XFX RX 5600 XT Thicc II and Thicc III Ultra Review

Conclusion

Our first experience of the RX 5600 XT showed what a tremendous effort AMD had put in to producing a graphics card which was not only a very affordable offering, but had the performance to back up their claims of it being the perfect card for 1080P gaming.

The way that the modern world of influencers works it is all too easy to get distracted by their monster systems that have been sent to them for free, and forget that the majority of people game at 1080P on systems that will make the specifications of the average readers here look like some £20K masterpiece. Even a cursory glance at the Steam analytics shows how low down the list many peoples graphics cards are, and how 1080P is, by a massive margin, the most common resolution.

It is these people that AMD have aimed their RX 5600 XT card. Those with limited budgets who just want to play nice looking games at sane resolutions without worrying about fiddling in the settings. Whether you’re interested in the Thicc II or the Thicc III Ultra, both of the XFX cards we’ve had on test today demonstrate this with clarity. Even Borderlands 3, the most demanding game in our test suite, sat over 60 FPS with every turned up to the max, with only the Thicc II at stock falling below this mark and then by only 0.5 FPS. Dropping the anti-aliasing down a single notch will give you a ton of FPS back without noticeably impacting your eye candy. Every where else the two cards show that you can have a smooth gameplay experience without compromising your visual splendour in any title around.

So which of the two XFX cards is it worth investing in?

We can’t decide. Seriously. They are almost identical. We’d have expected the Thicc III Ultra to win out thanks to the faster factory overclock and the extra cooling power enabling the Crimson drivers to overclock it a little harder, and whilst the GPU was a tiny bit quicker on average the faster memory performance of the Thicc II balanced out this until the two cards were nigh on inseparable. Heck the temperature testing showed that the meatier cooler of the Thicc III Ultra was a single degree warmer on average, although the Hot Spot measurement was a degree cooler too. About the only difference between the cards, beyond their physical size, is the noise factor with the fans on the Thicc II having to spin a little harder than those on the Thicc III Ultra, although the extra fan speed noise is balanced by there only being two of them instead of the three.

All in all it doesn’t matter which of the two XFX cards you go for, they are both excellent takes on the RX 5600 XT formula and guaranteed to give you smooth gaming at 1080P and only requiring minor settings adjustments in certain titles to also be a good 1440P card. We’d probably go with the Thicc II, just because at this end of the market saving that few quid can be used to improve another area of your system and the XFX pair are already at the upper end of the RX 5600 XT options, but both are great buys and win our OC3D Gamers Choice Award.

  

Discuss the XFX RX 5600 XT Thicc II and Thicc III Ultra in our OC3D Forums.