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AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (OC) manages to beat the NVIDIA RTX 2080 in Fire Strike Ultra, shows RDNA has good overclocking potential

An overclocked AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT performs great in 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra. (Source: /u/FeelsAnimeMan on Reddit)
An overclocked AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT performs great in 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra. (Source: /u/FeelsAnimeMan on Reddit)
An overclocked AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT can give good competition to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 in synthetic benchmarks as was discovered by a Redditor who managed to crank up the 5700 XT all the way to 2.1 GHz. At this frequency, the 5700 XT scored higher than the RTX 2080 FE in Fire Strike Ultra indicating that the RDNA architecture has good potential for overclocking.

So far, we've seen the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT trade blows with the NVIDIA RTX 2070 and even the RTX 2060 Super. Now, a Redditor has shown than an overclocked 5700 XT can even beat the RTX 2080 FE in 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra. 

The OP, /u/FeelsAnimeMan, managed to achieve an overclock of 2.1 GHz (stock 'Game Clock' is 1,755 MHz) along with a memory overclock of 900 MHz (14.4 Gbps). At this speed, the 5700 XT managed to score 6533 points in Fire Strike Ultra. The RTX 2080 FE scores about 6505 points in this very test. What this shows is that maturing Navi drivers are capable of unlocking more overclocking potential in RDNA cards. However, this comparison has some caveats. 

First things first, the 5700 XT won't be beating the RTX 2080 in gaming anytime soon. An actual gaming comparison between an OC 5700 XT and an RTX 2080 running at 1800 MHz stock shows the latter leading in most games. That being said, OC'ing the 5700 XT does bridge the performance gap to a large extent so you can spend less and still get equivalent performance. Another thing to keep in mind is that Fire Strike Ultra is a 2013 benchmark and even the GTX 1080 Ti gets to score around 7465 in this test.  

Also, the blower design does have its pitfalls in not being able to achieve the requisite cooling for overclocking. AIB cards for the Radeon 5700 series are around the corner and their custom cooling setups can be helpful in getting good benefits from this overclocking exercise. If you are adventurous enough, you can also slap an AIO cooler for even better cooling. 

What remains to be seen is the power draws while OC'ing the 5700 XT. Still, the fact that a US$400 card (RX 5700 XT) has 'potential' to come close to a US$700 card (RTX 2080) is very enticing.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2019 07 > AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (OC) manages to beat the NVIDIA RTX 2080 in Fire Strike Ultra, shows RDNA has good overclocking potential
Vaidyanathan Subramaniam, 2019-07-25 (Update: 2019-07-25)