AORUS Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G Review

Introduction

We are very close to AMD unveiling its next generation RDNA 2 architecture, but before then I wanted to test as many graphics cards as possible.

I reached out to GIGABYTE to see if they would send me some new cards to play with -- and they did, with the first of them under the benchmark microscope being the AORUS Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G. We might be close to RDNA 2, but that doesn't mean the Radeon RX 5700 XT is going to be an instant do-not-buy overnight.

AMD has a formidable 1080p and 1440p gaming graphics card with the Navi 10-powered Radeon RX 5700 XT, packing a 7nm GPU and 8GB of GDDR6 -- the custom variants are pretty kick ass, and GIGABYTE has one of the best you can buy with its AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G.

GIGABYTE has one of the best performing custom Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards on the market, and it's one of the coolest-operating cards, too. It really impressed me on the tail end of the RDNA journey in 2020, with AORUS kicking ass with its RX 5700 XT 8G.

List of reviewed Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards so far:

• AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT reference
• SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 5700 XT NITRO+ OC
• SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 5700 XT PULSE OC
• MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT GAMING X
• ASRock Radeon RX 5700 XT Taichi OC+
• XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC II ULTRA

Marketing

AORUS has deployed one of the best custom coolers on the RX 5700 XT 8G graphics card that I've used so far, with some impressive cooling performance that you'll read about later on in the review. But underneath, we have a huge heat pipe with 3 x 82mm cooling fans courtesy of the WINDFORCE 3X cooler.

The GPU, 8GB of GDDR6 memory chips, and MOSFETs are all cooled by the WINDFORCE 3X cooler.

GIGABYTE offers an insane 6 display outputs on the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G, with 3 x DisplayPort and 3 x HDMI. If you want heaps of displays, the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G is ready for that, and some.

The AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G also looks great, with GIGABYTE using its RGB Fusion 2.0 lighting on the card to let you tweak it to your styling. Speaking of style, it's not just style -- it's also the glorious (GIGABYTE's words, and also mine) black metal back plate that protects the back of the card.

Oooh, aerospace-grade PCB coating for the best protection of your AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G.

GIGABYTE includes two smart power LED indicators on the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G, where if they're on the power cable is disconnected -- if they're off, there is stable power flowing into the card, while blinking means there's something wrong.

PCIe 4.0 support is on all Navi-based Radeon RX 5000 series graphics cards, including the custom AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G we have here to review.

Detailed Specs

Detailed Look

The retail packaging for the AORUS Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G isn't bad at all.

We have some good packaging that isn't too over the top, where on the back of the box GIGABYTE goes into the WINDFORCE 3X cooling system. Not just that, but the RGB Fusion 2.0 and the ability of having up to 6 displays at once.

Seriously, the AORUS Radeon RX 5700 XT just looks great from the front and back. The triple-fan WINDFORCE 3X cooler looks great in a gaming PC, while the backplate looks equally as good. I love the AORUS eagle coming out of the left side of the backplate, too. A nice touch by AORUS.

It's a thick card -- but it is also super-quiet, and one of the coolest-operating custom Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards that I've tested so far.

Once again from the top, with the PCIe power connectors visible here, and that massively chunky heat sink. Speaking of PCIe power connectors, you'll need 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors to get the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G up and running.

These little touches of style... perfect.

The chunky heat pipes running through the WINDFORCE 3X cooling system.

I love these little touches of style on the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G -- very nice. There's also a Fan Stop LED, that will -- well, let you know when your fans have stopped spinning. This is in cases of low GPU load, like sitting in Windows, surfing the web, or watching a video on Netflix or YouTube.

Test System Specs

I've got a new upgrade inside of my GPU test bed before my change to a next-gen test bed, where I will be preparing for NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere graphics cards (you can read more on that here) and AMD's next-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards (more on those here).

Sabrent helped out with some new storage for my GPU test beds, sending over a slew of crazy-fast Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSDs. I've got this installed into my GPU test bed as the new Games Storage drive, since games are so damn big now. Thanks to Sabrent, I've got 2TB of super-fast M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD storage now.

Anthony's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5GHz (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H115i PRO (buy from Amazon)
• Memory: 16GB (2x8GB) HyperX Predator DDR4-2933 (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2 (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: 512GB Toshiba OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2 (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: InWin 1065W
• Case: InWin X-Frame
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (buy from Amazon)

Additional Images

Synthetic Benchmarks

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.

1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

GIGABYTE starts things off well in Shadow of War at 1080p, beating out the reference RX 5700 XT by a few FPS and beating out the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER. It's still a chunk away from the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER here.

In Metro Exodus however, the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G is just 1FPS away from the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER -- but Pascal still kicks ass with the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti keeping up with the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G at just 1FPS slower.

Over 110FPS average in Far Cry New Dawn, and over 142FPS average in Shadow of the Tomb Raider -- I'd say that is absolutely fine. Interestingly, the custom AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G loses to the reference RX 5700 XT in Shadow of the Tomb Raider -- but it's only by 2FPS. You wouldn't even tell the difference between 142FPS and 144FPS anyway.

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.

1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

We start off 2560 x 1440 benchmarks with Shadow of War, and the AORUS RX 5700 XT beating out the reference Radeon RX 5700 XT from AMD by a fair margin -- 91FPS versus 99FPS average. This puts the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G closer to the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER at 1440p in Shadow of War.

Metro Exodus is a little more punishing, but the custom goodness from AORUS in the RX 5700 XT 8G is enough to have it beat the RX 5700 XT (by a single 1FPS) and equal the Vega 20 + 16GB HBM2 combo in the Radeon VII.

The AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G pushes over 100FPS average in both Far Cry New Dawn and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Nothing to complain about there at all for 1440p performance.

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.

4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts

I wouldn't buy the Radeon RX 5700 XT for 4K gaming, and would suggest waiting for RDNA 2 -- but for 1080p and 1440p gaming the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G kills it. That doesn't mean it's not a good buy for 4K gaming, but it (the Radeon RX 5700 XT, all Radeon cards right now, not just the AORUS card) get smashed by NVIDIA at 4K.

Still, you're pulling nearly 60FPS average at 4K out of the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G in 4K -- that's not a bad effort at all. It's only 1FPS better than the reference AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, however.

34FPS average in Metro Exodus, another 1FPS improvement over the reference Radeon RX 5700 XT -- while Far Cry New Dawn is pushing out 59FPS (this time 2FPS better than reference) and finally in Shadow of the Tomb Raider we have 56FPS, which is identical performance to the RX 5700 XT.

Temp & Power

GPU, GPU Hotspot, Memory, GPU VRM temps

We've got some impressive numbers here from GIGABYTE, with their kick ass WINDFORCE 3X cooling system on the AORUS Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G keeping things nice and chill. We have 88C on the GPU hotspot, which is better than the reference by 7C.

Max GPU Boost

The AORUS RX 5700 XT runs at 2010MHz all day long, which is just 10MHz under the MSI RX 5700 XT GAMING X and ASRock RX 5700 XT Taichi+ OC. This is up from the 1860MHz on AMD's own reference model Radeon RX 5700 XT.

Temps

63C... just 63C.

This is ridiculously cool as the reference Radeon RX 5700 XT from AMD is much, much hotter all the way at the top of the list at 84C. GIGABYTE's kick ass WINDFORCE 3X cooling system on the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G keeps the card cool all day, and very long into the night with those all-night gaming sessions.

Power Consumption

The AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G in my Intel Core i7-8700K test bed uses 330W, an identical result to the other Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards. Nothing unusual here.

What's Hot & What's Not

What's Hot

• WINDFORCE 3X cooling technology: The AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G is one of the coolest graphics cards I've tested in a while, with the WINDFORCE 3X cooling system keeping the card at just 63C during the hardest testing.
• Slick AORUS styling: The style that GIGABYTE has used on the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G is welcomed -- it's not over the top, but it's enough that it looks unique and I love it.
• 6 display outputs: It's kinda insane, but GIGABYTE is packing in a crazy 6 display outputs through 3 x DisplayPort and 3 x HDMI output connectors. You can use them all at once if you wanted to feel like you are hooked into The Matrix with 6 monitors at once because why not.

• Silent mode, is -- really silent: The custom WINDFORCE 3X cooling system offers GIGABYTE the ability of offering AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G users a dual BIOS, one of those being the Silent BIOS. Once enabled, the card sits at around 70C (up from 63C) but is virtually silent.
• Great 1080p/1440p performance: AMD offers stellar price/performance ratios with its Radeon RX 5700 XT and the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G is even better. It's either performing at the same level, or a few more FPS at both resolutions.

What's Not

I don't think there's anything I need to criticize here... the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G is a great package if you're in the market for a new Radeon graphics card.

Final Thoughts

I didn't think I would be impressed on the tail end of 2020 with Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards, right before RDNA 2 comes knocking on the door -- but here we are, and the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G has the goods to get your attention.

AMD already has a great foundation of 1080p and 1440p gaming performance with the Radeon RX 5700 XT, but AORUS improves that with the Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G through its WINDFORCE 3X cooling technology. This keeps the card pretty silent, or cooler and beefier performance.

If you are cranking along with Call of Duty: Warzone at 1080p or 1440p and wanted to push 120FPS on a high refresh rate gaming monitor, the AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G is something you should be seriously looking at.

GIGABYTE has a very impressive custom Radeon RX 5700 XT with its AORUS RX 5700 XT 8G, and it should be on your radar if you're in the market for the best Navi card right now. It keeps up with the other custom cards, and even beats them in most cases especially with great thermal performance.