In the 1440p gaming market, AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 and the competing GeForce RTX 2060 Super are the most viable options. They are also ideal for high frame rate 1080p gaming, where they compete with their lower-end siblings, the RTX 2060 and the RX 5600 XT. In this post, we compare the RX 5700 and the RTX 2060 Super and decide which one is the better buy for 1080p 144Hz and 1440p 60Hz focused gaming rigs.
We’ll be testing the two cards across eleven titles and note the average frame rates, 1% lows and 0.1% lows. We’ll also compare the FPS graphs of the two cards in a couple of games and then check their respective TDPs. Let’s get to it.
| Specs | RX 5700 | RTX 2060 Super |
|---|---|---|
| Cores | 2304 | 2176 |
| Base Clock | 1540 MHz | ~1500MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1750 MHz | 1650 MHz |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Speed | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps |
| TDP | 225W | 175W |
| Price | $329 | $394.99 |
TestBench
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
- Motherboard: ASRock X570 Taichi
- Memory: Trident Z Royal 8GB x 2 @ 3600MHz CL15
- Power Supply: Corsair HX1000i
- All the titles except Wildlands were tested at 1080p and 1440p ultra.
AMD Radeon RX 5700 vs NVIDIA RTX 2060 Gaming Benchmarks: 1080p
At 1080p, the GeForce RTX 2060 seems to have the upper hand. The RX 5700 is beaten even in AMD sponsored titles like Strange Brigade and Ashes of the Singularity. These games are known to favor Radeon cards thanks to an excellent DirectX12 implementation that includes Asynchronous Compute and a low driver overhead.
AMD Radeon RX 5700 vs NVIDIA RTX 2060 Gaming Benchmarks: 1440p
Things get better for the RX 5700 at 1440p, however, the RTX 2060 Super still manages a slim victory by winning in 7 out of 11 titles, with the deltas being under 5% in most of the games. Let’s have a look at the sustained frame rate graphs to get a better picture:
Have a look at the sustained frame rates of the two GPUs in Borderlands 3 and Metro Exodus. In both games, the RX 5700 starts off in the lead, but towards the middle of the benchmark, it begins to falter, and finally near the end, the RTX 2060 takes the lead.
We did some checking and it turns out that the RX 5700 runs into a hard temperature bottleneck leading to severe throttling. This results in a performance drop towards the last segments of the benchmarks due to overheating. AMD’s blower-style reference cooler has always been terrible. NVIDIA adopted a new dual-heatsink with the Founders Edition cards and for good reason. The older design doesn’t cut it anymore. AMD needs to do the same or these small things will cost in the long run.
As such, we recommend the aftermarket Radeon RX 5700 cards (specifically the ASRock Radeon RX 5700 CHALLENGER D), over the RTX 2060 Super for 1440p gaming. There’s a good 5-10% gap between the reference and ASRock card. Even with the reference card, the delta between the Radeon and GeForce is under 5% and can be ignored. You can snag a board partner RX 5700 for as low $329 while the cheapest RTX 2060 Super will cost at least $400. However as already mentioned, for high frame-rate 1080p gaming, the RTX 2060 Super is not a bad option. Ray-tracing support is an added bonus and it works well at FHD using this GPU.
