The AMD Radeon RX 580 & RX 570 Review: A Second Path to Polaris
by Ryan Smith on April 18, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Polaris
- Radeon RX 500
The Test
Before diving into our tests, I want to quickly touch upon the test setup. Since AMD isn’t making any reference RX 580 or RX 570 cards, they instead sent over the PoworColor and Sapphire cards listed on the previous page. However both of those are factory overclocked, so both needed to be underclocked to stand-in for the baseline RX 580 and RX 570 cards.
The trick with underclocking cards like this isn’t the clockspeeds, but rather the power consumption. Factory overclocked cards are frequently built and configured for higher TDPs to support their frequencies, which can throw off our results, especially if a baseline card would power throttle in the same situation. So it’s sometimes not enough to simply underclock a card to represent the baseline performance.
In the case of today’s cards, thankfully both of them ship with a second, lower power BIOS. PowerColor calls this Quiet OC on the Red Devil RX 580, and along with reducing the max GPU power by 20W, it reduces the GPU boost clock to 1355MHz, a 15MHz overclock. Sapphire does one better on their Nitro+, as the second BIOS reduces the GPU power by 25W and brings the card down to AMD’s reference clocks.
PowerColor RedDevil RX 580's "Quiet OC" BIOS
Unfortunately the power limit coded into the BIOS don’t perfectly correlate with TBP – the value is just for GPU power – so it’s difficult to precisely tell if these BIOSes match AMD’s 185W and 150W TBPs. However if these values are off, they should still be close to what a real baseline card would get, as they’re in the ballpark of what I’d expect for AMD’s TBPs to begin with. So our results here should be reasonably accurate here for both total power consumption and for accounting for any power throttling during testing.
For our review of the Radeon RX 580 & RX 570, we’re using AMD’s “Crimson Press” driver, version 17.10.1030. Going by the build number, this driver appears to be between the latest 17.3.1 and 17.4.1 Crimson public drivers.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: | PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 580 Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 570 AMD Radeon RX 480 (8GB) AMD Radeon RX 470 AMD Radeon R9 380 AMD Radeon R7 370 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founder's Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Founder's Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 381.65 AMD Radeon Software Crimson Press Beta 17.10.1030 |
| OS: | Windows 10 Pro |
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ddriver - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
Not as amazing as trying to make it sound like an achievement. Wake up Dorothy, every review site got a launch day review on the 580 adoy....Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Actually, they're usually still being finished as the embargo lifts. :D Nowadays it's such a short time from the hardware arriving to the review deadline.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Aye. Let's just say that Easter was not a holiday around here.Meteor2 - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
:(VoraciousGorak - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
It's like a reverse Intel. Every 1% increase in performance brings with it a 2% increase in power draw. Based on these tests, this refresh brought out - at best - an 8% performance increase, with typical gains in the 0-3% range, over a GPU that's been out almost a year. These gains are even worse than the Hawaii refresh, and that refresh saw prices drop by twenty percent, not ten dollars.Still waiting on the AMD GPU that will get me to upgrade from my R9 290....
VoraciousGorak - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
I mean, I guess we get an improvement on the stock cooler (I think? Thank god if so), which was probably needed with the 25W typical use power draw increase, likely enough to overwhelm the quiet-mode on the old stock cooler.Also WTB comment edit feature.
bill.rookard - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
That would be Vega.I will say it's good to see that the power consumption of the cards is down to a reasonable level (even with the increase in the 500 series) so that those wanting more performance can crossfire a pair without turning their computer case into the equivalent of a blast furnace.
Still - the problem is that most of these results with the 580 still puts them behind the GTX 1060 and the pricing is still pretty close. Given a choice between a $240ish RX580 and a $240ish GTX 1060, I'd have to still take the 1060. It's quiet, cooler, and faster.
Of course, if the rumors are to be believed, Vega should finally get AMD back in the high end, and Vega can't hit soon enough...
Meteor2 - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
It's all about Vega at this point. Launching as high-end this year, the RX500 series will be replayed by Vega cards next year. Of course, Nvidia should be on Volta by that point, but the Vega-Volta efficiency gap should be much smaller than the Polaris-Pascal gap. Pascal probably represents the last of the low-hanging efficiency fruit, which AMD will be picking with Vega.Mugur - Thursday, April 20, 2017 - link
You think? From the review, I gather that it's the other way around: RX580 was cooler and quieter that the FR GTX1060 in all the tests.nathanddrews - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Those noise levels though. Damn! Nice work AMD.