AMD RX 580 8GB review: one of the best-value graphics cards you can jam into your gaming PC. What is rx 580

The first model on this list is from XFX, a US hardware manufacturer that only produces AMD cards, but also produces power supplies and a host of other accessories.

GeForce GTX 1060 vs Radeon RX 580: which is best for 1080p gaming?

While high-end graphics cards like the AMD Radeon 7 and RTX 2080 Ti make the lion’s share of newspaper headlines, most PC games still run in good old-fashioned 1080p. Here, you can spend as little as a few hundred dollars on a graphics card to get console-quality graphics at 60fps, even in some of the latest games. In today’s article, we’re focusing on the two best 1080p gaming graphics cards: AMD Radeon RX 580 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060.

These two main GPUs are often similar in price, but which one offers better performance? To find out, we’re going to show you how each of these cards performs in select popular games, including Ghost Recon Wildlands, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and The Witcher 3. While we’ll be focusing on 1080p quality, we’ll also take a look at how these cards perform with stretching up to 1440p. Before we get into the framerate graphs, let’s take a quick look at how these two popular cards differ in features and price. Let’s get started.

Thinking about upgrading your gaming PC? Check out our recommendations for the best graphics cards on the market. It’s also important to pair your graphics card with one of the best gaming monitors, so check out our newest picks!

While the benchmarks are helpful, they’re not the full story either. We will also discuss the card comparison in terms of software and hardware features, as well as the payment for each of the two cards. Let’s get started!

Sapphire Nitro AMD Radeon RX 580, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

Features of the GTX 1060 and RX 580

Before we get into our benchmarks, how do these cards compare in terms of features?

Well, they both support key technologies: DirectX 12 and Vulkan graphic interfaces, DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0b monitors, and 4K / HDR content. This means you’ll be able to play modern games and use the latest monitors without worrying about compatibility issues.

As a member of Nvidia’s Pascal generation, the GTX 1060 offers a nice selection of modern features, including support for G-Sync monitors, Ansel game shooting, Nvidia Shield streaming, ShadowPlay recording, and so on. Nvidia also recently added support for FreeSync monitors, allowing GTX 1060 owners to buy cheaper monitors without sacrificing a variable refresh rate – and if you’re interested, we’ve recommended the best FreeSync monitors for Nvidia GPUs.

Meanwhile, the RX 580 is part of the Polaris line of graphics cards that has since been superseded by AMD’s later Vega GPUs. However, Polaris still supports useful features such as FreeSync monitor support, AMD Link’s mobile monitoring app, multi-eyefinity games, and more.

Ultimately, it’s hard to pick a winner here, as most of the features that show up on one tab will appear on top of the other, often under a different name. Nvidia may have some technologies that AMD has yet to match, such as Ansel, but the FreeSync monitors supported by the RX 580 are much cheaper than the G-Sync alternatives supported by the GTX 1060 – so if you’re planning a new gaming monitor to match your new graphics card that should radically change the situation in favor of AMD.

Assassin’s Creed Unity

We’ll start with Assassin’s Creed Unity, which was released in 2014. The bustling streets of Paris are still a good test for most cards, and the results are quite similar. The GTX 1060 seems to be a bit more stable here, with less FPS variation and better fifth percentile results, although the RX 580 averages better at both tested resolutions.

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Thanks to virtual reality, you have exceeded the minimum requirements people expect by far, and you should enjoy over 90 frames per second in all VR games except the most intense. However, even when encountering these issues, you can use SteamVR’s Resolution Scaling feature to lower the resolution a bit to maintain an acceptable level of performance.

AMD RX 580 specs

Improved polarity. This is what AMD called the updated 500 series of graphics cards, but it was never expected to encourage the upgrade of anyone who spent money on a last-gen Polaris card. Despite naming the GPUs at the heart of both the new RX 580 and RX 570 Polaris 20, it’s still the same 14nm Polaris 10 chip they used, with great effect, on the RX 480 and RX 470 cards.

The “improved” bit is due to the fact that 12 months after the first Polaris release, both the 14nm FinFET technology and the fourth-generation GCN architecture used in the latest AMD Radeon cards had a full year to mature. This means that the production process and performance improved and the resulting GPUs were more rugged.

AMD RX 590	AMD RX 580	Nvidia GTX 1060
Production process	12nm	14nm	16nm
Matrix size	232mm 2	232mm 2	200mm 2
Stream processors	2304	2304	1280
Texture units	144	144	80
RPO	32	32	48
Memory size	8 GB of GDDR5 memory	8 GB of GDDR5 memory	6 GB of GDDR5 memory
Memory bus	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit
TDP	225W	185W	120W
Price	$ 279 | 250	210 dollars | £ 195	pLN 250 | £ 220

This is the main reason AMD was able to release the RX 580 cards with a higher base clock speed than the reference RX 480 cards at launch. The original RX 480’s base / boost clocks were 1120 MHz and 1266 MHz, respectively, while the reference Polaris 20 chip specification on the RX 580 is set at 1257 MHz and 1340 MHz. With the general tightening of the GPU manufacturing process, AMD can ship cards, basically using the peak performance of the previous chip as a starting point to work.

Although if you were counting on the same CPU of 40,2560 cores, Polaris GPU, Microsoft shipped with the Xbox One X with an AMD CPU, you’d be disappointed. Aside from the reference speed jump, the RX 580 is the same GPU beast as the RX 480. The core configuration is identical – the 14nm Polaris 20 in the new card still has 36 Compute Units (CUs) with 2304 stream processors of them. In addition to that, there are the same 144 texture units and 32 ROPs.

The memory system is the same, with 8GB of GDDR5 memory for a full 256GB / s memory bandwidth. Like the 400 series cards, there are 4GB and 8GB versions of the RX 580, as well as the RX 570.

It seems like all that really changed then, setting aside the increase in clock speed, is the fact that the new RX 580 cards have a higher TDP to allow the increase in clock frequency with which the new designs are shipped. The above clock rates are only suggested reference design specs, but the fact that AMD never made any reference samples of the new cards indicated their refresh / rebadge status as well as that most RX 580 cards would be roads, factory tweaked even if prices didn’t were artificially stimulated by the voracious mining community.

AMD RX 580 performance

The RX 580 is just a little behind the newer RX 590 in terms of overall gaming performance, and generally only a few frames per second in between. This is a bit of a surprise given the much higher clock rates offered by the updated 12nm cards.

It’s not a crucial battleground for the RX 580, though. How the Nvidia GTX 1060 handles is where the real fight goes, and that’s a lot more interesting. Overall, the AMD Graphics Core Next architecture has an edge in terms of overall gaming performance. There are a few cases where the Nvidia GPU has the upper hand, but that only happens with last-gen DirectX 11 games. In more modern APIs, and DirectX 12 in particular, AMD’s silicon has a bit with a GeForce card.

When you take a step up in gaming resolution, AMD’s improved memory subsystem comes to the fore. With another 2GB of GDDR5 memory and a wider 256-bit memory bus, the RX 580 8GB version is better at dealing with the rigors of high-resolution textures and an additional overall pixel count.

That doesn’t mean the GTX 1060 still isn’t a great product at this end of the market, it certainly is, but when performance is so close, price becomes even more important. And while the RX 580 just has an overall gaming FPS and price advantage, it doesn’t look good for a GeForce card.

The Nvidia GPU, however, has a significant advantage in the classic GeForce performance. Back in Maxwell’s time, Nvidia played for performance when it was unable to shrink the silicon die, and this move still pays off. The GTX 1060, in addition to its reference, cooler design, often runs cooler than the RX 580, but it definitely draws much less power to play at almost the same level.

there is a bit more competition in the mass market today as AMD launches its “new” RX 590 graphics card. This is only a moderate 12nm shrinkage of the Polaris GPU at the heart of the old RX 580, but it’s also a current reminder that major cards AMD graphics are currently the best choice when it comes to gaming performance at a great price.

Factors To Consider While Buying RX 580

Purchasing the best RX 580 graphics card may seem simple enough, but purchasing the RX 580 variant that perfectly complements your particular version is a different ordeal. Overall, as with any other purchase, there are certain factors to consider when deciding which graphics card to purchase, and the RX 580 is no exception. Here are a few things you should definitely keep in mind when purchasing a graphics card in 2021.

Thermal Management

When we talk about managing the temperature of your graphics card, the overall premise is really simple. The card’s heat sink assembly must be able to dissipate the heat generated by the GPU and related components such as memory modules and VRM components etc. A graphics card that is unable to cope with the amount of heat it generates will eventually overheat, leading to severe throttling in modern graphics processors, a process that can significantly degrade performance. That is why it is so important to identify the different types of cooling solutions implemented in the many variants available on the market for each card and to investigate their advantages and disadvantages in terms of performance.

Acoustic Performance

Just as important as the cooling performance of a card is its acoustic performance, which simply relates to the level of noise the card produces under a certain load level. Understandably, the desired result in this category is a lower noise level, and many variants of graphics cards on the market do not do this in a spectacular way. Achieving lower noise levels while keeping the temperature within a comfortable range is the perfect blend of performance and acoustics to consider when deciding to purchase a graphics card. Understandably, this means the variant’s price will increase as you move to the low noise, low temperature option.

Moreover, understanding the card’s TGP, TBP, and TDP is important, but not as important as the thermal and acoustic performance you expect from the card after purchase. Hence, it is considered an ideal practice by the enthusiast community to thoroughly research the various graphics card variants that can be purchased from many AIB motherboard partners. It will only be possible to make an informed purchasing decision if the potential buyer is fully aware of all the potential pitfalls that may happen to him during the process.

The brands we recommend you look out for (in alphabetical order) are Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, and Zotac. Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list of manufacturers you should trust, and other brands can make great cards as well.

Power consumption

Here’s where we come to the proverbial fly in the ointment: RX 580’s power consumption. While the GPU is measurably faster than anything AMD has released before, its power consumption is significantly higher. As part of this review, we re-tested all of the GPUs below as we compared the Core i7-5960X to the Core i7-6900K in our testing. All measurements were made on the wall during the third Metro Last Light Redux test (very fine detail, SSAA on).

Uf. The AMD RX 580 may be roughly 10% faster than the old RX 480, but it pays for those clock gains big time. Increasing the GPU clock speed by 1.13 times increases the power consumption by 1.3 times compared to the RX 480. What about energy efficiency, measured as the number of watts of power needed for each animation frame?

This slide has a different color to identify AMD and NV cards.

Watts per frame rates are no better. The Nvidia GTX 1060 uses 64% of electricity per frame of animation than the RX 580. No AMD GPU currently matches the Nvidia cards in terms of energy efficiency, but the RX 580 uses 1.18 times more watts per frame of rendered animation than the RX 480. AMD could achieve higher clock speed with the retuned version of RX 480, give away most of its power consumption improvements to do so. The RX 580 is still more energy efficient than the R9 390, but the difference between the two GPUs has narrowed significantly and not in a positive way.

The RX 580 proves beyond doubt that the GCN architecture in various incarnations from 1.0 to 1.4 is used. Polaris got a kick out of the new process node and better clock scaling, but AMD runs into the same problem it had with GCN at 28nm: this GPU is not designed to achieve high clock rates, and it can’t do it without messing about improving power consumption which the RX 480 delivered almost a year ago.

What about price?

The theoretically tested Gigabyte RX 580 Aorus OC will be priced at $ 259. The standard RX 580 Aorus (without OC) costs $ 229, the RX 580 Gaming 8GB is $ 219, and the RX 580 Aorus 4GB is $ 199. For $ 20, it’s worth paying the difference between 4GB and 8GB of RAM, but we are making no price statements today and our conclusions do not take into account the price.

Our reason is simple: last year, Nvidia and AMD jointly launched a farcical product refresh cycle, in which the hardware hit the reviewers literally months before it could be bought at a price close to the suggested retail price, if it could be at all to buy. We didn’t hit the GTX 1080 Ti in this regard as AMD has nothing to compete with and it’s a halo product with a limited customer base. However, in areas where GPU companies are competitive, we are holding any price comparisons on launch until GPUs are confirmed in the market at a price close to what both AMD and Nvidia should be selling. If AMD and Nvidia find it unpleasant, we invite you to place the products on store shelves on the day of release,and then consistently.

But even if you’re happy with your plain old FHD, we still recommend the 8GB variant if you can afford it, as you’ll get a more future-proof card.

The Best RX 580 For 2022 – Our Picks

Finally, if we were to pick our favorites, we would choose the following cards:

The XFX GTS XXX Edition RX 580 as a budget solution as it is currently available at a very low price, making it a very attractive choice if you are trying to fit the RX 580 into your budget.

However, our favorite is the Sapphire Nitro + RX 580 for many reasons: it looks great, offers great performance, is affordable and comes from a reputable and reliable manufacturer.

For those who are more performance minded and want to invest a little more, the Asus RoG Strix RX 580 is by far the best choice as it has excellent cooling with three fans that allows it to achieve higher clock rates. It even has better RGB lighting as an added bonus.

We conclude our benchmark tour with one of the most popular RPGs in the latest memory, The Witcher 3. Here we see our final victory for AMD as the RX 580 manages to outperform the Nvidia GTX 1060 in the benchmark at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions.

How Will These Cards Perform?

XFX RX 580 GTS Black Edition

ASUS ROG STRIX RX 580

MSI Gaming RADEON RX 580 8GB

XFX GTS XXX Edition RX 580 4GB

PowerColor RED Dragon RX 580

In-depth Review

XFX RX 580 GTS Black Edition

The best factory overclock

Strong radiator configuration

No extra features no dual BIOS

The XFX is one of the leading manufacturers of Radeon graphics cards, and their 580 GTS Black Edition effectively shows why. Offering a sleek black cooler dual-fan design, the XFX 580 won’t look out of place on any high-end gaming PC. The addition of Dual BIOS functionality makes it not only suitable for gaming, but also…

.. yes, we are talking about cryptocurrency mining. Thanks to the ability to toggle the BIOS with a flick of a switch, you can switch your card between Game Mode and Mining Mode without thinking. If you want a high-end gaming experience but don’t always play games, GPU mining is a great way to use your graphics card outside of your gaming hours.

That being said, mining cryptocurrencies isn’t as profitable as it used to be. Think of it as an added benefit in this case, not a point of sale.

ASUS ROG STRIX RX 580

The best cooling of the RX 580s

The second-best RX 580s performance

RGB lighting and many other functions

More expensive than other options

The largest cards will be difficult to fit into smaller cases

ROG Strix is ​​the most feature-packed of these GPUs, with a substantial margin and a higher price to match.

First, let’s remove this part: cooler. ROG STRIX offers virtually the best cooling in the industry. Some of this can certainly be explained by ASUS ‘excellent, efficient cooling design .. but most of it is probably the massive cooler size itself, boasting three fans and a massive heatsink. With such a large cooler, there is no way that the card does not have good cooling.

In addition to the best cooling in the RX 580, the Asus ROG STRIX offers many other great features. For example, its factory overclocking is actually the second-highest on this list, meaning it should work close to our previous option. In fact, once you add user overclock to the equation, you may be able to increase performance in this setup than with any other, thanks to a larger anti-overheating cooler.

What’s more, you also get RGB lighting and quieter operation thanks to lower temperatures… until you start overclocking or pushing the GPU to the limit.

The main disadvantages of this card are in its price, which is higher than the usual 580, and in its size. You’ll need a decent case to accommodate this, so make sure your suitcase has what it takes before making a decision.

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AMD RX 550 price and availability

the 550 is new and does not replace anything in the RX 400 series. It is an entry-level graphics card that comes in a small footprint to fit in smaller computers, including home theater systems.

It will go on sale on April 20 and start at £ 79.99.

It is aimed at those who still use integrated graphics and is about four times faster than Intel’s current chip and 70 percent faster than the Radeon R7 250.

It does not require an additional power supply, so it will not require a power supply upgrade.

AMD RX 580, 570, 560 & 550 specifications

Here is a table summarizing the price and specification of the new cards. Remember that these are standard specs – partners will immediately offer overclocked versions that will have faster cores and boost speeds.

Power consumption

Radeon Chill is new to the cards from the 500 series. It is designed to reduce energy consumption by reducing the number of frames per second in game scenes where there is not much movement on the screen.

So if you’ve been running or fighting and then getting somewhere and standing still, the algorithm will lower the FPS to save energy. As soon as you start moving again, the frame rate is increased again to keep the experience smooth.

Chill also prevents games running at very high FPS that waste energy with no benefit to the player. The point is, you’ll never notice Chill doing anything: you should see the gameplay smoothly no matter what you do, but overall power consumption should be lower and fans may run quieter.

Not all games support this, but there are several big titles that support it, including Dota 2, WoW, Team Fortress 2, CS: GO, League of Legends, Overwatch, and more.

You will need to enable Chill in the Radeon Settings app as it is not enabled by default.

There is also another energy saving feature. All 500 series cards have a third power state in addition to idle and maximum. This turns on when a second display is connected and means the cards are drawing less power in dual screen idle mode.

Form factors

Unlike the RX 400 series, AMD does not intend to manufacture its own RX 500 boards. Instead, it has worked with Asus, MSI, Sapphire and other partners to help them build overclocked cards and various forms.

So you have a wider choice of cards, including smaller ones that should fit smaller PC cases, which doesn’t have room for a traditional 10-inch graphics card that also takes up two PCIe slots.

If you’re planning to upgrade your graphics card, check out our list of the best graphics cards and buying advice.

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