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
Grand Theft Auto V
The latest edition of Rockstar’s venerable series of open world action games, Grand Theft Auto V was originally released to the last-gen consoles back in 2013. However thanks to a rather significant facelift for the current-gen consoles and PCs, along with the ability to greatly turn up rendering distances and add other features like MSAA and more realistic shadows, the end result is a game that is still among the most stressful of our benchmarks when all of its features are turned up. Furthermore, in a move rather uncharacteristic of most open world action games, Grand Theft Auto also includes a very comprehensive benchmark mode, giving us a great chance to look into the performance of an open world action game.
On a quick note about settings, as Grand Theft Auto V doesn't have pre-defined settings tiers, I want to quickly note what settings we're using. For "Very High" quality we have all of the primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, with the exception of grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced redering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but it not increasing the view distance any further.
Otherwise for "High" quality we take the same basic settings but turn off all MSAA, which significantly reduces the GPU rendering and VRAM requirements.
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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.