MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC: Evoking the Best Navi Performance Yet

Introduction & Pricing

It is the week of custom Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards being released, where my first review out of the custom Navi gate was SAPPHIRE's far-better-than-reference Radeon RX 5700 XT PULSE OC. Today... MSI's new Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC.

MSI's new Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC features an interestingly-styled 2.5-slot and dual-fan design, something that celebrates AMD's huge 50th anniversary with its gold styling. MSI engineers have worked overtime on the RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC, with the dual-fan cooler keeping the Navi 10 GPU even cooler than SAPPHIRE did with its PULSE OC card.

The entire card screams premium, and while it might not find a home in all gaming PCs because of its unique look, it will have an audience for sure. Even for those who want to jump into the custom Radeon RX 5700 XT side of things, the MSI card is going to appeal from pure brute performance as well as thermal numbers.

Pricing

MSI is pricing the new Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC at $429.

Specs: Navi 10 GPU + 7nm Node + PCIe 4.0

Navi GPU Detailed

RDNA is at the heart of the new Navi GPU architecture, which delivers improvements at virtually all levels over the Polaris and Vega GPU architectures. The main component here is the 7nm process, mixed in with the use of GDDR6 memory (over HBM2 on Vega) as well as the huge step into PCIe 4.0 technology.

We can expect some big wins here with power and performance, with AMD tapping some of the knowledge it discovered with the Zen CPU architecture inside of Navi and RDNA.

This is the big difference between RDNA and the GCN (GraphicsCore Next) architectures, with AMD promising up to 50% performance gains -- breaking this up into around 60% performance-per-clock enhancements, 25% of it from the new 7nm node, and the rest in design frequency and power improvements.

AMD compares the new Navi 10 GPU directly against the Vega 10 used in the Radeon RX Vega 64 showing a 14% increase in performance, while using 23% less power. Vega 64 had a huge 495mm2 die while the new Navi 10 is on 7nm and using just 251mm2 in comparison. Overall, we're looking at a huge 2.3x increase in performance per area.

Don't worry, it isn't just going to be RDNA as RDNA is coming in 2020 on 7nm+.

PCI Express 4.0

AMD's new Ryzen 3000 series CPUs have been made with the new X570 chipset in mind, the first to market with PCIe 4.0 -- and the new Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards are the first to market with PCIe 4.0 support. There is no gaming benefits right now, as PCIe 4.0 is more for storage and high-end tasks on GPUs that are bandwidth restrained. Gamers don't need to really care about PCIe 4.0, for now.

MSI Torx Fan 3.0 Cooling

MSI's new Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC doesn't look like its a mean, Navi-cooling machine but hell yes it is. The cooling technology MSI deploys on its custom graphics cards is always impressive.

Once again, the company doesn't disappoint -- evoking (heh) some great cooling powers in the custom RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC. The dual-fan cooler does a kick ass job at keeping the card cool, which is now our coolest custom RX 5700 XT card yet.

This does result in a chunkier card, however... with it coming in as a 2.5-slot card.

Detailed Look

The front of the box will surely EVOKE some feelings from customers when they see it on a shelf somewhere. As you can see, MSI is celebrating AMD's 50th anniversary with this card.

On the back MSI details the Torx Fan 3.0 cooling technology, the copper baseplate, and premium backbone of the RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC graphics card.

The card in question, rocking a dual-fan cooler and gold styling.

I love the back of the card, with its gold backplate looking bling AF.

We can see the MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC is a 2.5-slot graphics card with a rather chunky heat pipe system keeping it nice and cool.

And once again from the top of the card, with some funky cut outs on the cooler to the left, and PCIe power connectors to the right.

You will need 8+6-pin PCIe power connectors for the MSI RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC.

We have 3 x DP 1.4 and 1 x HDMI 2.0 output on the back of the card.

Test System Specs

GPU Test Rig

Welcome to the latest revision of our GPU test bed, with our system being upgraded from the Intel Core i7-7700K to the Core i7-8700K. The CPU is cooled by the Corsair H115i PRO cooler, with the 8700K overclocked to 5GHz. We've stayed with GIGABYTE for our motherboard with their awesome Z370 AORUS Gaming 7.

We approached our friends at HyperX for a kit of their kick ass HyperX Predator DDR4-2933MHz RAM (HX429C15PB3AK4/32), with 2 x 8GB sticks for a total of 16GB DDR4-2933. The RAM stands out through every minute of our testing as it has beautiful RGB lights giving the system a slick look while benchmarking our lives away, while the Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard joins in with its own array of RGB lighting.

Detailed Tech Specs

• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5GHz
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H115i PRO
• MB: Z370 AORUS Gaming 7
• RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) HyperX Predator DDR4-2933
• SSD: 1TB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
• SSD: 512GB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
• PSU: InWin 1065W PSU
• Chassis: In Win X-Frame
• OS: Windows 10 Pro x64

Additional Images

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike - 1440p

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike - 4K

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark TimeSpy

3DMark TimeSpy Extreme

Heaven - 1080p

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

Heaven - 1440p

Heaven - 4K

Benchmarks - 1080p

1080p Benchmarks

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Benchmarks - 1440p

1440p Benchmarks

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Benchmarks - 4K

4K Benchmarks

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Thermals & Power

Power Consumption

In our stress testing with Heaven running at 4K, the MSI RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC and our entire Core i7-8700K test bed consumes 330W of power. This is 15W more than the SAPPHIRE RX 5700 XT PULSE OC, and 45W more than the reference card from AMD.

Temperature

But when it comes to temps, MSI kicks it out of the park. The custom RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC runs at just 63C, compared to the absolutely huge 84C (and sometimes higher) of AMD's own reference RX 5700 XT. SAPPHIRE's custom RX 5700 XT PULSE OC performs much better than the reference card at 68C (and up to 72C) but MSI trumps it with the EVOKE OC.

Final Thoughts

MSI knocks it out of the park with the new Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC, offering better than reference performance with the best thermal performance of the custom Navi cards that I've tested so far. It also offers it all up in a slick gold styled card that celebrates AMD's 50th anniversary.

We have some stellar 1080p performance, equally as impressive 1440p gaming performance and depending on the game you'll handle 4K without a problem.

MSI keeps temperatures lower by a frankly insane 20C under the reference Radeon RX 5700 XT, which easily peaks at over 84C under gaming and stress testing. MSI's new Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE keeps things under chilly temps of 63C, all without making much noise which is another bonus.

If you were already impressed with what Navi has to offer with the reference Radeon RX 5700 XT then you'll fall in love with the MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT EVOKE OC. It offers better than reference RX 5700 XT performance, is covered in gold-styling, and stays nice and cool and quiet - what more could you ask for?