Radeon RX 590 (PowerColor Red Devil) review - Introduction

PowerColor 'Red Devil' Radeon RX 590 8GB 
Another demonic spin on an aging GPU

It is time to tackle that new graphics card that AMD is releasing, the Radeon RX 590 is here and we'll be reviewing the Power Color Red Devil edition. What demonic GPU will sit underneath that hood, Polaris? Of course, it is, but let's talk about that more in detail in this review. The rumors have been ongoing for a long time now, and this release has been delayed quite a bit. None the less, AMD has announced a new graphics card series based on the Polaris (called Ellesmere these days) series, the RX 590 series is fitted with a graphics processor that has been shrunk down. I should say, they fabbed it at a 12nm FiNFET node. By doing so they have a slightly smaller die, likely can utilize a little less power but most of all, the new Polaris 30 offers a notch higher clock frequencies. So the essence and DNA of the new Radeon RX 590 series is 99.9% the same compared to the Radeon RX 480 and 580, it's just that the chip was fabbed with a smaller process node (which gives it a little more breathing space).

Polaris (also called Ellesmere these days) was first introduced with the Radeon RX 480, many of you will still own one as they are still going strong in the mainstream segment. To get you an idea on timespan, however, that product was released late June 2016. Followed by the 580, and now on 12nm the 590. AMD certainly has had a good run with Polaris, and admittedly it was really good the past two years. We're not too sure about the RX 590 release though as everybody that is in the red team, obviously already purchased a 400 or 500 series card. The end-users are not likely going to upgrade towards the 590.  

Today we look at the RX590 Red Devil from PowerColor. This triple-slot cooled mainstream to higher end (read the words well) graphics card series will allow you to play your games in both the Full HD 1080P range as well as gaming in WQHD (2560x1440) range. It pushes just over 7 TFLOPS of peak performance. Where the RX 580 hovers at a 180W TDP, the 590 will remain to sit at that level due to its higher clock-frequencies. The RX 590 still has the very same 36 CUs (compute units aka shader clusters) x 64 shader processors per CU = 2304 shader processors). PowerColor has clocked the GPU at a boost frequency of 1576 MHz. The memory partition reveals the very same 8GB tied towards 256-bit GDDR5 memory which offers an effective 8 Gbps data-rate. Overall looking at the specs prior to testing, the specs show a decent card that would play the latest games with whilst offering a good memory size versus price in the 1920x1080 and even 2560x1440 monitor resolutions. But with an estimated 10% increase in performance, will it be enough? But you know what at 279 USD we wanna find out? Also, let me state already that the 590 cards will ship with three free games, Devil May Cry 5, Division 2 and Resident Evil 2. Let's have a peek as to what PowerColor offers.

PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 590 with 8GB GDDR5 memory