The AMD Radeon RX 590 Review, feat. XFX & PowerColor: Polaris Returns (Again)
by Nate Oh on November 15, 2018 9:00 AM ESTThe Test
Like with the Radeon RX 580, we emulated AMD's RX 590 reference specs by using the PowerColor RX 590 Red Devil's Quiet BIOS, which drops the boost clock to 1545MHz. As factory overclocked cards are frequently built and configured for higher TDPs to support their frequency curves, where simple underclocking doesn't necessarily reflect what might be throttled performance in a baseline card. The power limit coded into the BIOS don’t perfectly correlate with TBP, so it’s difficult to precisely determine if they match AMD’s 225W TBPs, but it should be reasonably accurate for a virtual reference card.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-7820X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | Gigabyte X299 AORUS Gaming 7 (F9g) |
| Power Supply: | EVGA 1000 G3 |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Toshiba RD400 (1TB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 4 x 8GB (16-18-18-38) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | LG 27UD68P-B |
| Video Cards: | XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy PowerColor Radeon RX 590 Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 590 AMD Radeon RX 580 AMD Radeon RX 480 AMD Radeon R9 390 AMD Radeon R9 380 4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 416.81 AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.40 Press (Nov6 Build) |
| OS: | Windows 10 Pro (1803) |
| Spectre/Meltdown Mitigations | Yes (both) |
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rtho782 - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
So, a 16% increase in price since June 2016, 30 months ago, gets us 22% higher clocks with the same memory bandwidth, and 50% more power consumption.I'm not very excited by this for some reason.
Galcobar - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
It's likely a reference to the Harley-Davidson Fatboy, which is a big cruiser even by HW standards. Probably hoping to capitalize on its continuing media presence in such productions as Sons of Anarchy and Terminator Genisys (not so much Wild Hogs).Galcobar - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
Bother, replied to the wrong comment...Dr. Swag - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
Who in the world thought xfx fatboy was a good gpu name?!?"Hey I was thinking of buying the fatboy."
"Dude the fatboy actually runs pretty cool."
Seriously wtf is that name?
plonk420 - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
it would have been an amazingly awesome promo if Fallout 76 came with it...PeachNCream - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
Yes, that's some awful branding and who knows how that one found its way onto a retail box. The name on the box doesn't mean anything in relationship to the card's performance, but someone over at XFX was smoking something good and someone else was asleep at the approval button helm.ianmills - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
If we think of electricity as food I think fatboy is a great name for the 590!PeachNCream - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
Hah, that's a good (and funny) point!Galcobar - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
It's likely a reference to the Harley-Davidson Fatboy, which is a big cruiser even by HW standards. Probably hoping to capitalize on its continuing media presence in such productions as Sons of Anarchy and Terminator Genisys (not so much Wild Hogs).PeachNCream - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
It seems derogatory in any case, as if a clever way to toss out an insult in the general direction of the customers. As for media presence, I don't know. I've heard of Terminator movies before, but haven't seen anything past the second movie. Sons of Anarchy, I think is a cable TV series IIRC, but not as many people pay attention to television. For instance, I haven't even owned a television in the last 18 years and don't bother with streaming media aside from the occasional YouTube clip. It seems that aside from the very old, that's more the norm than the exception. As well, I think those big motorcycles aren't very popular either. Isn't the company that sells them in a little financial trouble these days?