The AMD Radeon RX 590 Review, feat. XFX & PowerColor: Polaris Returns (Again)
by Nate Oh on November 15, 2018 9:00 AM ESTFar Cry 5 (DX11)
The latest title in Ubisoft's Far Cry series lands us right into the unwelcoming arms of an armed militant cult in Montana, one of the many middles-of-nowhere in the United States. With a charismatic and enigmatic adversary, gorgeous landscapes of the northwestern American flavor, and lots of violence, it is classic Far Cry fare. Graphically intensive in an open-world environment, the game mixes in action and exploration.
Far Cry 5 does support Vega-centric features with Rapid Packed Math and Shader Intrinsics. Far Cry 5 also supports HDR (HDR10, scRGB, and FreeSync 2). This testing was done without HD Textures enabled, a new option that was recently patched in.
Far Cry 5 shows the same trends as Battlefield 1, with the RX 590 splitting the difference between the GTX 1070 FE and GTX 1060 6GB FE. At 1440p, that level of performance brushes close to the 60fps milestone, not a surprising feat as the original RX 480 8GB proves itself on par with the GTX 1060 6GB FE. Like Battlefield 1, this is the general space that the RX 580 wants to be in, where its performance can act as a spoiler for the GTX 1070 FE and mitigate increased prices and power draw.
As we'll see later, the lower VRAM options in this upper mainstream segment make it clear that 8GB is really the new level of broadly sufficient video memory, especially for cards expected to be in service for a few years. As it so happens, Far Cry 5 released a free 29GB patch adding toggleable HD Textures, which we will look into benchmarking. Generally, high-resolution texture packs are a simple way of increasing visual fidelity without significantly hurting framerates, provided the card has enough framebuffer. This can especially benefit those mainstream cards, particularly those on 1080p rendered on larger displays, as every passing year is often another exercise in figuring out what quality settings to dial down.
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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.