Conclusion

Just as R9 290 and RX Vega 56 were more compelling and balanced offerings than their higher-powered flagship counterparts, the RX 5700 continues the trend by being the better buy of the new Navi pair.

The lead it exerts over RTX 2060 is much more substantial than with RX 5700 XT over RTX 2060 Super – 10 percent on average and highs of 20 percent in its best showing. Whether Nvidia drops RTX 2060 pricing remains to be seen, but for now the RX 5700 dominates on price-performance.

The difference in efficiency and thermals are also less pronounced. Nvidia’s smaller RTX 2060 Founders Edition design is definitely superior in many regards like noise output, build quality, and backplate inclusion, but as of right now you can’t actually purchase the RTX 2060 FE, as its listing has disappeared from Nvidia.com. It’s possible it’ll come back in stock, but for the same £330 as RX 5700 currently, you’ll be looking at entry-level dual-fan custom designs instead. These don’t tend to have the same allure as the FE parts, but noise and thermals will still be better.

The overclocking situation right now is unfortunate, so hopefully the driver situation changes soon. We believe it may already have done (not in time for us to have done any testing, though), so we’ll try to have a play soon. For now, though, RX 5700’s overclocking potential remains unknown, whereas RTX 2060 can often get to within touching distance of RTX 2070 (and thus RTX 2060 Super).

Nvidia also has a strong selection of custom RTX 2060 on the market, but the noisy reference design of the RX 5700 looks set to be the only one available for at least a month, further dampening the impact it has.

Regarding game bundles, the Radeon RX 5700 will qualify buyers for three months of free membership to Microsoft’s Game Pass for PC, giving you access to over 100 PC gaming titles for free as long as your membership is active. As far as we know you won’t be able to start the three months until August, even if you buy before then. Nvidia has a more traditional bundle for RTX 2060 whereby you get a free game to keep for life: Wolfenstein: Youngblood, which launches later in July.

So, you have a £350 GPU budget and you’re wondering what to do with it. Realistically, your choices right now are RX 5700 reference or a custom-cooled RTX 2060. If noise is your number one priority and/or you really buy into the ray tracing argument, the RTX 2060 is probably for you, but for everyone else the RX 5700 is more compelling, especially if you game or plan to game at 1440p, as the scaling we saw indicates a more future-proof design from AMD.

Sadly, this card isn’t perfect. The noise is definitely more than we’d like, and the absence of a backplate is a shame too. Overclocking also remains untrodden ground for now. As such, while the value proposition in RX 5700’s case is disruptive enough to earn it a Recommended award in spite of these flaws, our primary advice is to hold out for custom-cooled cards, during which time we’ll get a better sense of Navi’s overclocking potential, and possibly even witness further price drops as the market settles and responds to a very busy week.