Gigabyte Gaming OC RX 5700 XT Review

Conclusion

The latest Navi GPU from AMD is a difficult thing to review because the performance gaps between the bottom and top are so tiny as to be almost unworthy of discussion. Whilst we’re aware that if everything is closely matched then what little gaps there are get magnified and made more important than they might otherwise be, the reality for the consumer is very much that any and all RX 5700 XTs are a good purchase and the differences between each come down to extra things such as quietness, coolness and the price.

With a huge triple fan Windforce cooler installed it should come as no surprise that the Gigabyte Gaming OC is a very good example of the RX 5700 XT. If you’re the type of user who wants your internal temperatures to be kept as low as possible then the sub 70°C running temperature of the Gaming OC should definitely keep you happy. Equally three fans are naturally louder than two due to the sheer amount of air being moved, but this is balanced out by the fact that three fans don’t need to run as quickly to get the same cooling level as two fans would, thus it ends up being quieter than the two fan models overall. Obviously the single fan cards are relatively much louder and don’t fall within the sphere of this particular discussion.

Looks are very much in keeping with the Windforce equipped Gigabyte cards we’ve seen. The shroud takes up a single slot height leaving another single slot available for the warm air to be dissipated out of the sides of the card. With an RGB Gigabyte logo forming the only point of visual interest on an otherwise all-black affair, it’s a good card if you like your internals to be stealthy rather than shouty. Lastly the heatsink itself is very business-like with a high fin density and fat heat pipes giving a good visual indicator of the capabilities of the card.

With a factory overclock in place the Gigabyte Gaming OC take on the RX 5700 XT range performs very well, usually finding itself in the upper echelons of our performance graphs. If you like installing a card and getting on with the job of playing then it’s very much a card that should be on your shortlist of potential purchases. Given how little headroom we’ve seen from the Navi GPU we were also surprised at how consistent the overclocking performance was, nearly always in the top three results and often topping our graph.

With cool temperatures, stealthy looks and more performance than you might expect the Gigabyte Gaming OC RX 5700 XT is a very good take upon the latest Navi cards and wins our OC3D Gamers Choice.

  

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