As you can see from the unboxing video and I will repost here as pictures in case you don’t have time to watch the video, the Cordless Vacuum Cleaner from Brigii pretty much is a double sided mini-vac.  THere is the “blower side” and the “intake” side, and you have various attachments you can put on that are included.

The dust collection tray and filter are very small, so if you have a lot of dust you will have to empty it quite often, you shouldn’t be using this thing to do floors, couches or heavy duty jobs though, it is designed for small jobs.
The absorb side is clearly labeled as is the blow side.  You simply use the attachment you want, and the bristle brush attachment is what I mostly used to clean the keyboard so the bristles can dislodge dust and debris that falls between the keys.

Now I found that my keyboard G910 Orion Spark gaming keyboard which I use everyday was not the ideal test for this mini-vac, because my sweaty fingers and constant hammering caused much of the dust and debris to become stuck more firmly to the keyboard surface than simple falling dust.

I found the absorb side to have very little suction and while it worked well for immediate and loose dust, it was not designed for and could not pick up pet fur with ease (like my short Boston Terriers hair that was scattered) and overall it didn’t perform as well as “cleaning goo” products you could just stick and unstick from surfaces to remove larger particles of dirt and debris.  The blower side however worked fairly well with a decent amount of force, not nearly as much as a compressed air can but decent.  I wish they made an attachment that narrowed the blower side much more, it would have been even more effective.

You can see my full video review of the Brigii Y120 here and pay attention to my corn starch test which is where the product performed better compare to my casual test of all the gunk that built up over weeks on my keyboard where it didn’t fare as well.

In Summary

The Brigii Y120 fell right in the middle of the road as a device for quickly cleaning up dust and loose debris around desks and car vents, I felt it didn’t really have enough suction to be very effective though it was good at keeping things dusted if you used it regularly before dust sat too long and became adhesed to a surface.  I found it did very well cleaning the dust off my printer and router, but was less effective at my keyboard itself which was already dusty for a month, for the brand new review keyboard unit I tested with the corn starch it did a fine job on.  So this product may end up working just right for you based on your needs. Battery tests showed it going strong for use after use without having to recharge it, I must have done 15+ short operations without having to charge it, and left it unplugged for a few weeks and it still had a charge when turning it back on.  But it charges quickly and being cordless it is very convenient.  It has no way near the dust blowing capability of the X-Power A2 Blower but that device is plugged in and not cordless and would be an unfair comparison.  I also found the ColorCoral Cleaning Gel to be fairly effective at picking up keyboard debris and desk surface junk bot this product has a limited # of uses before the gel gets too dirty and you have to buy another one.

Get the Brigii Cordless Vacuum Now

With 3 attachment heads, easy to clean dust bin, a blower and an absorb side.

Buy from Amazon

The post Brigii Y120 Keyboard Vac / Blower Review appeared first on Dragons Love Tech.

I came pretty close to finding the perfect paper shredder for under $60 in the Aurora AU820MA, which I will list the features.

Aurora AU820MA Paper Shredder Features

• High security micro-cut: Provides ultimate protection with particles 6 times smaller than typical cross-cut.
• ShredSafe advanced safety feature: Auto power-off upon forced entry, prevents accidents.
• Overload protection: Overload jam auto-stop prevents serious paper jams.
• Easy emptying: Integrated single-hand lifting handle for easy emptying wastebasket.
• LED Status Indicator:
• 5 Minute Continuous Run Time

The paper shredder head which sits on top of the can weighs 14.04 pounds and was a bit heavy for my wife, so take note of the weight.  The thing has to have that much weight to grind through up to 8 sheets of paper at the same time and can chew right through paper clips, staples, and even DVD/CD’s with ease breaking them to bits.

It is one of the safest paper shredders in this class by really preventing any accidental chance of having fingertips or say long hair from accidentally getting pulled into the shredder because you don’t directly top load, and the cover/lid doesn’t open all the way making it to where you have to actually insert the items to shred at a slightly up facing angle.    My wife was having our younger son help shred stuff so it is something you can be comfortable with kids as long as not too young to help with.

There is a separate loader for DVD/CD’s which shred one at a time, but paper itself you can shred up to 8 sheets at a time or if you have folded sheets you can shred half that if they are folded.  Bills, college notes, old tax data or business records that are no longer needed all were chewed up within seconds.

Overall we shredded thousands of documents over several days and put this thing through the paces.  One, we did have 2 overheats where it ran for 5 continuous minutes adding paper after paper and it eventually shuts of and has to rest a few minutes to cool down.  It does get blistering hot, if you take it off the can, the dozens of tiny blades get very hot from grinding all that paper continuously so be careful there.

This high security paper shredder turns papers into very tiny bit sizes that are virtually impossible to piece together if you put them in the bucket and then shuffle everything around, bag it and toss it.  It fills up the bucket fairly fast, and remember at 14 pounds you have to be careful to lift the shredder straight off the bucket and dump the bucket, or you can tip it and spill your shreds all over.  The one feature I found to be relatively useless is the little “window” they advertise to see how full the bucket is, and the reason is that paper creates a lot of dust while it is being shredded.

So after doing a couple of rounds of shredding you can see the window in the below pic where you are supposed to be able to see how full the bucket is is completely obscured with paper dust, and it gets like this every time within minutes, you almost never can see how full the bucket is with the window due to it always being obscured with dust.  This is the only mildly annoying thing about this otherwise fantastic paper shredder.

I also would highly recommend you do shredding outside on a patio or porch or backyard as paper dust gets everywhere, all over the lid, and general area especially when you take the shredder top off the can.  So much fine paper dust just flies everywhere and some if is very fine like dust so you don’t really want to do this inside the house in a room unless you are planning on a dusting and vacuuming afterward.

The post Aurora AU820MA The Best Paper Shredder Under $60? appeared first on Dragons Love Tech.

Justin managed to snag a PlayStation 5 on Thursday release day at the last minute and is also saving to have a new computer built in early Q1 2020 and can’t decide on a new AMD Ryzen 5000 build or Intel Core i-9 10850k build and then an Nvidia RTX 3080 or a Radeon RX 6800 GPU, decisions am I right?  Which route would you go?

Oliver has been enjoying his new HyperX Alloy 2 Elite Keyboard and between grinding school and gaming with his friends has been doing Dungeons and Dragons sessions online when he can.  He also really enjoyed playing Ghostrunner for the channel which is a Cyberpunk Speed Run game (hack and slash) with time dilation elements.

Brian while running Dragoncast podcast every week with Victor Salazar on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify has also churned out some written video game reviews including the review of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Dirt 5 for the channel.

Jackie plans on eating way too much food on Thanksgiving and finding time to explore the mountains, as well as get caught up on reading goals for the year.  She is proud of doing a run of game completions on stream over the past few weeks as she completed Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Apsulov: End of Gods

James is about to enjoy the extra 1TB of storage from his new Kingston KC2500 NVME M.2 SSD drive which has blazing fast speeds of 3500 MB/s Read and 2500 MB/s write.  He also has been hounding AverMedia for their new 4K WebCam to compare it to his other 3 webcams sitting on top of his camera who want another sibling.

PlanetGabo decided to take a break from Escape from Tarkov and rotate some other games into his Monday’s streams, and Starcraft 2 was what he was playing most recently and is a competitive player and INSANELY good.  I watched him and he would kick the pants off me, he is a sight to see on Monday’s playing Starcraft 2 and worth a watch.

Opal dealt with not only power outages due to ice storms and weather but an extended internet outage as well and is soon to be back in business we hope.  He most recently covered an anime article about Paranoia Agent that is worth a read.

Jayson last streamed for us as part of the Best Friends Team B42 Charity event and covered the most excellent game The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope.  This event of which we were just a small part went on to raise over $2100 to support no-kill pet shelters.

KatVonMeow nabbed some influencer work doing mobile game content showcases, repaired her computer finally and launched her own Twitch Channel officially.  She still will be contributing to DragonBloggers on Sundays but you can also watch her grow on her Twitch.tv/KatVonMeow channel as well.

Nate is busy working on reviewing the Cobra SC 201 Dual-View Smart Dash Cam review which is a GPS enabled dash cam to help capture and alert you to road events before you even reach them.  He also is still playing Red Dead and COD Warzone on his spare time.

Supreme_Rob finally having his Internet restored for a few weeks now and has been at his regular Wonder Wednesday’s segment on our channel covering something new and different each week.  He recently got into playing The Outer Worlds and is doing tech talking streams on his own channel.  You can find the best price for The Outer Worlds Steam key over at Kinguin.

Briley is trying to finish up a written reviews for Dragon Blogger while his Custom Christmas Lighting business gets incredibly busy this time of year as you can imagine.

Lynda due to the lockdown of COVID has been killing time playing lots of board games as she has over 200+. She often posts the board game sessions to our Instagram channel showcasing the games she is playing.  She also managed to nab an Xbox Series X and is gaming on that too.

Rohan this month will be playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, celebrating Diwali with his family and start researching on stock market and future investment plans.

The post Year End Video Game Giveaway and Newsletter Update appeared first on Dragons Love Tech.

A bright shiny new video card is what all gamers, graphic and video designers want to help boost their skills.  With that boost comes a pretty hefty price tag that not all of us can afford.  We do have options but we all want the best!  What if I told you that you could still get a great experience without breaking the bank?  My review of the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro could be that card to get you to the next level without emptying your wallet.

Let’s see the features and specifications of this investment.

• Based off of AMD’s 2nd Gen 7nm process RDNA architecture
• Boost Clock of Up to 1620Mhz
• 1560Mhz Game Clock
• 6Gigs of 192Bit GDDR6 RAM
• 14 Gbps Effective Memory clock speed
• 2,304 Stream processors
• Dual UEFI BIOS Support
• Dual Fans
• Card Profile: Dual slot
• Dimension: 11.02 x 5.83 x 1.73 inches
• 1 x HDMI 2.0b
• HDMI @ 4096×2160
• 3 x Display Port 1.4 HDR DSC 1.2a
• DisplayPort @ 5120×2880
• Max of 4 concurrent displays
• Supported Features
• Video Streaming up to 8K
• PCI Express 4.0
• Radeon Boost
• AMD Compute
• BIOS Switch
• Asynchronous Compute
• Radeon Rays Audio + True Audio Next
• Radeon Image Sharpening
• Fidelity FX
• Radeon Freesync 2 HDR
• Radeon VR Ready Premium
• Radeon Boost
• Fuse Protection
• DirectX 12 Optimized
• HDR Ready
• Radeon Relive
• XFX Zero DB Auto Load Sensing Fans
• Requires a minimum of 500Watts
• Requires 1 x 8-Pin PCI Connectors
• XFX 3 Year Warranty

You might have noticed, I bolded the 14Gbps portion of the memory clock speeds and it was for a reason.  It’s the updated version of the Thicc II Pro with faster memory (14Gbps over 12Gbps).  You don’t need to jump through hoops to get that extra speed, you get 14Gbps out of the box.  Because of that bump though, an issue does come up.  It might be a small one, but we will go over it here.

Talking about the box, let’s see what’s inside.

Let’s break it down.

Starting off with the Installation Guide, this will give you the basics on how to install the card.  You don’t really need to worry about this document though this since I will go over it in detail here.  Stay tuned for that, but let’s move on.

Next up, the driver insert documentation.  Some companies will throw a disk in the box with the driver.  The problem with that is the minute those CD’s are printed the drivers are out of date.  XFX provides you a link to their website which includes their latest approved AMD drivers.  It’s a good and a bad thing though.

Good because they don’t want you to have an older driver, they want you to have the latest and greatest.  Bad, because sometimes you just can’t download that driver, maybe your internet is out or you have a metered connection.  At least Windows 10 will give you basic drivers to get you going in the meantime.

I love the fact that they include this adapter.  This adapter turns 2 x 6Pin PCI-e cables into 1 x 8Pin PCI-e cable.  The card requires a 450Watt power supply, some power supplies may not include an 8Pin, this has you covered.

And lastly, but certainly not least, we have the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro itself.  I want to get a little personal with it, so let’s take a Close look at the card.

Getting a little closer

A slick looking card with the XFX logo recessed and smoothed out into the end of the card.  Both fans centered with the XFX logo bronzing.

A closer look at the bronzed center of the fan.

The card measures 11.02 inches in length, or 28 cm, the measurement includes that I/O end.

5.83 inches wide, or 49 cm.

And is 1.73 inches thick, 35.5 cm.  Nothing out of this world really.

They carved out XFX and used that as a grill, a nice touch, not just a plane I/O.  Oh yeah, the card comes with 3 x Display Ports and 1 x HDMI port.  The Display Ports are 1.4 with HDR DSC 1.2a and the HDMI port is 2.0b.

Laying the card down, we can see along the sides exposing the fins, the 8Pin PCIe connection, copper pipes and if you get a little closer you see some more details.

We can see right next to the PCIe connection, there is a switch.  Switched Left is low power/low noise and switched right is for performance.  For the remainder of the review, we test switched to the right for Performance, though the picture here shows on left.

Coming along the back of the card, it kind of looks a little like a spaceship.  Sexy strict curves to make it aerodynamic and 4 thrusters propelling the card.  The thrusters of course being the copper pipes ending but they are not just sandwiched together with a sloppy seal, they are rounded off and polished.  The little cable along the right does mess up the look a little, but it’s gotta be there.

Along the bottom side of the card, where the PCIe connector meets with the PCIe slot, there’s not much going on.

The top of the card, exposes the metal backplate with some slits to help vent the heat out a little.  Once again, XFX branding the metal with their polished recessed logo.

Around the edges of the card, there are 4 openings exposing the card but looking good with the rounded sides.  The rear, as I showed you before that houses the copper pipe endings almost looks as if it were designed to be a blower card, but it’s not a blower card.

Finally, we have the card inside of the system.  This is more of a budget card, so there are no LED’s other than that one blue LED right above the PCIe connection.  This brings us to the next chapter in this review Installing the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro.

Installing the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro

The card didn’t get itself in there and install the drivers all by itself, we had to take care of that.  In this next video, geared more for those of us that don’t know how to install a card, that might be a little terrified installing the card on their own.  I try to help everyone in this, if you are a little more advanced you might learn something too, check it out.

In this video, I show you how to remove your old card and install your new card.  If you are just looking on how to install the card if you don’t already have a card, this will help you too.

Installing the physical card is only part of it, in the video I also show you how to remove your old drivers and install the latest and greatest AMD has to offer.

Moving along, on this next page we will go over benchmarking, performance, thermals and power consumption.  Stay tuned, I have a little something I haven’t done before here coming up.

Benchmarking, performance, thermals and power consumption

As you saw in the installation video, the card had to be installed in a system to be used, so let’s go over the specs in my system.

A video card does not work on its own, aside from drivers and all, we need the rest of the system.  So that you know what I am working with and to compare performance with your own system, here are my system specifications.

• Windows 10 Professional: https://geni.us/TbOpq
• Asus ROG Strix XG438Q 43” Monitor: https://geni.us/xaNu
• XFX RX 5600 XT Thicc II PRO 6GB: https://geni.us/3G5kk
• Montech Air 900 ARGB White Mid-Tower PC Case: https://geni.us/kcq3
• Alienware Wireless Gaming Headset – AW988: https://geni.us/z52uzC
• Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360: https://geni.us/iAqV
• Intel Core i9 9900K Processor: https://geni.us/0PrCbaY
• Patriot Viper Gaming RGB DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz 16GB Kit: https://geni.us/URlI8
• EVGA Z390 Dark Motherboard: https://geni.us/UmV6t
• WD Black SN750 1TB: https://geni.us/8sqXFs
• Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD: https://geni.us/QTA2
• WD Black PCI-e NVMe 512GB SSD: https://geni.us/mMNLde
• EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G+, 80 Plus Gold 1000W: https://geni.us/IVoE

A quick GPU-Z reading here so you can see what this card has to offer.  You might be a little confused here since it looks like a slight bump down from a 5500 XT, and a huge bump down from a 5700 XT, but it’s actually perfect in the middle where it is.  Offering double to pixel fill rate and 1.5 times the Texture Fillrate and Bandwidth above the 5500 and less than half that of the 5700,… it’s a confusing tweener.

There will be more comparison further down in the review, but not what you are expecting, so stay tune.

For all of these tests I will do below, I use GPU-Z to gather temperatures of the card and I use a Kill A Watt for reporting the power consumed.  GPU-Z is a free and awesome utility but the Kill A Watt you would need to buy, you can click on this link to check it out on my amazon affiliate link, but it is very handy.

For this card, I use GPU-Z not only to capture the GPU temperate but to also capture the HotSpot temperature so that you know both.

I again have changed up some of the games I use to benchmark to go along with what we are playing our there.  Below are the list of games and benchmarks I use in this review.

• FutureMark’s 3DMark Fire Strike
• FutureMark’s TimeSpy
• Metro Exodus
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
• Shadows of the Tomb Raider
• Far Cry 5
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint

OK, enough with the talk, let’s get started with the benchmarks.

So if you saw my last review on the 5500 XT, you can see this blew it out of the water, not only in performance but cooling as well and for not much more money.  The average power consumed was a little higher, but it is to be expect since it performs better.  The hottest the GPU got was 65°C and the Hotspot 78°C.  The hotspot is a bit hotter than the GPU temperature but it’s got plenty of room to get hotter if need be.  The maximum safe operating junction temperature is 110°C, not that we want to be near that, it is worth noting.

The “GPU Hotspot” readout in GPU-Z is reflective of the junction temperature. The “Hot Spot” reflects the Edge temperature of the die. Older graphics cards that feature a single temperature sensor report this ‘edge’ value shown in GPU-Z. However, AMD continues to allow applications to read and publish this legacy ‘edge temperature’ to provide a fair comparison point vs. older Radeon and competitive GPU’s that don’t have the ability to report (and act on) the Junction or Hotspot temperature.

The card requires a 450Watt power supply and it did get kind of close.  The XFX Radeon 5600 Thicc II Pro scored 88% better than all of the results, which is pretty awesome for such an affordable card, but that is just one benchmark.  Let’s see how it fares on DX12 with UL’s TimeSpy.

Interestingly enough, this one did come in a bit lower than I expect, 7,916 on the overall score but it did come out 69% above all other results.  During this test, the hottest the GPU Temperature was 69°C and the Hotspot was 84°C.  While it still was oddly enough lower, it did come in at 69% better than all other results.  Here TimeSpy maxed out at consuming 315 Watts and on average 257 Watts.

While the TimeSpy score being lower than expected, I did run them 3 different times, choosing each time the middle score between the 3.  This is to make sure that each result is not a fluke and between then 3, there is very little difference.  The testing methodology is the same throughout the review so that you get a better feel for each result.

Ok, that’s enough with the synthetics, let’s try some games.

Throughout the benchmarks, I keep the settings the same, only changing the resolutions and presets.  Some games though, I chose the Very High, High and Medium presets.  Some games change the wording a little like Metro Exodus that calls the Very High Ultra.  The resolutions I use are 3840×2160, 2560×1440 and 1920×1080.

The testing on this and future benchmarks is different as before I would only test Very High (Ultra) and the 3 different presets’, but I feel like this did not give a real-world result at comfortable gameplay.  Like you, when I can’t play a game, I lower the presets coming down from the highest. I work my way down to a playable result so these results will help you more.  Of course, this takes me longer, but this isn’t for me, this is for you.  Let’s move on.

Here are the results utilizing the presets and resolutions I mention earlier.  Click on the results for a better view of the scores.

At 2160 it was basically unplayable, on 120hz it was smooth but no where near the magical 60fps.  We start get more playable at 1440p within the Highs coming in at 56.58 FPS while consuming on average 265Watts.  On Medium, the card came in 78.24 FPS consuming on average 288 Watts while heating up to 71°C.  At 1080p, every single preset was 100% playable coming from 60.16 FPS all the way up to 94.1FPS on Medium.  At Medium, the card only consumes 273 Watts on Average and kept itself on a cool 66°C on the GPU and 80°C on the HotSpot.

So, we can see that this card can handle the GPU slayer that is Metro Exodus at 1440p at Medium.  While the TimeSpy results had me a little worried, seeing an actual game coming in playable at DX12 at 2560×1440 raises my hopes a little more for it.  I am curious to see what it looks like on our next benchmark, Shadows of the Tomb Raider.

Keeping the same presets and resolutions as we did before.  Click on the results for a better view of the scores.

Laura brings us some goodies.  Once again, 4K was unplayable, a little worse here than before.  Starting at 1440p, we receive 64fps on the highest and 80fps on the lowest.  Then at 1080P, at 96 frames per second.  At 1080p the card consumes 265 Watts on Average at 71°C on GPU and 85°C on the HotSpot.  At medium, we received 118 frames per second at 268 Watts on average and 70ׄ°C on the GPU.  Laura treated us well here.

Going back in time from here, let’s see how Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, another GPU slayer treats us.

Assassins Creed Odyssey to my surpris, at 2160p and Medium setting was almost totally playable, a great benefit starting to show the different presets.  At 1440p though, it was totally playable from the highest setting to the lowest, 62fps/85fps.  Then on highest, it consumed on average 281 Watts keeping a warm 70°C GPU and 81°C hotspot.  At 1080p, once again totally playable.  We see between 82 and 102 fps on the highest settings consuming on average 300 Watts, keeping the temperatures similar to 1440P.  This one really surprised me since it pounds on GPU’s and the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro really kept up.

Keeping on with the odd results, let’s see what our crazy friends at Farcry 5 think about this card.

This one was Ultra, High and Normal, and I use Normal very loosely.

2160p results are kind of bleak but take a look over at the 1440p results.  From the highest to the lowest, they are 100% playable, starting off at 82 frames per second up to 94.  On average here, the wattage consumed range from 293 to 296, some of the lowest so far.  On the temperature side, these across the playable board, were some of the lowest temperatures so far.

Ambient temperature in this office is 66°C, so that you can compare and contrast with your own.  These results were impressive.  The Montec Air 900D has some nice air flow but it is hindered a little since I have the Arctic Freezer II 360 liquid cooling unit in this machine at the front, so it does not have the full airflow as it would with regular fans on the front.

Let’s go on over to Tom Clancy’s BreakPoint and see if this is the point where this breaks.

This one was Very High, High and Medium presets.

Being my first time benching on BreakPoint, I didn’t know what to expect.  The benchmark was very fast paced and with that the wattage was flying all over the place.  During this benchmark it became impossible for me to manually monitor the wattage.  I ended up buying the “Watts Up .Net” which records the data so that I can review it afterwards, such a time saver.  Sadly, the Watts Up has been discontinued for some time, so I cannot link one up for you.

So as usual here, the 4K results were 100% unplayable, though they do look smooth during the benchmark.  With that, since the memory utilization was higher here on 2160p and 1440p Very High, each test would report that the memory was exceeding the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro’s 6gigs of RAM and with that, it did not score very high.

Coming into 1440p’s High and Medium, that things came together and the RAM could keep up.  On High and Medium at 1440p the game was very playable at 71 and 75 frames per second respectively.   The average power consumption between 255 and 258, very reasonable.  The GPU was a cooler 68°C on each and the hotspot matched at 83°C as well.  With that, 1080p was great between 80 and 139 frames per second.

So as of right now, the XFX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro has held its own, gaining very respectable scores at 2560×1440 and 1920×1080, 3840×2160 not so much.  Well, how about we compare this card, but not to a 5500 XT, since I don’t have that card anymore, but let’s compare it with something a little more similar that I bought just for this review.  In this next chapter we will be comparing Performance between the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro and the EVGA Geforce RTX 2060 KO Ultra Gaming.  Let’s get to this.

This is a first on Dragonblogger and I am very excited to bring this to you.

Comparing Performance

Let the battle begin.

In 3DMark FireStrike, we can see there is a 3.39% improvement on the XFX 5600 Thicc II Pro score over the EVGA 2606 KO Ultra Gaming.  The KO 2060 also consumes on average 2 more watts but the 5600 Thicc II Pro does come out 5.97% cooler, than the 69°C on the 2060.

Let’s see how TimeSpy handled it.

On TimeSpy, it was a little flipped.  We can see the 2060 KO had a bit of an advantage over the 5600 Thicc II, a 1.43% lead, a smaller margin than before.  The 5060 again came in consuming less power than the 2060 by 9.28% did come in 5600 did come in 5.97% cooler than the 2060.

Now that we have some of the synthetics out of the way, let’s get to some

The result’s here match up the cards almost exactly on 1440p.  The EVGA Geforce RTX 2060 KO Ultra Gaming performed 1.85% faster than the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro on Ultra, 3.52% on High and the Thicc II Pro out performed the 2060 KO Ultra by 0.55% on Medium.  I would say they are very similar, let’s see what 1080p shows, the most common resolution for gamers.

Aside from scores, we can see the AMD 5600 came in on average consuming less power than NVIDIA.  At Ultra, the 5600 consumed less power by 9.96%.  On High the 5600 took up less power than the 2060 by 11.72%.  On medium, the 2060 consumed more than the 5600 by 2.40%.  Many of us don’t think about power consumption, unless our power supplies are rated lower or paying the bills.

On Ultra, the 5600 is 5.71% cooler than the 2060, at high, 2.82% cooler and on Medium came in even with the 2060.  Higher temperatures mean more power consumption and that could be what’s going on here.  Let’s check out the differences at 1080p.

At 1080p, the results were somewhat similar.  The EVGA RTX 2060 came up 1.98% on Ultra, a higher 5.86% on High and a much more significant 12.62% higher than the XFX Radeon RX 5600.  The 2060 took the crown at 1080p.

On the power side, NVIDIA came in at a much higher percentage here on consumption.  On Ultra, the 2060 came in 13.05% higher than the 5600, on High 14.03% higher and finally on medium 12.69% higher.

Regarding temperatures, the Radeon 5600 XT Thicc II Pro comes in 4.32% cooler on Ultra against the RTX 2060 KO Ultra Gaming, a much cooler 16.54% on High and 8.70% on Medium.  The 2060 come up ahead slightly in performance but the 5600 is coming in much cooler and consuming less power.

The fans on the 2060 rev up higher at 70°C making some more noise.  The fan curve is more aggressive on the 2060,  making it a little louder, not a ton though. While the 5600 is cooler, you can adjust the fan curves manually maybe to make it a little more quite.  I didn’t play with the fan curves for these benchmarks, but in this video I show you how they work and how loud it can get.

Pretty simple right and best of all, it’s built into the driver.   I like the fact that you don’t need a 3^rd party application to do it.

A bit shocking, but comparing the 2, they are almost identical score wise.  The only differences are by 1 frame per second lower on 1440p at the highest preset on the 5600 side but then 1 frame per second higher on the high preset.

On the power consumption, we can see the 5600 consumed on average across the board between 8 and 12% lower than on the 2060.  Temperature wise, it was a different story.  Likewise, the 5060 ran on average between 8 and 9.4% cooler than the 2060.  Let’s check out the performance at 1080p.

At 1080, we can see that the 2060 is coming up above the 5600 but by 1 or 2 frames per second, regardless though that is still a win.  The power consumption and temperature trend it still apparent here.  Looks like this will be a contest won by a hair, but there is more to this story.  Let’s move on to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey see the savagery continue.

I felt like I was recording my scores incorrectly, checking screenshots over and over, but they are essentially the same.  The only difference here on frames per second is that the 2060 came up 1 frame per second higher on the 1440p Very High preset.

The temperature side, comes up like the previous ones, the 5600 coming in always a little cooler, but not as much as we have previously see. On very high, the 5600 comes in 2.82% cooler than the 2060.  At High, the 5600 comes in at a minuscule 1.42% cooler than the 2060.  Finally at Medium, the 2060 comes in on par with the 5600.

Moving on to power consumption.  At Very high, the 5600 consumes on average 12.98% Watts sipping 281 Watts while the 2060 sucks up 320 Watts, the 2060 on High, takes up 8.40% more power than the 5600.  On Medium, the 5600 comes up on top, consuming on average 7.45% less power than the 2060.

Let’s see how 1080p comes up.

A little different here, but we can see between Very High and High, there is not much a difference 1 fps higher on the High side for the 2060.  Shifting to the Medium 1080p, we can see there is while small, a 6.64% improvement on the 2060 over the 5600.

The temperatures on Very high come in 1.42% hotter on the 5600, from 71°C and 70°C on the 2060.  On High, The 2060 comes in 5.80% cooler than the 5600 at 71°C to 67°C.  Lastly on Medium, the 5600 is 2.99% hotter than the 2060 by 66°C to 68°C.  1080p turned the tables here, will this continue?

Back to power, on Very high, we can see the 5600 actually sucks up 3.39% more power than the 2060, one of the first times here that has happened.  On High, we can see the 2060 sucked up 4.88% more wattage than the 5600.  Lastly on Medium, the 2060 consumed 11.84% more power than the 5600.

Let’s go check out what the difference is between in Far Cry 5.

Far Cry 5, a pretty high paced game, we can see the 5600 dominates the 2060 across the board.  On Ultra, the 5600 came in 5% faster than the 2060.  At High, there was a 4.76% increase on performance on the 5600 over the 2060.  On the normal preset, we can see a 5.46% improvement over the 2060.

Keeping in line with the dominance here, we can see we can see the 2060 on average consumes about 9% power than the 5600.

Throughout this portion, there is between 4 and 5% higher temperatures on the 2060 over the 5600.  That really is not a lot, but it is worth mentioning.  Let’s see how 1080p performs here.

A bit of a dip here, but across the board the 5600 came ahead.  At Ultra the 5600 came in ahead 8.14% above the 2060.  On high, I can’t explain it, but it happened 3 separate times, the 2060 0.88% above the 5600.  Lastly, on Normal, the 5600 pins the flag on the hill claiming a 4.76% lead over the 2060.

Coming back to thermals, the 2060 heated up 7.19% more than the 5600 on Ultra.  On High and Medium, the 2060 came in 8.70% hotter than the 5600.  Tiny differences here thankfully in temperatures.

On power consumption, we find the 2060 consumed on average 16.56% than the 5600 on Ultra.  On high, the 5600 consumed 14.13% less power than the 2060.  On normal, the 5600 again consumed 8.10% less power than the 2060.  The 2060 loves to drink that wattage.

Now let’s check out the new kid on the block here, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

Tom Clancy likes things a little rough.  We can see on 1440p Very High the 5600 came in 14.04% behind the 2060.  At High, the 2060 was 1 fps above the 5600 and on Medium, the 5600 was 2.63% behind the 2060.  The performance here is within margin of error really but we 3 benchmarks.  For those 3, I always chose the middle one to bring you a more real-world result, not just the highest.

With the victory though, we can see the 2060 consumes on average on Very high, 29.59% more power than the 5600.  That’s a pretty huge margin.  At High, the 2060 consumed 13.53% more power than the 5600.  In a smaller margin, the 5600 consumed 2.68% less power than the 2060 at medium.

Along with heat, we can see on Very high, the 5600 was 14.29% cooler than the 2060.  At high, the 2060 was 9.79% hotter than the 5600.  Finally, at Medium, we can see the 5600 again at 9.79% cooler than the 2060. I am curious to see what 1080p will bring since it seems the 2060 is happy at 75°C.

At 1080p at Very high, we can see the 2060 came in 11.76% faster than the 5600.  At High, the 2060 was able to edge in a 4.78% increase over the 5600 in performance.  At Medium, the 5600 had a huge surge in performance and came in 19.76% higher than the 2060.

While there was a performance increase on the 2060, with it came a power increase.  On Very High, the 2060 consumed on average 14.13% over the 5600.  On High and Medium, the 5600 consumed 8.73% less power than the 2060.

On Very High, we can see the 5600 came in again 9.79% cooler than the 2060.  On high and Medium again, the 2060 was 8.33% hotter than the 5600.

Going over all the benchmarks, we can see that a gaming card is meant for gaming, but let’s see how it handles playing games instead of only benchmarking them.  Here we play Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, Doom Eternal, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Borderlands 3 all at 2560×1440.

It did pretty well right, usually everything over 60 frames per second and it was all smooth.  A smooth experience, though the performance might have been hindered slightly since I was using Streamlabs OBS to record gameplay.

OK, with all that done, let’s move on to my Final Thoughts.

That was an exciting review, getting to watch the 2 mid ranged GPU’s duke it out for all the glory.  The competition between the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro and the EVGA Geforce RTX 2060 KO Ultra was fierce, there were many wins, performance alone, the RTX 2060 KO Ultra beat out the 5600 by 17 different scores and the 5600 XT Thicc II Pro overpowered the 2060 KO Ultra by 10 different results.  Oddly enough, there was 4 points at which the 2 tied.

The written results are below, but you can check out the video for more information

In all results, the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro on average was cooler and consumed less power than the 2060 KO Ultra.

There are a few other things, but let’s go over the pros and cons on this card.

Pros

• Tons of ports to fit almost any monitor (except DVI)
• Supports 4 x 4K displays
• FreeSync and FreeSync Pro (Formerly FreeSync 2 HDR)
• Supports DX12
• 0DB Fan mode
• Dual BIOS Modes
• Top Level Performance
• A sexy and simple design
• Support PCIe 4.0
• Affordable
• Heatsink and fans do an incredible job keeping the card cool

Cons

• For being on the budget side is a bit long

XFX does not include an app to overclock or create fan curves, though AMD drivers have that feature built in.  I know AMD drivers are currently running into some issues, working with AMD, they have assured me that they are working with the community to resolve them, I can’t downplay XFX for that.  On the NVIDIA side, they don’t have fan curves or overclocking built into their drivers, but EVGA does create an app for that.  I prefer though not having to install anything more than I have to, so that is a plus for AMD though the driver issues are noted.

For those of your running into driver issues, I help you resolve them here, I ran into it once

Since I am comparing the 2, the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro comes in at $269.99 on Amazon while the EVGA Geforce RTX 2060 KO Ultra comes in at $319.99 on EVGA’s site (On amazon $337.94 at the time of this review 6-28-2020, though the price seems to go up every day).  While the 2060 did best the 5600 on a few different benchmarks, I cannot justify $50 on a between 1 and 15 fps difference.

Paying more money upfront is one thing, since the 2060 does consume more power, you’ll have to add in that monthly expense for a minimal gain.  If the performance difference across the board, or for even the ones the 2060 did beat over the 5600 was HUGE, maybe 30+ FPS, the additional cost would be justifiable, but even at the current base pricing of $319.99 for the 2060, I don’t think the 2060 is worth it.

Sure, the RTX 2060 does do ray tracing, but ray tracing at a 2060 level, you can’t expect too much, but we will see in the EVGA Geforce RTX 2060 KO Ultra review coming soon.

As you saw in this review, the cards were almost identical in performance minus the temperature and power differences.  If the cards were identical in pricing, it might be a more difficult decision, but for me, I would go for the XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT Thicc II Pro.

Great job XFX on your Dragonblogger’s Editors choice award and your 9.5 score.

Please let me know what you guys think in the comment’s below, I would love to know.

EDIT: During this review, I misinterpreted the readings between Hotspot and GPU.  My understanding was that Hotspot on AMD was the GPU Temperature equivalent on NVIDIA.  GPU Temperature on both AMD and NVIDIA are identical, they are reading the same spot for temperature, the Edge Temperature.  The Hotspot is the junction temperature, unlike the GPU/Edge Temperature, the Hotspot accurately reads the hottest spot across the GPU dye.  I will see if I can find the equivalent on NVIDIA and report back.

If you read the review earlier today (7/7/2020) and again now, you may have noticed it looked a bit different.  This is because I corrected the entire review with my correct understanding.  I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.  With the incorrect understanding, I previously gave this card a 9.4, but with the updated understanding… I raised it to 9.5 because it got that much “cooler”,… sorry I had to, it just fit.

My gaming video on the EVGA Geforce RTX 2060 KO Ultra Gaming will correct this.

Also, make sure you ENTER for your CHANCE to WIN THIS CARD

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