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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Samus - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
I donno, you can pickup a used 1070 for under $300 practically anywhere (facebook mp, forums, even ebay) as people upgrade to RTX...which I honestly can't believe people are doing, but hey, they're doing it.Spunjji - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link
It's really quite astonishing, but great for those of us who can think our way our of a paper bag :DManch - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
Can't go across the border and bring one back?Targon - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link
$400-$450 USD for a Vega 64.Falck - Sunday, June 6, 2021 - link
This comment aged well XDOpencg - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
Just get something cheap for now and wait for navi in 1 year. Gpu buyers the 10 series window is gone. This next year is going to suck untill navi comes out.Allan_Hundeboll - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
GTX1070/Vega 56 is expensive toys. I only play like 2 hours a week, and only need min. FPS to stay above 60. 1440P Ultra settings sure looks pretty, but doesn't really improve my gaming experience considerably compared to 1080P High settings.So I recently replaced my defective R9 280 with a 4GB RX580. Only paid 140$ and sold the game bundle for 20$. My RX580 clocks to 1480/9600Mhz so I'm perfectly satisfied with the performance I got for 120$.
casperes1996 - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
How is it an investment? Unless you play Counter Strike professionally, I doubt you get a return on that "investment". how much the "minimum" is depends how much money you have to spare for playing games.PeachNCream - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
Investment in this case was probably used in a casual sense rather than to imply there was a more conventional set of investing considerations given to the purchase. It is common knowledge, after all, that computer hardware generally loses value rapidly and computer gaming typically only yields an intangible reward in the form of entertainment.wumpus - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link
If I wanted an "investment" in the sense of "depriciating slightly slower than fish" I'd wait for something made in 7nm (not the Vega, unless you fit their market exactly). And I suspect nvidia should have something up their sleeve to spoil Navi's party (but at least wait to see if they survive, this latch batch of nvida cards seems to just fail).GPU architecture may improve, but it will take a long time to get a smaller process than TSMC's new 7nm. This is about as close to "future proofing" as you are going to get.