AMD Launching 3 New Energy-Efficient RX Radeon 5700 XT ‘RDNA’ Graphics Cards

AMD has now finally taken the wraps off its full mid-range RDNA line, with three RX-5000 series cards:

1. The Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition,
2. RX 5700 XT
3. RX 5700

The cards are available to purchase on July 7.

AMD’s New Cards: Specs

After teasing the products for several months, AMD has now revealed the full specifications for the new cards and promised its new “RDNA” architecture will offer a significant performance bump over previous generations. The new RX-5000 series cards feature up to 40 compute units, with the top end card capable of achieving up to 10.14 teraflops of performance. Base clocks range from 1465 to 1680 MHz — though boosted turbo clocks are bumped to 1725 to 1980 MHz, respectively. With a retail price of just $499 for the top end 50th Anniversary Edition and $375 for the lowest spec base model, the new hardware appears to be designed to tempt gamers — and, perhaps, cryptocurrency miners — away from Nvidia’s equivalent offerings at this price point. Comparing the RX-5000 series to the current top mining cards — AMD’s RX 580 and Nvidia’s GTX 1070 — it is clear that the new RDNA cards offer far superior performance with an excellent price-performance ratio to boot.

Good for Cryptocurrency Mining?

Beyond this, being manufactured with a 7nm process, the new graphics cards have up to 25 percent more stream processors than the GTX 1070 — with the top-end card drawing just 225W of power. This performance and efficiency may make the new cards an attractive choice for cryptocurrency miners since power efficiency is intimately tied with mining profitability.  However, though AMD has mentioned in the past that it appreciates the support from cryptocurrency miners, the company understands that relying on this niche alone for sales will not be able to sustain the product line. Because of this, it is unlikely that there will be a special mining edition card based on RDNA, while cards with aftermarket cooling solutions are likely still several months off. Overall, the new RX-5000 cards look to be an affordable option for crypto-miners and gamers alike, but one may want to wait for real-world benchmarks to come in before overhauling his or her mining rig. What is your opinion on AMD’s new GPUs? Will they overpromise and underdeliver again? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!