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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
136 Comments
View All Comments
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?