5700 XT. First AMD card, 19.7.5 driver. 4790K on water cooling, mild OC at 4.5. Z-97 PRO, 3503 BIOS. New install of Win10 Pro. 16GB ram. I keep a neat machine. Only install what's necessary. Not a noob.
Not a mega-machine anymore, but according to benchers, the XT is 132% faster than the old 970 I replaced. And my experience has been a mixed bag, at best.
I play some current games(Dx12 or Vulkan? Run great!), but I would call myself a retro gamer first. I like old games, emulation...that sort of stuff. And the XT doesn't seem to like a lot of what I like to do. Things that don't work well off the top of my head:
1. Anything UE3-based. Batman's, Mass Effect's, UT3 itself, Borderlands 2 and TPS, Transformers Cybertron games. You get the idea. ME2 on the Normandy is really bad. Stuttering/hitching. UE3 covers a LOT of territory for it run badly. Old 970? Wiped the floor with all of those and anything else UE3-based. Strangely, the Bioshock games seem to run fine.
2. Guild Wars 2 is AWFUL. Amazingly bad. Will run at 2 frames per second with 4% gpu utilization, then jump to 60 in 2 seconds with 80% usage, then back to 2fps when I look in a different direction. D9VK was recommended to me, and it helped a lot. But still not nearly as smooth and consistent as the old 970.
3. Quake 3 engine games like Star Trek Elite Force 2? Unplayable. So jerky in motion it's nauseating. Quake 3 itself I cannot even start because the menu screen melts and is unintelligible.
4. SWTOR? Well this one is obviously tricky for a lot of people. I have always known that. But I can say without reservation that the experience on the 970 was smoother and more consistent. We all know that NO modern setup runs that game perfect.
5. Emulation? Anything that requires opengl is a non-starter. Fortunately a number of the emulators I use are either moving to DX12/Vulkan, or are so old and low-usage that the XT can just overpower them with brute force. PCSX2 is hit or miss, depending on the game. MGS3 has so much bloom on DX11, it's eye-watering. Opengl is way too slow.
Just want you to know that I am not some miserable dude that goes around various forums posting complaints. I actually can't stand that type of person. It's just that I don't make a lot of money. I didn't spend that 400 bucks on this card lightly. As I have told you, I upgraded from a 970, for Pete's sake. It's been a long time. I just wanted to give my money to AMD, and NOT Nvidia. I don't like how Nvidia and Intel have been price-gouging people for years, and I wanted to go team red on my next card.
Not really looking for fixes on all of these things per se. Just hoping AMD sees this, and that maybe with some of their newfound Ryzen cash, they can shore up their DX9/Opengl support a bit.
