Radeon RX 590 (PowerColor Red Devil) review - Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

What are we going to do with the RX 590 and what market relevance does this GPU still have? These are the two questions that came to mind when the first card arrived. I find it a somewhat difficult to position product. At least AMD didn't name it RX 680. When push comes to shuffle, this is a year 2016 GPU placed on a smaller die fabbed at the 12nm node. That brings in more leeway in terms of performance as the product can clock higher. Your power consumption would normally be lower with a smaller fabrication process (lower voltage required), however, by pushing the GPU to the max by boosting the clock frequency, that benefits dissipate into thin air. Most games will offer 5 maybe 10% performance increases with the refresh GPU, some less. Considering this is a 2016 refresh GPU, the user base will already have purchased a 480/580 in the past two-year update cycle. For them, this product has not much relevance. And therein lies my answer towards the initial two questions. It however remains to be very solid performer in the 1080p and even QHD resolutions.

Performance

The Radeon RX 590 is a notch faster compared to the 580, but really a bit all over the place depending on game title; fast in fill-rate limited games, a little less with GPU stringent ones. Overall you are looking at a product that still competes with the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and 1060 really well. So in the year 2018, any RX 580 or 590 8GB is still a valid choice for 1080p and even 1440p gaming.

Pricing

The price level. The Radeon RX 590 will sit in a 279 USD price range. That will vary a bit based on AIB SKUs and model of course, but the reality is that you can purchase the Radeon RX 580 quite a lot cheaper. If you do a quick search for an 8GB model, you can spot them at 209 EUR / USD. With this in mind, I expect the RX 590 to drop in value fast though. 

Cooling and acoustic levels

We had a BIOS issue with the Red Devil where the fans kicked in way too hefty. It was a noisy pos, there's no other wording for it. I'll leave it at that as we're sure PowerColor is going to fix that. With that said we cannot say anything solid on temperatures as well. If PowerColor changes fan RPM, the temps are likely to go up.

Power Consumption 

We rate the RX 590 at roughly a 200~225 Watts TDP measured under full gaming load. That definitely is on the high side. The cooler being wrongly configured might draw 10 watts alone though. We also expect the number will vary a bit depending on the clock state (throttle) but also if you overclock the product you'll pass that value with a decent amount. Keep in mind that this figure is indicative as some games utilize a bit more, others a little less. 

Overclocking

The RX 590 from PowerColor has been pushed hard already however likely you can boost another 100 MHz out of it, and combined with a bit of a memory tweak it really does well. 1650 MHz is nice, and with an increase boost limiter, it does not throttle (at the cost of more power draw though). Memory wise we expect it can reach 9.0 Gbps on the 8GB memory.

Final Words

As you can see I am struggling with the Radeon RX 590 a bit, and that is mostly due to product positioning and pricing. It is more of the same that we have been testing well over two years now. However yes, performance did go up a notch, and yes the card still works very sufficiently in Full HD and Quad HD resolutions and triple yes, it tweaks nicely. The technology, however, is getting dated? In my believe for the RX 590 to be a success pricing needs to be great, AMD rates this as a 279 USD product. Try to imagine what would have happened if AMD kicked back in its value prospect. If this was a 199 ~ 219 USD card, it would have been a Christmas smash hit under that Christmas tree. Relevance wise, hey the product is faster than a GTX 1060 overall, and NVIDIA is charging you 250 bucks for that and remember, you do receive three free games, Devil May Cry 5, Division 2 and Resident Evil 2. In closing, Polaris remains to be a sound architecture for today's game titles. Strictly speaking from pure shader engine performance it's still a product that performs very decent in 1080p and well enough in 1440p. If you have not upgraded in the past 3 years, hey it might be the product you are looking for. But take a bit of an advice, check out the Radeon RX 580 8GB and it's pricing, as that looks to be the better deal - it can save you some good money.

Recommended  Downloads

• MSI AfterBurner
• 3DMark FireStrike + Time Spy
• Download AMD Radeon drivers
• Download GeForce drivers

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