Radeon RX 590 (XFX Fatboy) review - Architecture and Specifications

The Reference Design

AMD traditionally has been respinning their GPUs quite a bit. It was 14nm FinFET+ Polaris 20 being fabbed at Samsung and Global Foundries’ 14nm FinFET-based process technology, the Polaris 30 is 12nm FinFET. FinFET transistors are crucial to reducing power consumption and enabling operating voltages that are 150mV lower than the previous generation, thereby cutting active power by 30% from a 1V baseline.

Radeon RX 480, 580 and 590 are 100% similar in terms of architecture.

 
For the last five years, graphics processors have relied on 28nm high-k/metal nodes. We have moved towards 3rd gen 14nm FinFET and now 12nm FinFET. Basically, the Polaris GPU is based on 36 shader clusters with 64 shader processors each. So that makes a nice 2304 shader processors in total. For the RX 570, however, there are 32 out of the 36 Cus enabled, boiling down to 2048 Shader processors whereas the RX 580 has 2304. These shader partitions are tied to 32 ROPs. TMUs wise for a fully enabled unit AMD has always used a 4:1 ratio meaning 36 CUs x 4 = 144 texture units, which is a good number. Memory sits on a 256-bit wide bus spread over the 64-bit controllers. Polaris runs its memory reference at 7000 MHz for the 4GB models and 8000 MHz for the 8 GB model.  

Radeon	RX590	RX 580	RX 480	RX 570	RX 470	RX 460
Fabrication Process	12 nm	14 nm	14 nm	14 nm	14 nm	14 nm
GPU	Polaris 30 XTX	Polaris 20 XTX	Polaris 10	Polaris 20 Pro	Polaris 10	Polaris 11/Baffin
Shader procs	2,304	2,304	2,304	2,048	2,048	896
Graphics memory	8 GB GDDR5	4 GB / 8 GB GDDR5	4 GB / 8 GB GDDR5	4 GB / 8 GB GDDR5	4 GB / 8 GB GDDR5	2 GB / 4 GB GDDR5
Memory Clock	8.0 Gbps	8.0 Gbps	7.0 / 8.0 Gbps	7.0 Gbps	6.6 Gbps	7.0 Gbps
GPU Clock Max	1,545 MHz	1,340 MHz	1,267 MHz	1,244 MHz	1,206 MHz	1,200 MHz
Memory Bandwidth	256 GB/s (8 GB)	224 GB/s (4 GB) 256 GB/s (8 GB)	224 GB/s (4 GB) 256 GB/s (8 GB)	224 GB/s	211 GB/s	112 GB/s
Power Connectors	2 x 6/8-pin	1 x 6-pin	1 x 6-pin	1 x 6-pin	1 x 6-pin	NA or 1 x 6-pin
Form Factor	Dual slot	Dual slot	Dual slot	Dual slot	Dual slot	Dual slot
Freesync	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
DirectX 12 Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

 

With the introduction of series 500, AMD will launch four lines of series 500 products:

• AMD Radeon RX 590 8GB with 2,304 shader processors - GDDR5 at 256-bit.
• AMD Radeon RX 580 4GB and 8GB with 2,304 shader processors - GDDR5 at 256-bit.
• AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB and 8GB with 2,048 shader processors - GDDR5 at 256-bit.
• AMD Radeon RX 560 4GB with 1024 shader processors / GDDR5 - GDDR5 at 128-bit.
• AMD Radeon RX 550 2GB with 512 shader processors / GDDR5 - GDDR5 at 128-bit.

AMD Radeon	RX 590	RX 580	RX 570	RX 560	RX550	R9 390X
Graphics Core	Polaris 30 XTX	Polaris 20 XTX	Polaris 20 Pro	Polaris	Polaris	Grenada
Fabrication Process	12 nm FinFET	14 nm FinFET	14 nm FinFET	14 nm FinFET	14 nm FinFET	28 nm
Single Precision	7.1 TFLOPs	6.1 TFLOPs	5.1 TFLOPs	~2 TFLOPs	3.48 TFLOPS	5.9 TFLOPS
Memory	8 GB GDDR5	4/8 GB GDDR5	4/8 GB GDDR5	2/4 GB GDDR5	2/4 GB GDDR5	8 GB GDDR5
Clock Frequency Base / Boost	1,469 MHz 1,545 MHz	1,257 MHz 1,340 MHz	1,168 MHz 1,244 MHz	1,175 MHz 1,275	1183 MHz	1,050 MHz
Compute Units	36	36	32	14	8	44
Shader Processors	2304	2304	2048	1024	512	2816
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	128-bit	128-bit	512-bit
ROPs	32	32	32	16	8	64
TMUs	144	144	128	56	32	176
Memory Speed Effective	8 Gbps	8 Gbps	7 Gbps	7 Gbps	TBA	6.0 Gbps
Memory Bandwidth	256 GB/s	256 GB/s	211 GB/s	112 GB/s	TBA	384 GB/s
TDP	185 W	185 W	150 W	75 W	TBA	275 W
MSRP	$279 (8 GB)	$199 (4 GB) $229 (8 GB)	$149 (4 GB) $179 (8 GB)	$99 (2 GB) $119 (4 GB)	$199	$399

As you can observe, the GPU architecture has remained similar and is comparable to the last-generation products, hence the die-shrink at 12nm is where the biggest advantages are to be found as well as supporting more features in line with HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.4. As you can see, it's a lot the same but a bit faster. This RX 590 series release is aimed at people who haven't updated in say a year or two.