Meet the Cards: PowerColor & Sapphire

For today's launch, AMD sampled us a pair of partner cards: PowerColor's Red Devil Radeon RX 580 8GB, and Sapphire's Nitro+ RX 570. The Red Devil RX 580 sports a modest factory overclock, while the Nitro+ 570 takes comes with a more aggressive factory overclock.

Radeon RX 500 Series Cards
  PowerColor Red Devil RX 580 Radeon RX 580
(Reference)
Sapphire Nitro+ RX 570 Radeon RX 570
(Reference)
Boost Clock 1380MHz 1340MHz 1340MHz 1244MHz
Memory Clock 8Gbps 8Gbps 7Gbps 7Gbps
VRAM 8GB 8GB 4GB 4GB
TBP 220W? 185W 195W 150W
Length 9.5" N/A 10.5" N/A
Width Double Slot N/A Double Slot N/A
Cooler Type Open Air N/A Open Air N/A
Price $249 $229 $199 $169

Both of the cards are relatively typical for a custom, factory overclocked design. Along with their overclocks, they feature a dual fan open air cooler. PowerColor is charging a $20 premium on their card, while Sapphire makes that $30 for the Nitro+ RX 570.

PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 580

Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 570

Polaris Refined: Better Fab Yields & a New Memory State The Test
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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 audibly
  • goodtofufriday - 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.

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