The AMD Radeon RX 590 Review, feat. XFX & PowerColor: Polaris Returns (Again)
by Nate Oh on November 15, 2018 9:00 AM ESTGrand Theft Auto V (DX11)
Now a truly venerable title, GTA V is a veteran of past game suites that is still graphically demanding as they come. As an older DX11 title, it provides a glimpse into the graphically intensive games of yesteryear that don't incorporate the latest features. Originally released for consoles in 2013, the PC port came with a slew of graphical enhancements and options. Just as importantly, GTA V includes a rather intensive and informative built-in benchmark, somewhat uncommon in open-world games.
The settings are identical to its previous appearances, which are custom as GTA V does not have presets. To recap, a "Very High" quality is used, where all primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, except 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 rendering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but not increasing the view distance any further.
The ever-popular GTA V has proven itself a very demanding game even on the latest hardware, despite its age. Overall NVIDIA cards usually fare much better on it, and the GTX 1060 6GB is no exception. Polaris' best efforts across generations have narrowed the gap but isn't enough to bring it into contention against the GTX 1060 6GB. The 2GB framebuffer of the GTX 960 isn't sufficient for 1440p and falls behind the R9 380 4GB with completely unplayable performance, though at 1440p both the R9 380 4GB and the GTX 960 lack the raw horsepower to drive gameplay at that resolution anyway.
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AMD#1 - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link
Well, they released a card this year for the consumer market. My hopes are that Navi will be a better option against NVIDIA RTX, good that Radeon will not support RT. Let NVIDIA first support DX12 with hardware shader units, instead of hanging on to DYING DX11.silverblue - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
A couple of reviews seem to be showing the Fatboy at similar power consumption (or slightly higher) levels to the 580 Nitro+ (presumably the 1450MHz version) and Red Devil Golden Sample. That's not so bad when you factor in the significantly increased clocks, but the two 580s hardly sipped power to begin with, and basic 580s don't really perform much worse for what would be much lower power consumption. AMD has a product that kind of bridges the gap between the 1060 and the 1070, but uses more power than a 1080... hardly envious, really. The Fatboy has rather poor thermals as well if you don't ramp the fan speed up.The 590s we're getting are clocked aggressively on core but not on memory; what would really be interesting is a 590 clocked at 580 levels, even factory overclocked 580 levels. Would it be worth getting a 590 just to undervolt and underclock the core, make use of the extra game in the bundle (once they launch, that is), and essentially be running a more efficient 580? I'd be tempted to overclock the memory at the same time as that appears to be where the 580 is being held back, not core speed.
silverblue - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
I'll be fair to the Fatboy; it does have a zero RPM mode which would explain the thermals.WaltC - Sunday, December 2, 2018 - link
I just bought a Fatboy...to run in X-fire with my year-old 8GB RX-480 (1.305GHz stock)...! As I am now gaming at 3840x2160, it seemed a worthwhile alternative to dropping $500+ on a single GPU. Paid $297 @ NewEgg & got the 3-game bundle. I read one review by a guy who X-fired a 580 with a 480 without difficulty--and the performance scaled from 70%-90% better when X-Fire is supported. Wouldn't recommend buying two 590's at one time, of course, but for people who already own a 480/580, the X-Fire alternative is the most cost-effective route at present. Gaming sites seem to have forgotten about X-Fire these days, for some reason. Of course, the nVidia 1060 doesn't allow for SLI--so that might be one reason, I suppose. Still, it's kind of baffling as the X-Fire mode seems like such a no brainer. And for those titles that will not X-fire, I'll just run them all @ 1.6GHz on the 590...Until next year when AMD's next < $300 GPU launches...! Then, I may have to think again!quadibloc - Friday, December 7, 2018 - link
Oh, so Global Foundries does now have a 12 nm process? I'm glad they're doing something a little better than 14 nm at least.