Value and Conclusion
- The Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition is expected to retail for $279.
- Faster than the GTX 1060 6 GB
- Plays everything at 1080p
- Very quiet in gaming (with quiet BIOS)
- Overclocked out of the box
- Memory overclocked, too (default BIOS)
- Fans stop in idle
- Dual BIOS
- Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 2, and The Division 2 included ($100+ value)
- Backplate included
- Very high power consumption
- High multi-monitor power consumption
- Limited overclocking potential
- Memory overclocking limited by Wattman limits
Buy Sapphire Radeon NITRO+ RX 590 8GB GDDR5 PCI-E Dual HDMI / DVI-D / Dual DP OC Video Card w/ Backplate AMD 50TH EDITION (UEFI), 11289-07-20G with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Newegg shopping upgraded ™. What is the difference between Gigabyte Radeon RX 590 Gaming and Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 Special Edition? Find out which is better and their overall performance in the graphics card ranking.
AMD's Radeon RX 590 comes at the right time to make a splash for X-mas business. The new card is based on the same Polaris architecture we saw two years ago on the RX 480, but uses a new 12 nanometer process at GlobalFoundries. Besides the production process, everything is identical on the RX 590. The number of shaders, ROPs, texture units, etc., is identical to what we saw with the Radeon RX 480. Software features are also unchanged, but at this time, there is no pressing need to address these. It seems AMD simply leveraged the new 12 nanometer process to reach higher clock speeds on their RX 590 with the minimum in time and money invested, which actually makes sense. The switch to the new 12 nm node lowers power draw, which conversely increases GPU-clock headroom. AMD cashed this headroom in to increase clock speeds by 15% over the RX 580.
The Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ is significantly faster than the GTX 1060, by 11% when averaged over all our testing at 1080p. The performance improvement over RX 580 is 12%, which is better than expected. This means that NVIDIA's next-fastest SKU, the GTX 1070, is only 20% ahead, and RX Vega 56 (AMD's next fastest card) is 25% faster. The additional 10% in extra gaming performance over the RX 580 will come in handy when it comes to driving the latest titles at 1080p. Compared to what was needed two years ago, games do have (a bit) higher hardware requirements these days.
Power consumption of the RX 590 is comparable to the Radeon RX 580—so no improvements here. The Sapphire Nitro+ is a good bit more energy efficient than the XFX Fatboy we reviewed today, too. As for AMD's side, it looks like all the improvements from the 12 nanometer process went into reaching higher clocks instead of reducing power consumption. This is a reasonable approach since in this segment, performance is very important, and beating the GTX 1060 is a must to make the RX 590 a success. When looking at performance per watt, the RX 590 ends up as one of the worst cards in our test group. NVIDIA's GTX 1060 is 60%-80% more power efficient, and their RTX cards have more than twice the performance per watt. What's also a bit sad to see is that AMD still hasn't worked on reducing multi-monitor power consumption, an issue that has been around for many years.
Sapphire's dual-slot cooler works much better than the heatsink on the XFX RX 590 Fatboy. Temperatures reach only 75°C, which is quite good given the heat output of the RX 590 GPU. What's even more impressive is how quiet the fans are at the same time. The default BIOS achieved 31 dBA, which is already very quiet. It gets even better, though. Since the card has dual BIOS, Sapphire chose to make the second BIOS a 'quiet' BIOS. This BIOS runs at an impressive 29 dBA, which is as quiet as the quietest GTX 1060 cards we tested—amazing. It's great to see that idle-fan-stop is included, too, so you can enjoy a noise-free graphics card when you're not gaming.
Priced at $279, the Sapphire RX 590 Nitro+ follows AMD's RX 590 MSRP and doesn't come with a price premium. I have to say that's very reasonable pricing, but rival NVIDIA has reacted preemptively and their prices for all cards below GTX 1080 Ti have been reduced by $10-$25. For example, the GTX 1060 6 GB was $260 and is now $230, and the GTX 1070 was $390 and is now down to $360. This puts a lot of pressure on AMD. Additional pressure comes from AMD's own RX 570 and RX 580, which are now priced at $150 and $200 respectively, while the RX Vega 56 can be had for $360. It looks like we're finally back to normal GPU prices from the horrors of the crypto-mining boom. At $280, the RX 590 is a good buy, but it could be priced cheaper—something like $250 would lure in a lot of potential buyers from the green camp because at that price point, the extra performance and lower price would make it easy to overlook the RX 590's higher power draw. With the RX 590, AMD is including three AAA games, including DMC 5 and Resident Evil 2, which is a straight $100+ value. Personally, I'd keep those games because they haven't been released yet and I'd like to check them out. If you're not all that interested, you could resell them to offset some of this card's cost.
The Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ is significantly faster than the GTX 1060, by 11% when averaged over all our testing at 1080p. The performance improvement over RX 580 is 12%, which is better than expected. This means that NVIDIA's next-fastest SKU, the GTX 1070, is only 20% ahead, and RX Vega 56 (AMD's next fastest card) is 25% faster. The additional 10% in extra gaming performance over the RX 580 will come in handy when it comes to driving the latest titles at 1080p. Compared to what was needed two years ago, games do have (a bit) higher hardware requirements these days.
Power consumption of the RX 590 is comparable to the Radeon RX 580—so no improvements here. The Sapphire Nitro+ is a good bit more energy efficient than the XFX Fatboy we reviewed today, too. As for AMD's side, it looks like all the improvements from the 12 nanometer process went into reaching higher clocks instead of reducing power consumption. This is a reasonable approach since in this segment, performance is very important, and beating the GTX 1060 is a must to make the RX 590 a success. When looking at performance per watt, the RX 590 ends up as one of the worst cards in our test group. NVIDIA's GTX 1060 is 60%-80% more power efficient, and their RTX cards have more than twice the performance per watt. What's also a bit sad to see is that AMD still hasn't worked on reducing multi-monitor power consumption, an issue that has been around for many years.
Sapphire's dual-slot cooler works much better than the heatsink on the XFX RX 590 Fatboy. Temperatures reach only 75°C, which is quite good given the heat output of the RX 590 GPU. What's even more impressive is how quiet the fans are at the same time. The default BIOS achieved 31 dBA, which is already very quiet. It gets even better, though. Since the card has dual BIOS, Sapphire chose to make the second BIOS a 'quiet' BIOS. This BIOS runs at an impressive 29 dBA, which is as quiet as the quietest GTX 1060 cards we tested—amazing. It's great to see that idle-fan-stop is included, too, so you can enjoy a noise-free graphics card when you're not gaming.
Priced at $279, the Sapphire RX 590 Nitro+ follows AMD's RX 590 MSRP and doesn't come with a price premium. I have to say that's very reasonable pricing, but rival NVIDIA has reacted preemptively and their prices for all cards below GTX 1080 Ti have been reduced by $10-$25. For example, the GTX 1060 6 GB was $260 and is now $230, and the GTX 1070 was $390 and is now down to $360. This puts a lot of pressure on AMD. Additional pressure comes from AMD's own RX 570 and RX 580, which are now priced at $150 and $200 respectively, while the RX Vega 56 can be had for $360. It looks like we're finally back to normal GPU prices from the horrors of the crypto-mining boom. At $280, the RX 590 is a good buy, but it could be priced cheaper—something like $250 would lure in a lot of potential buyers from the green camp because at that price point, the extra performance and lower price would make it easy to overlook the RX 590's higher power draw. With the RX 590, AMD is including three AAA games, including DMC 5 and Resident Evil 2, which is a straight $100+ value. Personally, I'd keep those games because they haven't been released yet and I'd like to check them out. If you're not all that interested, you could resell them to offset some of this card's cost.
Introduction
AMD today announced its Radeon RX 590 graphics card. This is an unexpected product launch given the current competitive environment, and nobody expected something new from AMD until 2019. The Radeon RX 590 is designed for the vast majority of PC gamers who still play at Full HD (1080p) resolution and is priced under $300. With a number of AAA game launches lined up for the holiday, AMD is going after the crowd that's either upgrading or gifting a graphics card for gameplay at 1080p with all details maxed out in every game. Rival NVIDIA hasn't managed to address this segment with its RTX 'Turing' architecture yet, and there is a big price-performance gap between its 'Pascal' GeForce GTX 1060 and $360 GTX 1070, which AMD is targeting with the RX 590.
The Radeon RX 590 packs none of the exotic HBM tech from its RX Vega siblings and uses existing GDDR5 memory, which has AMD and its partners enjoy more headroom in which to adjust prices. It is based on the 'Polaris 30' silicon, which is essentially a 'Polaris 10' die built on the latest 12 nm FinFET node at GlobalFoundries, yielding significant energy-efficiency dividends AMD is cashing in on to increase clock speeds by 15 percent. The engine clock has been dialed up to 1545 MHz, compared to the 1340 MHz of the RX 580.
Unlike the RX 580, the new RX 590 only comes with 8 GB of video memory (no 4 GB variant), and the card's memory setup is unchanged: 8 Gbps GDDR5 over a 256-bit wide memory interface, which yields 256 GB/s of bandwidth. The 'Polaris 30' silicon features the same core-configuration as its predecessors, with 2,304 stream processors spread across 36 compute units, 144 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. There's still no ray-tracing machinery to rival RTX, or other new features.
In this review, we're taking a look at the Sapphire Radeon RX 590 NITRO+ Special Edition. Thanks to the pin-compatibility between Polaris 30 and its older siblings, Sapphire is reusing the PCB and cooler design from its RX 580 NITRO+ Special Edition. The card draws power from an 8-pin and a 6-pin PCIe power connector. There's also a factory-overclock on tap, which has the card running at 1560 MHz out of the box. Memory is overclocked to 8.40 Gbps. The card offers dual BIOS, and while the main BIOS packs the advertised speeds, a second 'Silent' BIOS runs it at lower clock speeds, which triggers the existing fan-curve less, resulting in a generally quieter card.
Price | Shader Units | ROPs | Core Clock | Boost Clock | Memory Clock | GPU | Transistors | Memory | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
RX 470 | $165 | 2048 | 32 | 932 MHz | 1216 MHz | 1650 MHz | Ellesmere | 5700M | 4 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit |
RX 570 | $150 | 2048 | 32 | 1168 MHz | 1244 MHz | 1750 MHz | Ellesmere | 5700M | 4 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit |
GTX 970 | $235 | 1664 | 56 | 1051 MHz | 1178 MHz | 1750 MHz | GM204 | 5200M | 4 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit |
RX 480 | $230 | 2304 | 32 | 1120 MHz | 1266 MHz | 2000 MHz | Ellesmere | 5700M | 8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit |
RX 580 | $200 | 2304 | 32 | 1257 MHz | 1340 MHz | 2000 MHz | Ellesmere | 5700M | 8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit |
RX 590 | $280 | 2304 | 32 | 1469 MHz | 1545 MHz | 2000 MHz | Polaris 30 | 5700M | 8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit |
Sapphire RX 590 Nitro+ | $280 | 2304 | 32 | 1469 MHz | 1560 MHz | 2000 MHz | Polaris 30 | 5700M | 8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit |
GTX 1060 3 GB | $200 | 1152 | 48 | 1506 MHz | 1708 MHz | 2002 MHz | GP106 | 4400M | 3 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit |
GTX 1060 | $230 | 1280 | 48 | 1506 MHz | 1708 MHz | 2002 MHz | GP106 | 4400M | 6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit |
GTX 980 Ti | $390 | 2816 | 96 | 1000 MHz | 1075 MHz | 1750 MHz | GM200 | 8000M | 6 GB, GDDR5, 384-bit |
R9 Fury X | $380 | 4096 | 64 | 1050 MHz | N/A | 500 MHz | Fiji | 8900M | 4 GB, HBM, 4096-bit |
GTX 1070 | $360 | 1920 | 64 | 1506 MHz | 1683 MHz | 2002 MHz | GP104 | 7200M | 8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit |
RX Vega 56 | $350 | 3584 | 64 | 1156 MHz | 1471 MHz | 800 MHz | Vega 10 | 12500M | 8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit |
GTX 1070 Ti | $380 | 2432 | 64 | 1607 MHz | 1683 MHz | 2000 MHz | GP104 | 7200M | 8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit |