I bought one of these to sort of play around with. In stock form, even the reference 5700 is pretty darn powerful. I flashed mine to the 5700 XT 50th Anniversary's BIOS from the TechSpot repository, and got a really nice uplift over stock, of course, I had to ramp the fan curve up to 100% for loading, but with no ill results. If you're like me and don't mind the risk, I would recommend getting a reference card vs an aftermarket for one big reason: the reference cards are extremely overbuilt, with all solid-state capacitors, high-quality components in the power stages and does not skimp out on other components. Beware many of the third-party solutions, they cut into the engineering specifications in order to beef up the cooling solution in order to preserve profit margins, the net result in many cases is a 5700 that will perform a wee bit better but does not have as much potential should you wish to reflash to the higher performing XT bios.
