The AMD Radeon RX 590 Review, feat. XFX & PowerColor: Polaris Returns (Again)
by Nate Oh on November 15, 2018 9:00 AM ESTFinal Fantasy XV (DX11)
Upon arriving to PC earlier this, Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition was given a graphical overhaul as it was ported over from console, fruits of their successful partnership with NVIDIA, with hardly any hint of the troubles during Final Fantasy XV's original production and development.
In preparation for the launch, Square Enix opted to release a standalone benchmark that they have since updated. Using the Final Fantasy XV standalone benchmark gives us a lengthy standardized sequence to utilize OCAT. Upon release, the standalone benchmark received criticism for performance issues and general bugginess, as well as confusing graphical presets and performance measurement by 'score'. In its original iteration, the graphical settings could not be adjusted, leaving the user to the presets that were tied to resolution and hidden settings such as GameWorks features.
Since then, Square Enix has patched the benchmark with custom graphics settings and bugfixes to be much more accurate in profiling in-game performance and graphical options, though leaving the 'score' measurement. For our testing, we enable or adjust settings to the highest except for NVIDIA-specific features and 'Model LOD', the latter of which is left at standard. Final Fantasy XV also supports HDR, and it will support DLSS at some later date.
For Final Fantasy XV, the older R9 380 and GTX 960 simply can't keep up with the demands and are essentially unplayable with particularly low 99th percentiles. VRAM wouldn't be the sole issue - though FFXV does use high resolution textures - as the GTX 980 (4GB) performs up to par. NVIDIA hardware tends to perform well on FFXV but as with Ashes: Escalation, the RX 590's extra performance permits it to claim victory, reference-to-reference, which the RX 580 was unable to do here.
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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.