AMD today officially launched the Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card for retail sale, and with it, lifted the embargo on reviews and benchmarks (we posted our own review this morning). Fortunately, this is not a paper announcement. There are several custom models available for pre-order, but there are also plenty in stock and ready to ship.

Whether you should buy depends on what you're looking for in terms of gaming performance and value; in Jarred's testing, the 5600 XT averaged about 17% faster at 1080p than Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and was the "clear winner"

Comparing the 5600 XT to the RTX 2060 is a tougher call considering the recent price drop; Jarred found the two cards to be "nearly tied" in performance, with the RTX 2060 having a slight edge. The RTX 2060 also has hardware-level support for ray tracing.

In the end, the 5600 XT roughly matches the high-end 5700 XT in performance for $50 less (at MSRP) If you are thinking of upgrading to the 5600 XT, we have taken the liberty of summarizing the available options. Let's start with the cards that are in stock:

And here are the cards that are available for pre-order:

Amazon has them in stock, albeit at a slightly higher price: the PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 5600 XT for $309.99 versus Newegg's $289.99 In addition to the PowerColor cards, XFX's Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro also sells for $279.99 at Newegg, compared to $299.99 at Amazon. for $299.99.

As an interesting aside, none of the models listed, including the Sapphire Pulse card, show boost clocks above 1,640 MHz; the review sample of this card received by Jarred shows a boost clock of 1,750 MHz The review sample received by Jarred included an updated vBIOS that boosts the boost clock to 1,750MHz. It is unknown which of the above cards will have an updated vBIOS to achieve the faster clock.

Also note that base and game clocks and other features can and do vary from model to model. To keep things from becoming too overwhelming, the above description is limited to the number of boost clocks and cooling fans.

As for the RTX 2060, the cheapest card I can currently find is the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 OC for $299.99 after a $30 mail-in rebate. If you are not interested in the mail-in rebate, EVGA's GeForce RTX 2060 KO Ultra Gaming is on sale for $319.99 (the lower-priced version that is not Ultra Gaming is sold out, and Nvidia's Founders Edition model is also sold out, both for $299 .99).