AMD’s latest card has been revealed. The Radeon RX 590 is the first AMD card produced using a 12nm process, allowing the card to reach significantly faster clock speeds than the 14nm RX 580. However, that does come at a cost – in the form of a 40W jump in power consumption and a higher price: $279 for the RX 590, versus $229 for the RX 580. In this preview, we’ll show you how the new RX 590 performs against its closest competitors ahead of our full DF review.
The RX 590 is intended to slot between the RX 580 and Vega 56 on AMD’s totem pole, thereby achieving strong 1080p performance with a little more headroom to play at max settings or chase high frame-rates without the extra cost and features of AMD’s Vega chips. We should also expect 1440p performance to be improved, although even the best RX 580 models only managed console-quality frame-rates in the most demanding titles. In terms of Nvidia’s GPU lineup, the RX 590 ought to offer faster performance than the GTX 1060 6GB without challenging the significantly more expensive GTX 1070.
AMD isn’t producing any own-brand ‘reference’ designs for the RX 590, so we will be testing a custom design made by one of their partners instead. AMD sent us the XFX Fatboy OC+ edition of the RX 590, an overclocked model that reaches a 1580MHz boost clock thanks to eleven-bladed 100mm fans and substantial thermal superstructure. The card also cuts out its fans at idle to ensure it remains quiet in day-to-day usage. This extra performance does require more power, and six-pin and eight-pin inputs are included here. In terms of I/O, we have three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, one HDMI 2.0 port and one DVI-D port.
Source: Eurogamer AMD Radeon RX 590 preview – refreshingly solid