Opinion | AMD confirms disappointing Radeon RX 5700M and RX 5600M specifications
AMD presented the Radeon RX 5600M and RX 5700M at CES 2020 as being designed for high-performance mobile gaming and ultimate mobile gaming, but was scant on the details about either GPU besides a 1H 2020 release date. Announced on January 6, AMD confirmed that devices like the Dell G5 SE should start shipping in Q2, with websites like Wccftech speculating that the RX 5600M and RX 5700M would support 2,304 and 2,560 stream processors, respectively. However, it seems that AMD quietly confirmed the full specifications for both GPUs a few days later.
We say quietly, as we are unsure when AMD first listed the specifications for both cards, with no other outlet having covered them as far as we can see. Some searching revealed a Reddit thread from January 16, but they could well have gone live earlier than that.
Regardless, the full specifications have gone live for the RX 5600M and RX 5700M, and they are not quite as hoped. Both will feature 36 compute units, 2,304 stream processors and GDDR6 VRAM. However, it is worth keeping in mind that the latter will operate at 12 Gbps on both cards. The RX 5700M will have a 256-bit bus though, yielding a bandwidth of 384 GB/s, while the RX 5600M will have a 288 GB/s bandwidth because of its 192-bit bus. The full specifications for both cards are as follows:
| Radeon RX 5700M | Radeon RX 5600M | |
|---|---|---|
| Compute Units | 36 | 36 |
| Boost Frequency | 1,720 MHz | 1,265 MHz |
| Game Frequency | 1,620 MHz | 1,190 MHz |
| Peak Pixel Fill-Rate | 110.10 GP/s | 80.96 GP/s |
| Peak Texture Fill-Rate | 247.70 GT/s | 182.16 GT/s |
| Peak Half Precision (FP16) | 15.85 TFLOPs | 11.66 TFLOPs |
| Peak Single Precision (FP32) | 7.93 TFLOPs | 5.83 TFLOPs |
| ROPs | 64 | 64 |
| Stream Processors | 2,304 | 2,304 |
| Transistor Count | 10.3 billion | 10.3 billion |
| Memory Speed | 12 Gbps | 12 Gbps |
| Max Memory Size | 8 GB | 6 GB |
| Memory Type (GPU) | GDDR6 | GDDR6 |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit | 192-bit |
| Max Memory Bandwidth | 384 GB/s | 288 GB/s |
At this stage, it remains unclear whether AMD will offer the RX 5600M and RX 5700M only with 6 GB and 8 GB of VRAM, respectively. The wording of "Max Memory Size" implies that multiple SKUs could be on the cards, but that may not prove the case. We cannot understand why AMD has opted for 12 Gbps VRAM for the RX 5600M and RX 5700M, though. By contrast, the RX 5500M has 14 Gbps VRAM, as do the GeForce RTX 20 series for laptops.
Speculatively, the specifications effectively confirm that the RX 5700M will sit below the existing RTX 2070, with the RX 5600M will likely outperform the RTX 2060. While the rumoured RTX 20 SUPER series will probably not change that significantly, it will undoubtedly widen the gap between the RX 5700M and the RTX 2070 SUPER and RTX 2080 SUPER.
Overall, these specifications make for rather disappointing graphics cards, in our opinion. The RX 5600M will probably make for a solid 1080p GPU at high or ultra graphics settings. However, we are unsure whether the RX 5700M will even reach current RTX 2070 levels, let alone RTX 2070 SUPER or RTX 2080 SUPER. Hardly ultimate mobile gaming, AMD?
