MSI RX 5700 XT Gaming X Review

Conclusion

Blimey. No sooner do we review the XFX THICC III Ultra and determine that it was so comfortable ahead of the RX 5700 XT pack that it is unlikely to be toppled from its throne any time soon than the MSI Gaming X appears and, whilst not necessarily beating it, certainly stands shoulder to shoulder with it on the top step of the podium.

Whereas the XFX card was a different design aimed at eliminating the previous version from our minds like some silicon bleach, the MSI goes about its business in a much less showy, but no less capable, manner. The XFX was unlike any GPU we’ve seen really with its soft curves, the MSI Gaming X instead looks like the card we imagined when we heard of its existence. It’s not interested in catching your eye with gentle radii or chrome accents, it cares not a jot whether you are so caught up in modern parlance that the name alone is enough to make you buy it. Instead it says, “here is what MSI do well, deal with it”, and this card does all that.

That might sound like we’re damning with faint praise, but we’re absolutely not. In fact we respect its no fuss approach. After all, why does it need to distract you from models which have come before when the ones that have come before have been so great? Why redesign a cooler to fit in with current mores when the existing design laughs off any attempts by a GPU to heat it up? The Twin Frozr is a legend for a good reason and the 7th generation does nothing to blot that particular copybook. It’s quiet and fantastically good at dissipating heat, which is pretty much all we demand of a cooler. If ever a graphics card adhered to the Bauhaus school of form following function then the MSI Gaming X is it. It’s all the cooler you need, no more nor less, without a fig given for whether it might look a little utilitarian. When the action on your screen is so buttery smooth why would you look into your case?

And buttery smooth is the perfect description of the gameplay you’ll get from the Gaming X. Just like the XFX it plays a blinder when overclocked, with a particularly good average boost clock ensuring even the most marathon gaming sessions, those “feed me through a tube” ones, remain with the same high FPS after a dozen hours as they did at the start. Where we think the Gaming X scores on its contemporaries is in the stock performance. With automatic overclocking such a huge part of modern drivers the need to manually fettle the card has become less paramount than before, and the outstanding cooling of the Twin Frozr 7 allows even the cautious Adrenalin drivers to bust out huge numbers in both MegaHertz and Frames Per Second terms. If you’re the sort who’d rather be playing than microtuning your card, the Gaming X has you covered.

Although the MSI RX 5700 XT Gaming X might not win any belle of the ball awards, although we happen to like its businesslike aesthetic, there is no denying that when it comes to low temperatures and high performance it has the boxes comfortably ticked and wins our OC3D Performance Award.

  

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