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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TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
So this is ReBrandeon 2 - the search for more money?There is almost 0 improvement here. The XFX 480 GTR 1338 edition was already capable of hitting these performance numbers, with a better PCB and lower power consumption to boot.
Calling this a 580 is a mistake. You'd think they would have learned from the 300 series's massive mistake.
ABR - Thursday, April 20, 2017 - link
Might mean that they are planning on rebooting the naming scheme for Vega.willis936 - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
*sighs audiblygoodtofufriday - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
rx580 @ 185w - "look elsewhere for mitx"? r9 nano is 275w. 1070 strix 180w is in my ncase m1 itx with a 700w psu. please explain your reasoning.ajlueke - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
"r9 nano is 275w". Actually the TDP of the R9 Fury Nano is listed at 175W. Which is actually an interesting point, as it still outperforms the RX 580 while using less power.AMDs recent architectures, lie Polaris and Fiji don't really seem to benefit much from throwing more juice at them. The Fury Nano is a great example. A 175W TDP vs 275W on the Fury X with only about 10% difference in performance.
I haven't been following to closely, but perhaps there will also be a Vega "Nano" variant? That card may easily be a performance per watt champion. Hopefully they don't price it the same as the full speed variant like AMD did for the Fury Nano originally.
goodtofufriday - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Typo on the 175/275 but yes. I do agree with all you said well. Which begs the question of why the writer says to look elsewhere for ITX soley based on the 35w increased tdp.Orumus - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
I work 2 jobs and don't have a lot of time to read full reviews which is why I really appreciate the great "Final thoughts" section on most of your reviews. I can almost always count on it to give a concise yet nuanced overview of the overall review and technology in question. Thanks for making my life just that little bit easier.Yojimbo - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Good review, but I have a couple comments. Firstly it would be nice to have 1060 3GB benchmarks as well as a few more 1050 Ti benchmarks. Secondly, I don't think it makes sense to clock the Powercolor and Sapphire cards to AMD stock frequencies and list them as if they are AMD stock cards going up against the NVIDIA reference designs in the "Power, Temperature, and Noise" charts. Since these results are highly board-specific, I think you should explicitly write in the charts that it's a Powercolor clocked at stock rather than "AMD Radeon RX 580". An apples to apples comparison would be some factory overclocked board partner card based on the NVIDIA GPUs similarly downclocked to reference clock speeds.milli - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Isn't the game selection getting a bit old? Nothing newer than year old games.Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 are (almost) 4 years old.
Add Doom to have one Vulcan game.
Computerbase.de tests with more and newer games. The RX580 ends up 1% faster than the GTX1060FE there.
https://www.computerbase.de/2017-04/radeon-rx-580-...
webdoctors - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
If you're looking at these cards, you're likely not going to be buying the newer games. You'll likely be buying humble bundle or bundle star class games for your kids or feed your gaming addiction. Those generally have pretty reasonable GPU requirements. Games less than a year old are gonna be $40 a pop, 5 of those are equal to the price of a 580 which is unrealistic for someone buying a 580 to spend on SW.If you weren't cheap you'd go the Nvidia route, but at the sale prices the AMD cards are giving great value. Value gamers aren't buying the latest and greatest games.