The AMD Radeon RX 590 Review, feat. XFX & PowerColor: Polaris Returns (Again)
by Nate Oh on November 15, 2018 9:00 AM ESTMiddle-earth: Shadow of War (DX11)
Next up is Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the sequel to Shadow of Mordor. Developed by Monolith, whose last hit was arguably F.E.A.R., Shadow of Mordor returned them to the spotlight with an innovative NPC rival generation and interaction system called the Nemesis System, along with a storyline based on J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, and making it work on a highly modified engine that originally powered F.E.A.R. in 2005.
Using the new LithTech Firebird engine, Shadow of War improves on the detail and complexity, and with free add-on high resolution texture packs, offers itself as a good example of getting the most graphics out of an engine that may not be bleeding edge. Shadow of War also supports HDR (HDR10).
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, to which Shadow of War is the sequel, was notorious for its VRAM-hungry nature. For Shadow of War, we have Ultra textures enabled, which balloons the in-game required VRAM meter to more than 8GB even at 1080p. But as it is largely for texture caching, only a fraction of that 8GB is necessary to keep things going smoothly, so here, the raw GPU performance remains most important. The solidly mainstream GTX 960 and R9 380 are not fast enough in the first place.
In any case, the RX 580 already edges out the GTX 1060 6GB Founders Edition so the RX 590 only adds to that advantage. But the GTX 1070 being so far ahead, the RX 590 is not even close to approaching those framerates.
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Manch - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
Harley Davidson --> Harley Owners Group --> H.O.G. --> Also nickname for Harleys --> Fatboy is what you call a big actual hog. Nothing derogatory. SMDH. Step out of the basement every now and then! ;)PeachNCream - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
Why lace something with an insult? You were doing pretty good until you got to that point.Manch - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link
It was just a joke! Hence the wink ;)Allan_Hundeboll - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
I Fatboy is better than many of the other vendors meaningless names. It's easy to remember and the fact that we are even discussing it proves that it succeed in standing out from all the other namesmapesdhs - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
Reminds me of the derision that was everywhere when AMD announced the EPYC name, but now it's become the popular source for various amusing memes in AMD's favour.Fatboy on the face of it sounds crude perhaps, but it has consonants, and it's memeable.
Mr Perfect - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
Personally, I'm hoping they release a mITX length card under the name Fatboy Slim.Lord of the Bored - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
Honestly, I thought it was inspired by Fat Man and Little Boy.Xex360 - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
AMD are nowhere compared to nVidia, even 2 years after Pascal they can't compete the 590 should at least be on the level of the 1080 not the 1060.neblogai - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
AMD have cards at 1080/2070 price point, and offer a better deal- lower price, Freesync, and 3 highest tier games for free. RX590, while not as great deal as RX570/580, also comes with those 3x €60 games- while nVidia's GTX1060 did not get any speed upgrade since release, nor a more competitive price, nor any new tech.CiccioB - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
AMD has a better price. Stop.They just can't stop discounting their GPUs to not be erased in the graphics market.
This GPU is not going to make nvidia loose any sleep and they can continue selling Turing at whatever price they want.
nvidia today is simply a generation ahead on the same PP. Let's see what will happen at 7nm, when AMD will most probably come out with another GCN pearl ws Turing successor.
Maybe at 7nm at the end of 2019 GCN will start consuming like Pascal 3.5 years older.