AMD RX 580 8GB overview: nonetheless the best-value graphics card you may jam into your gaming PC

The AMD RX 580 is now the sensible elder statesman of the present Radeon lineup, however when it first arrived the mildly up to date Polaris GPU was really a little bit of a disappointment. Not solely had been we hoping the 500-series playing cards would herald a brand new world of Vega-based graphics playing cards (which ended up being their very own distinctive model of disappointing), it was barely any completely different from the RX 480 that had landed a yr earlier.

But a yr and a half, and one crypto mining increase later, the RX 580 has managed to ship on the ‘fine wine’ promise that AMD attaches to all of its silicon. It’s now the graphics card that we’d advocate as the most effective GPU to drop into your gaming rig… except you could have an infinite cash tree and may spend $1,200 on an RTX 2080 Ti in any case.

It’s an impressively highly effective, well-priced graphics card, with a relatively big pool of video reminiscence and a flair for coping with trendy graphics APIs. And at simply $190 (£197) it has little or no competitors available in the market, with Nvidia’s GTX 1060 solely giving it pause in a couple of DX11 titles and nonetheless being costlier on the entire. Even the brand new GTX 1660 Ti struggles towards its real worth proposition.

It does have a bit extra competitors within the mainstream market proper now, with AMD launching its ‘new’ RX 590 graphics card. That’s only a reasonable 12nm die-shrink of the Polaris GPU on the coronary heart of the previous RX 580, but it surely’s additionally a well timed reminder that AMD’s mainstream graphics playing cards are your greatest guess for great-value gaming efficiency proper now.

Even with the GTX 1660 Ti being unveiled its GTX 1070-level gaming efficiency retains it one other pricing tier above the RX 580. The straight GTX 1660 might need one thing to supply, nevertheless, with its barely chopped TU116 GPU and $220 price ticket.

AMD RX 580 specs

Polaris Enhanced. That’s what AMD known as the up to date 500-series of graphics playing cards, however they had been by no means anticipating to encourage anybody that spent their money on a last-gen Polaris card to improve. Despite calling the GPUs on the coronary heart of each the brand new RX 580 and RX 570 Polaris 20 it’s nonetheless actually the identical 14nm Polaris 10 chip they used, to nice impact, within the RX 480 and RX 470 playing cards.

The ‘enhanced’ bit comes from the truth that 12 months on from the preliminary Polaris launch each the 14nm FinFET know-how and the 4th Gen GCN structure used within the newest AMD Radeon playing cards had a full yr to mature. That means the manufacturing course of and yields improved and the ensuing GPUs had been extra sturdy.

That’s the principle purpose AMD have been capable of launch RX 580 playing cards with a better base clock velocity than the reference RX 480 playing cards noticed at launch. The base/increase clocks of the unique RX 480 had been 1,120MHz and 1,266MHz respectively, whereas the reference spec of the RX 580’s Polaris 20 chip is ready at 1,257MHz and 1,340MHz. With the final tightening up of the GPU’s manufacturing course of AMD can ship out playing cards utilizing just about the earlier chip’s peak efficiency as a place to begin to work up from.

Though for those who had been hoping for a similar 40 compute unit, 2,560 core, Polaris GPU Microsoft shipped with the AMD-powered Xbox One X you’d be upset. Outside of the reference clock velocity bump the RX 580 is identical GPU beast because the RX 480. The core configuration is equivalent – the 14nm Polaris 20 within the new card remains to be sporting 36 compute items (CUs) with 2,304 stream processors unfold out throughout them. Alongside which might be the identical 144 texture items and 32 ROPs.

The reminiscence system is identical too, with 8GB of GDDR5 delivering a full 256GB/s of reminiscence bandwidth. And, just like the 400 collection playing cards, there are each 4GB and 8GB variations of the RX 580, in addition to the RX 570.

All that appears to have actually modified then, clockspeed hike apart, is the brand new RX 580 playing cards have a better TDP to permit for the improved clockspeeds the brand new designs are delivery with. Those clockspeeds above are simply the instructed reference design specs, however the reality AMD by no means created any reference samples for the brand new playing cards was indicative of their refresh/rebadge standing, and in addition that the majority RX 580 playing cards can be costly manufacturing facility overclocked ones even when the costs weren’t being artificially boosted by the gluttonous mining group.

Our XFX pattern runs at 1,366MHz, whereas the Asus STRIX card hits a heady 1,411MHz out of the field. The unique STRIX version of the RX 480, however, runs at a default 1,330MHz. That itself was a fairly hefty increase in factory-overclock phrases, however the brand new variant from Asus is sort of 100MHz forward of that.

AMD RX 580 benchmarks

PCGamesN Test Rig: Intel i7 8700Ok, Asus ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming, 16GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4, Corsair HX1200i,
Philips BDM3275

AMD RX 580 efficiency

The RX 580 is simply a bit behind the newer RX 590 by way of general gaming efficiency, and customarily there’s solely ever a couple of frames per second on common between them. That’s one thing of a shock given the considerably greater clock speeds supplied by the up to date, 12nm playing cards.

That’s probably not the important thing battleground for the RX 580, nevertheless. How it performs towards the Nvidia GTX 1060 is the place the actual struggle is, and that’s much more fascinating. On the entire the AMD Graphics Core Next structure has the sting in general gaming efficiency. There are a couple of cases the place the Nvidia GPU holds sway, however that’s solely ever in last-gen DirectX 11 games. In the extra trendy APIs, and DirectX 12 particularly, the AMD silicon has the GeForce card beat.

When you’re taking a step up in gaming decision the improved reminiscence subsystem of the AMD card involves the fore. With one other 2GB of GDDR5 reminiscence, and a wider 256-bit reminiscence bus, the RX 580 in 8GB trim is healthier capable of cope with the rigours of high-res textures and the additional general pixel depend.

That’s to not say the GTX 1060 isn’t nonetheless an excellent performer at this finish of the market, it most definitely is, however when the efficiency is so shut pricing turns into a good larger consideration. And when the RX 580 simply has the sting on gaming body charges general, and the sting in pricing, it doesn’t look good for the GeForce card.

Where the Nvidia GPU does have a major edge, nevertheless, is within the traditional GeForce effectivity. Back within the Maxwell days Nvidia made a play for effectivity when it was unable to motion a silicon die shrink, and that transfer remains to be paying off. The GTX 1060, outdoors of its reference cooler design, typically runs cooler than the RX 580, however undoubtedly attracts far much less energy to game at nearly the identical degree.

AMD RX 580 verdict

The RX 580 is hands-down the best-value graphics card available on the market at the moment. With the pricing issues of the mining increase instances a distant reminiscence, the RX 580 8GB playing cards may be picked up for as little as $190 (£196), and that’s a comparative discount. Given the very fact the closest Nvidia competitor card is commonly nicely over $250 it’s really fairly powerful to advocate the costlier GeForce GPU regardless of its higher general gaming efficiency.

That’s nonetheless an enormous amount of cash for many of us to spend on a single element for our gaming PCs. Sure, we’d all love to have the ability to spend RTX 2080 Ti cash with out pause, however in the actual world even ducking below that $200 mark may be daunting. And on the $200 degree AMD has the market sewn up, although possibly the GTX 1660 can have one thing to say about that…