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Radeon RX 590 vs. RX 580 vs. GeForce GTX 1060, Battle for the Best Value sub-$300 GPU

2018-11-15
welcome back to harbor unbox today we're checking out the newest Radeon rx 590 on hand for testing we have this fat boy the XFX Radeon rx 590 fat boy anyway we have a new rx 500 series GPU and it is technically new but kind of not new at the same time and what we have here is the Polaris 20 xt architecture on the 12 nanometer FinFET process and this small change means slightly better clock speeds so bit of an overclock going on there isn't any additional stream processors there's no fancy GDD are six memory or even gddr5 X memory for that matter so yeah essentially what we have here is an Rx 580 on steroids well the 12 nanometer FinFET process for a 15% overclock same thing right this is a somewhat misleading statistic though as most entry-level RX 5 ad models are clocked at 1382 1400 and 10 megahertz giving the new rx 590 at 10 to maybe 12 % clock speed advantage then there's the higher-end models like the gigabyte or SRX 5/8 extr which we use for testing and that particular model comes clocked at 1400 and 25 megahertz and that reduces the rx5 90s clock speed advantage to just 8% I also felt like it would be a bit misleading for us to compare the RX 590 with a base model rx 580 using AMD's reference clocks given its price tag AMD's mess to this launch up in my opinion by pricing the RX 590 at 280 dollars us yep that is unfortunately the MSRP for this slightly overclocked rx 580 meanwhile the RX 580 comes at an MSRP of $230 us but right now can be easily had for $200 us AMD is claiming up to a 12 percent boost over the reference clock to our x5 ATS and I have no idea how they think that means they can increase the MSRP by 22 percent doesn't quite add up for us so this could be an interesting review perhaps upsetting depending on your position so for this testing I'm using the XFX Radeon rx 590 Fatboy and it will be compared to the gigabyte or SRX 580 XJR and msi geforce gtx 1060 gaming X plus I haven't had time to update my results for any lower end models such as any rx 570 or three gigabyte GTX 1060 cards so this will have to do for now that said I do have some higher-end models for comparison as usual I'm using our corsair GPU test system inside the crystal series 570 x with the core i7 8700 k clocked at 5 gigahertz and then 32 gigabytes of vengence ddr4 3400 memory internal I have tested 21 games but due to limited time I'm going to discuss the results for just seven of the games and they will be for the more newly-released titles and then I'll break down the data for all the games towards the end of the video I'll also include all 42 graphs over on our patreon page so feel free to check those out if you're interested the link will be in the video description and that'll just delay to have a closer look at all the results anyway let's get into it first up we have the battlefield 5 results and here the XFX 590 was 7% faster than the Auris 580 xt are taking the average frame rate from 85 fps to 91 fps not exactly earth-shattering stuff but given the specs these were the kind of margins that I was expecting to see disappointingly that margin is reduced to just three percent at 1440p though they spent the 590 was 20% faster than the GTX 1060 and that is the 9 gigabits per second gaming x+ model from msi no less moving on we have the strange brigade results and at 1080p the new 590 was just 5% faster than the 580 though this did make at 16 percent faster than gtx 1060 at 1440p we see the same 5 percent margin here the 590 provided just an additional 3 FPS over the or SRX v 8 extr so again not exactly really exciting stuff here the Assassin's Creed series has been a bit brutal for AMD recently and Odyssey is no different here the 580 and 590 are easily beaten by the gtx 1060 at 1080p we find a similar story at 1440p here the 5 no was 7% slower than the GTX 1060 and just 6% faster than the 580 which equates to just two extra frames this is my first time ever benchmarking with hitman perhaps we'll have a big benchmark video for this title soon I'll see how I go for time anyway shame that the first time I'm using this Tyler isn't for a more exciting occasion here the 590 offered a 5 percent performance bump over the 580 and that meant that it was 11 percent faster than 10 60 at 1080p then at 1440p the margin between the 580 and 590 s reduces us to FPS a 4 percent performance advantage going the way of the 590 another 5 percent performance gain is seen in shadow of the Tomb Raider here the 590 rated 63 fps on average opposed to the 580 s 60 fps then at 1440p we see just a single frame advantage going to the 590 that said it was 14% fast and the gtx 1064 horizon for played really well on the RX 590 at 1080p as frame rates never dip below 80 fps that said we are only looking at a 6 percent performance improvement over the RX 580 only we did see a 10 percent performance boost 1440p and I suspect with a more reference clocked 580 and see more double-digit gains like this and we'll look at this in a moment of the 21 games I've tested the last one we're going to discuss is the results for monster hunter world tourney P we see another unexcited 4 percent performance gain over the 580 though the 590 was 10% faster the GTX 1060 then at 1440p we see a single extra frame and I don't know about you but that's about all the single digit gains I can handle for one video I suspect you're likely going to come across a few reviews showing more impressive gains for the RX 590 over the 580 than what we've seen in this video so let's underclock the Auris rx 580 exterior and run at the AMD spec which calls for a boost clock speed of 1300 and 40 megahertz doing so reduces the rx 580 performance in battlefield 5 at 1080 P by just 2% not exactly a massive reduction but it means the RX 590 is now 10% faster at 1440p we do see a larger 5 percent performance reduction for the under clocked rx 580 and now the 590 is 8 percent faster a much more pressive Marge and we compared to the three percent advantage and enjoy it over the our x58 extr running in its out-of-the-box trim overclocking the XFX fat boy landed us a core clock speed of 60 120 megahertz with a gddr5 memory frequency of two thousand two hundred and fifty megahertz resulting in a transfer speed of 90 beats per second this boost of performance in battlefield 5 at 1080 P by 4 percent while similar gains were seen at 1440p I should just point out that this is a retail card and not a cherry-picked card by AMD that said I have heard that most cards struggle hitting 1600 megahertz so be interesting to see what other reviewers got now please note the Auris RX 5 80 XTi is a power-hungry 580 model it uses around 10% more power than a more standard 580 that said we see that the new rx 590 model from XFX pushes total system consumption slightly higher and that resulted in a 42% increase over the gtx 1060 configuration that's obviously no small difference realistically a power supply won't have an issue with this increase and you're not exactly going to notice it on your power bill either unless your game 24/7 the only real issue here is dealing with the extra heat that's dumped in your case if you have a well ventilated case than it is less of an issue but for budget builds this will heat things up quite a bit speaking of heat under load the Fatboy peaked at 79 degrees which is reasonable but is also starting to get up there the good news is at this temperature it was relatively silent as the fans rarely spinning and up to thirteen hundred and eighty rpm overclocking actually reduced the temperature to 78 degrees as the fans in our spinning and up to 1600 rpm and they could now be heard over the case fans the operating volume wasn't unacceptable or anything crazy but it was a little bit louder and it certainly wasn't anywhere near as loud as a Vega reference card for example ok so now for a breakdown of all the games and on average we see that the XFX Radeon rx 590 fat boy was 5 percent faster than the gigabyte horas our x58 extr so you can probably expect a 7 to 8 percent performance margin over a more standard rx 580 not exactly earth-shattering star and it doesn't exactly bode well for the five 90s higher price tag then when compared to the msi gtx 1060 gaming x+ the XFX 590 was 8% faster on average at tourney p and we see that the new radeon GPU was slower in just four of the 21 games tested and those titles were the witcher 3 Ghost Recon wildlands World of Tanks and Assassin's Creed Odyssey the 590 enjoyed its biggest wins in dirt for battlefield 5 and vermintide 2 then when compared to Vega 56 the RX 5 9 it was 24% slower on average and given that it costs 38% less that actually bodes quite well for the new rx 590 in a cost per frame comparison and we will look at that data in a moment before we do though here's a quick look at how the 590 stacks up against the more expensive gtx 1070 here it was 19% slower on average so depending on the titles you play the gtx 1070 can be a significant upgrade or well not much of an upgrade at all now the last graph that we have to check out is the cost per frame breakdown coming in first place by a country mile as the RX 588 gigabyte models right now can be had for $200 u.s. which is a super purchase not that long ago gamers would have sacrificed a finger for a price like that on a mid-range graphics card the gtx 1060 right now is also down at the $250 MSRP though the 9 gigabits per second models are likely going to cost a little bit more but honestly that seems to be a gimmick for the most part we never saw much of a performance uplift over these standard models in any case the RX 580 cost 20% less per frame making it the obvious choice here the RX 590 is far less appealing at the 280 dollar MSRP that sees it come out at a cost of $4 per frame making it 32% more expensive on a cost per frame basis so that's really not much better than the 40% extra you can expect to pay in total as a hypothetical for 250 dollars the RX 590 should start to make sense but above that it's a pretty exciting product I'd much rather spend $100 more and get myself a gtx 1070 or a little bit more again and get a 1070 TI i can't work out what's disappointed me the most the MSRP of the RX 590 or the that XFX didn't name it super edition I guess they're both equally upsetting performance-wise the RX 590 was always going to be a bit lackluster I mean overclocking the RX 5/8 is really only going to get you so far the big issue here the real killer for this product at least for me is the 280 dollar US MSRP at that price it's my opinion that no one should really consider this product at all it's basically dead on arrival I'm just hoping this is a situation where AMD introduces the radio Erik's 590 at $280 u.s. and then before too long heavily acts as pricing down to $250 US or while I'm being wishful let's go a little bit lower but I think toy review dollars us is reasonable at least at that price it does match the gtx 1060 while offering superior performance and that should make it the obvious choice for budget gamers and i think at the very least AMD needs to well at least match in video on pricing the RX 590 might consume more power and while not ideal it makes up for that with a healthy ecosystem of affordable freesync monitors and an extra two gigabytes of vram its biggest problem right now as I said is the $200 RX 5 80s and the biggest problem the $200 RX 5 80s face is the 150 dollar RX 5 70s and appears as though AMD's am doing themselves I really am baffled by AMD on this one they've put together some flashy marketing slides claiming stuff like 12% faster versus rx 580 and while possible if you're comparing reference models it's not an accurate reflection of the real-world situation and we're still given this best-case scenario by their own numbers the RX 590 makes absolutely no sense awesome it's up to 12% faster for a guaranteed 22% increase in price when comparing MSRP s what a winner anyway the RX 590 it's certainly not a bad product it just comes at a really bad price in my opinion and I think it's safe to say that gamers have had more than enough of that this year new graphics card released in 2018 that have bad prices so it's become a boring theme and I'm hoping that we can make the theme of 2019 new graphics cards at really good prices get my fingers crossed for that one but I won't hold my breath anyway that is gonna do it for this one actually no sorry rewind quickly I do need to thank someone a big thank you to PC case gear for supplying our review sample that we have here so this is an actual retail cut was it handpicked by AMD or anything like that MD weren't able deliver one on time so with permission PC case gear came to the rescue and provided of this very card here so if you're a Z considering getting a new graphics card then please check out PC case key I will provide a link to their website in the video description and finally if you enjoyed this review then subscribe for more content if you haven't already if you appreciate the work with your our box then consider supporting us on patreon and remember you can find all the graphs for the 21 games tested at 30 pay and 1440p over on patreon page and it's free for anyone to look at so the link for that will be in the video description so if you're interested you can check that out anyway thank you for watching I'm your host Steve and I will see you again next time you
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