First off, this review is written without taking into consideration the state of AMD's drivers (though if you are reading this, at the time of this writing 20.1.2 is the latest and greatest and it is very stable; I recommend either 19.12.1 or 20.1.2 at this time for this card; whatever you do DO NOT run 19.12.2 even if it is the "recommended" version). I will talk about drivers at the end, but you can't really blame Sapphire for bad drivers as they aren't the ones writing them. As such, I do not feel it fair to knock of stars for AMD's shaky drivers.
Second, some of the negatives I am going to talk about are not necessarily the fault of the card, but rather the X570 chipset and motherboard manufacturer's BIOS bugs for other chipsets.
Let me start with the basics. The card is massive. It may not fit in your case. Make sure you check clearances before buying this card. And, depending on the way the PCIe slots are set up in your case, this card can be very hard to install. With an X570 Aorus Master and a Phanteks P400A it takes a great deal of patience to install and remove this card as there just isn't enough clearance over the audio cover coupled with the fact the card has to fit through a thin slot to be screwed down (as opposed to say Fractal's Meshify C, which would be a breeze to install if the card fits, which depending on fans/radiotors might not in that case).
The RGB is surprisingly tatsteful. I'm not big into the overdone RGB common to many "Gamer" oriented products, but since you can't really avoid it if you want to be competitive in that space, I do appreciate the Sapphire did it well (and it's super easy to turn off/tweak in TriXX or slave to your RGB headers on your motherboard).
If you haven't already, you should check out Gamer's Nexus review of this card as they touch on all the great technical features and design considerations of this card. For those who are less interested, I'll give a short summary. The card performs amazingly well with extremely good thermals for a 5700XT (these cards run hot) with reasonable fan noise. Additionally, it has three operating modes (performance, quiet, and TriXX).
One more positive note before I delve into the negatives I've experienced with this card. Sapphire support is fantastically responsive. I went back and forth with them multiple times a day for weeks early on as I debugged the various problems I had with the card.
Now onto the negatives/advisories (notice I still give a 5 star rating; the card is amazing now that it works well and I have workarounds for the last few caveats which I will mention as I go; I also admit there was a time where I was thinking about selling it and buying an EVGA 2070S FTW3, but that was on the 19.12.2 drivers).
When I first built my new rig (X570 Aorus Master, R7 3800X), I had countless issues trying to get the machine to display the boot splash and BIOS screens when connected to my monitor (MAG271CQR from MSI; 1440P@144Hz VA) via Display Port. This was true for both Gigabyte's Aorus Master and MSI's MEG ACE. The ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi did not have this problem. This is because (according to Sapphire) Navi doesn't always play nicely with CSM (legacy boot). Disabling CSM in the BIOS fixes this issue. Unfortunately CSM enabled is the default for most motherboards (the C8H defaults to UEFI only boot/CSM disabled), so I have a workaround when clearing my CMOS or upgrading my BIOS: I use HDMI for the initial BIOS configuration. Another setting for those who need CSM enabled is to set PCIe/VGA to UEFI only when CSM is enabled.
According to various forums, this card (like all RX 5700 cards) can have issues with certain chipsets that do not support PCIe 4.0 (such as AMD's X470 and B450 boards). When installing this card, if you have a PCIe 3.0 motherboard, you should change your PCIe mode from "AUTO" to 3rd gen; this will make sure your card runs nice and stable. For some reason, on certain boards the firmware can't auto-negotiate the generation correctly and the card becomes unstable.
The card is extremely power hungry. Make sure you run individual feeds from your PSU to each of the 8-pin PCIe power connectors on this card. If you run only a single cable and use the daisy chain connectors you are going to have a bad time. Additionally, Sapphire recommends 600W as a bare minimum with 650W being preferred. Unless you have a high end PSU (such as Corsair, EVGA, SeaSonic, etc...) that is 80+ Gold or better, 650W is not going to cut it. Cheap PSUs struggle to ramp up to the power demands of this card. Sapphire lists the pull at 285W; I've pulled 300W with stock settings according to TriXX. I recommend getting a good quality PSU with at least 750W of power. Personally, I can attest to the fact the SeaSonic Focus GX-750 is more than capable of handling this card along with the rest of my build.
I also stongly recommend disabling FastBoot in Windows. FastBoot caused countless stability issues when in use for me as well as rendering TriXX unusable.
Now for the software/driver side of things. Sapphire's TriXX software is solid; it shows all the important metrics you want to see as well as allowing you to switch operating modes when you set the VBIOS selector to software/TriXX mode. It also let's you run a fan test, which is very helpful. This counts in the card's favor, as Sapphire makes this software for their product and is a feature.
AMD's drivers are another story. Adrenaline 2019 was decent near the end (with 19.12.1 being the best of 2019). Adrenaline 2020 was an unmitigated disaster. Everything you have read about how bad AMD's drivers are (19.12.2) are either true or an understatement. I went from a 98% stable system to a completely unusable system. It was at this time I thought about selling my wonderful Nitro+ and getting a 2070 Super. To AMD's credit, they pushed out a patched driver (19.12.3) a few days later that at least allowed me to use my system, but it was far from perfect. I had pretty decent luck with 20.1.1. 20.1.2 has been the most stable Radeon experience I've had since I bought this card a little over 3 months ago.
It is worth noting that I have FreeSync and Enhanced Sync disabled. The only Radeon feature I actually have enabled is Radeon Image Sharpening (RIS) at 80%. I found FreeSync and Enhanced Sync did not play well with my monitor (so I'm not sure if its an AMD issue or an MSI issue, as others have had success with this card and FreeSync with other monitors).
Overall, my experience with this card was not positive at first (it didn't help I had motherboard issues and went through multiple motherboards), but I have grown to absolutely adore this card and its performance. As AMD's driver support continues to mature for the Navi platform, the card is only going to get better. I'm also someone who doesn't mind jumping on a new driver as soon as it comes out to see what works, what breaks, and what has been improved.
In closing, while Sapphire and PowerColor are "the" Radeon cards to buy if you are going to go Radeon, Sapphire has created quite the gem with the Nitro+ RX 5700XT and was my choice over the Red Devil RX 5700XT. Driver issues notwithstanding (as neither Sapphire nor PowerColor can control this), I have zero regrets in that choice. Now on 20.1.2, I'm glad I didn't sell my 5700XT for a 2070S.
UPDATE 2020-03-27: The AMD 20.2.2 drivers resolved nearly every problem I had with the card. 20.3.1 is just as solid.
UPDATE 2020-07-24: This card continues to impress me; while I will still probably move it to another build when Big Navi is available, I feel less and less like this is something I need to do quickly as this card is aging extremely well (and getting better). I'm currently running the 20.7.2 drivers, Windows 10 2004 build, with the latest and greatest BIOS on my X570 MEG Unify at the time of this update.
| Memory Speed | 14 GHz |
|---|---|
| Graphics Coprocessor | AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT |
| Chipset Brand | AMD |
| Card Description | RADEON RX 5700 |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 8 GB |
