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 |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
129 Comments
View All Comments
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
While 1680MHz would be fantastic, in this case it's meant to be 1360MHz. Thanks for the heads up.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
The powercolor card pulls 100 watts more than the 1060 yet gets totally destroyed by the 1060 in BF4 and GTA V. AMD is a shakespearean tragedy.docbones - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
So wait for Vega then.HomeworldFound - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
"So wait for Vega then." Who says they're going to execute Vega any better than their recent history.MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
I think AMD committed two blunders here.1. These should have been called 485/475/465/450, and not in the 500 series. OEM's still get their shiny new cards for consumers, but it doesn't look as bad to people expecting something more different from an entirely new series number.
2. AMD completely threw out power efficiency, and their partners seem to be taking that even further. I understand that Polaris wasn't as power efficient as Pascal, but it did come fairly close. This refresh seems to completely abandon AMD's previous message of power efficiency.
That being said, I will definitely put these cards in people's computers because of price/performance. I just feel like AMD could have done a bit better.
Drumsticks - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
As somebody who has a 480 in their PC right now, I'm not sure. I was looking at a build for a friend last night, and was surprised to learn you can pick up a 6GB 1060 Zotac Mini for about $219. It's not going to win any 1060 performance awards, but it has performance in the realm of the FE (probably not lower), which makes it an impressive play from Nvidia in price/$. It looks like a good deal compared to what you see here.I really hope Vega pans out. I don't see any reason for it to be as disappointing as the 500 series; I think it has a chance. At possibly 225W and on a new Arch, it should eclipse the 1080 easily (remember it's on HBM2 with the noted power savings), and maybe be at the least a value spoiler for the 1080 Ti.
MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the market as I hold no allegiance to either side. I do share your hopes for Vega :)sonicmerlin - Sunday, May 7, 2017 - link
They were close? The 1070 uses less power than the 480 and is 50% faster.theangryintern - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Anyone know the feasibility of doing CrossFire with a 480 and a 580?Flunk - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Just buy a 480 when they fire-sale them and spare yourself the hassle.