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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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.