The AMD Radeon RX 590 Review, feat. XFX & PowerColor: Polaris Returns (Again)
by Nate Oh on November 15, 2018 9:00 AM ESTPower, Temperature, and Noise
As always, we'll take a look at power, temperature, and noise of the Radeon RX 590. As a custom-only specification, this means that we will be looking at solely AIB vendor designs. With the RX 590, we already know what to expect with existing RX 580 boards and coolers.
As this is a new GPU, we will quickly review stock voltages and clockspeeds as well.
| AMD RX Series Video Card Voltages | ||||
| Boost | Idle | |||
| Radeon RX 590 | 1.1563V | 0.8000V | ||
| Radeon RX 580 | 1.1625v | 0.7625v | ||
| Radeon RX 480 | 1.0625v | |||
Power Consumption
For all the gaming performance gains that the RX 590 has made, it came with the higher clockspeeds, and to bring those higher clockspeeds came more power. Already, TBPs have notably increased from the RX 480's 150W to the RX 580's 185W, and now to the RX 590's 225W. Which is already past RX Vega 56's 210W reference board power spec.
Idle power consumption doesn't show anything out of the ordinary.
The RX 590's load power consumption is a slightly different story. For the RX 580 launch, we mused that this is where AMD paid the piper. For the RX Vega launch, I commented that the piper had then taken AMD to the cleaners. For the RX 590 today, I thought there wasn't any more the piper wanted to take, but there was.
From the wall, the RX 590 now pulls 30 to 45W more than the RX 580 in Battlefield 1. The difference in FurMark is even starker, with the RX 590 now drawing 45 to 80W more. Naturally, the power delta gets higher when comparing to the RX 480, let alone the GTX 1060 6GB FE. In Battlefield 1, that's 110W or more system consumption than the GTX 1060 6GB FE for what is panning out to be around 10% faster performance. It's clear that the RX 590 is not in the same league - or anywhere close - to the GTX 1060 in terms of power efficiency.
Temperature
With all that power, heat and temperature can easily become an issue. But as both a non-reference launch and a product refresh, the featured open air axial fan designs are tried-and-true, and already configured to dissapate similar thermals.
Noise
Likewise with noise, the RX 590 can benefit from zero dB functionality, where fans turn off under certain temperatures.
Additionally, a quick glance at RX 590 power consumption at -25% and -50% power limits show that like the RX Vega, RX 480, and RX 580, Polaris 30 is well past the optimal point on the voltage curve with the clocks at hand.
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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.