have two of our tests come in over 120 FPS, which given how none of the games tested are less demanding esports titles. 11 are in the 60-119 FPS range which is great. But the three that still fall into the over 30 FPS but under 60 FPS range are still a little concerning. When I dive into the detailed results I’m going to look for those three specifically to see what is going on there. Even with this not being a 1440p card, every game tested would be considered playable with the 5600 XT and with a majority of those even being over 60 FPS. Then at 4k things really take a dive. 10 tests were playable but none of them would be called smooth and nearly half were unplayable at all in the sub 30 FPS range. No surprises there!

Next, I want to take a look at the actual results. Specifically, I wanted to get an idea of how the RX 5600 XT compares with the RTX 2060 and the GTX 1660 Ti. I also want to look out for any weird results and look for those three 1080p results that fell under 60 FPS and see what games/detail they were and how close they were to making the 60 FPS cut. So start with those three sub 60 FPS results. The first one was in Metro Exodus with the ultra detail setting where it came in at 54.75 FPS. This was right above the RTX 2060 and in fact, even the 2060 SUPER didn’t break 60 FPS on most of the cards tested as well. The second one was Total War: THREE KINGDOMS at the ultra detail with an FPS of 57.7. Here the RTX 2060 did make the cut, coming in with almost 6 FPS more on this test. The last one was Ghost Recon: Wildlands at the ultra detail setting with an FPS of 57.49. The RTX 2060 was right there as well at 54.38 FPS but the 5600 XT did come out ahead on that one. SO overall all three of the sub 60 FPS results were VERY close. I think we can still consider this a premium 1080p card given that.

Above I also have the breakdown of the average FPS of all three cards for our 1080p results. I stick with just 1080p here because that is where this card is focused. But the breakdown shows exactly what I was seeing in all of the graphs below and previously in the synthetic results as well. The RX 5600 XT dominates the GTX 1660 Ti by a CRAZY amount with it being ahead over 12 FPS on average. But at the same time, it does still come in behind the RTX 2060 which is to be expected given pricing even after Nvidia’s pricing changes. Now keep in mind that is with the 2060 being a non-overclocked model where the other two are overclocked. This is especially true now that I am retesting with the new BIOS which added an even bigger overclock to the Phantom Gaming. The 1 FPS difference between the RTX 2060 and the RX 5600 XT doesn’t actually show that the 5600 XT came out ahead in our tests more often. But the 2060 did make up for it with a bigger lead in the games it did excel at.