XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy OC+ Video Card Review @ [H]

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XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy OC+ Video Card Review

AMD is launching the new Radeon RX 590 GPU today, and we have a custom XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy OC+ video card to evaluate. With a high factory overclock, and potential for overclocking, we will compare this video card with the EVGA GTX 1060 SSC overclocked and test at 1080p and 1440p gaming.

If you like our content, please support HardOCP on Patreon.

UPDATE: Performance and Quiet Mode Switch Position - Bottom of page 14 - Seems that cards were shipped with "Quiet Mode" turned on, even though Performance Mode was indicated. No changes in our clocks or performance in our review, as we have verified today. However, if you are buying this card and running it in a hot case, you will likely want to pay attention to this.

UPDATE 2: We have confirmation from XFX that "Quiet" mode is the correct default shipping BIOS mode on this video card. That position is with the switch closest to the power-connectors, as ours was in our testing. - https://hardforum.com/threads/xfx-r...-card-review-h.1971704/page-4#post-1043941017

UPDATE 3: We have updated follow-up power testing on RX 590 clocked to same clock speed as RX 480 posted in this thread right here - https://hardforum.com/threads/xfx-r...-card-review-h.1971704/page-4#post-1043941390
 
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thanks for the review, obvious 12nm allowed them to hit higher clocks which is nice, although it did not seem to help reduce power usage in the process. Maybe this will mean current 580s and 570s will drop to or below MSRP especially after how long they have been out?
 
dragonstongue said:
thanks for the review, obvious 12nm allowed them to hit higher clocks which is nice, although it did not seem to help reduce power usage in the process. Maybe this will mean current 580s and 570s will drop to or below MSRP especially after how long they have been out?
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When you're talking about 390W total system power while OC'd does power usage even matter? If it runs cool and is able to perform properly for the price, that low of a system draw is nothing. A cheap 500W PSU is more than enough to drive this card.

Not sure why everyone gets so hung up on power draw. This is [H]. I don't care if a card pulls 1000W as long as it performs good for the price and stays cool while doing so. I'll buy a bigger PSU if I need to.
 
Thanks for this review! I know a few people looking for upgrades at that price point. This might be the ticket.
 
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Riccochet said:
When you're talking about 390W total system power while OC'd does power usage even matter? If it runs cool and is able to perform properly for the price, that low of a system draw is nothing. A cheap 500W PSU is more than enough to drive this card.

Not sure why everyone gets so hung up on power draw. This is [H]. I don't care if a card pulls 1000W as long as it performs good for the price and stays cool while doing so. I'll buy a bigger PSU if I need to.
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Because of how much the card could be heating up the room. The power draw difference between the 1060 and 590 is considerable and more than enough to make a difference in the temperature of a room. Sure, that's going to be great for me in the winter but it would seriously suck in the summer.
 
SmokeRngs said:
Because of how much the card could be heating up the room. The power draw difference between the 1060 and 590 is considerable and more than enough to make a difference in the temperature of a room. Sure, that's going to be great for me in the winter but it would seriously suck in the summer.
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Has this ever been meaningfully tested? Are we talking about the same watts as in a 100w light bulb worth of difference?

Just turn a lamp off... or don't... who cares. Unless I'm mistaken about this.

Also, lots of people are saying this card (and the 580) are unsuitable for a mITX/mATX build. Is that just because the 1060 exists and is better, or will a 590 literally cook itself in even a well designed mITX build?
 
Insomniator said:
Has this ever been meaningfully tested? Are we talking about the same watts as in a 100w light bulb worth of difference?

Just turn a lamp off... or don't... who cares. Unless I'm mistaken about this.

Also, lots of people are saying this card (and the 580) are unsuitable for a mITX/mATX build. Is that just because the 1060 exists and is better, or will a 590 literally cook itself in even a well designed mITX build?
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No, it will not cook itself in a well ventilated case. I think the greater concern here is will that cooler fit in a mITX case.

As far as meaningful room temp changes, yeah, continual, days on end usage will affect the temp of a room negatively (when I used to have my kids PC's mine crypto while they were away at their mom's house, their rooms would be measurably warmer than normal, 74 degrees vs the normal 68). But that's continuous 100% load all day long, consuming about 250W for each PC. Usage for 5 hours of gaming will *not* affect a 12x12 room significantly. Over 24-48 hours in a closed room, it will eventually change the overall temp of a room, but not in just a few hours.
 
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At long last a GTX 1060 Killer.

I'd like a GTX 1070 thrown into the mix. It seems it should come really close on some games at least at 1080p
 
Wonder how this compares to the GTX980-Ti? I figure the 1070 is a little faster than the 980-Ti, and in some games it looks close to the GTX1070, so by transitive properties, I am assuming the RX-590 is more or less equal to the 980-Ti...may need to get this for the Wife...
 
A surprisingly strong performance, now I'm really interested to see what actual next gen silicon can do. Looks like the 12nm process is a real winner.
 
lightsout said:
Kyle you seemed to quite enjoy the fact that red team was beating up on green :)

Maybe I just read that into the review?
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Well, Brent wrote the review, not me. Brent stays out of all the politics. He gets paid the same no matter the brand of card. The only thing he doesn't get excited about it NOT having cards to review. My initial thoughts on the 590 was that it was just going to be a dog that would not hunt, but the fact that we are seeing AIB OC cards at $280 is a big deal. Street price of $300+ would put a different spin on the entire thing. It whipped a highly OCed 1060 well enough to justify getting excited about considering the 1070 base card is at least $80 more expensive. And do know this, product reviews are reviews. We have given gold awards to RTX cards. If we let industry politics influence our reviews, that is crossing the line into bad "journalism." I have no love loss for NVIDIA and the way it has, and continues to treat HardOCP, but a good card is a card. I have an RTX in my box right now.
 
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Great review and food for thought for me, hanging on to my 280x as I am.

I wonder what kind of performance you would get if you could push that core to close to 1060 levels.

Now I'm torn between this 590 and stumping up a bit more for a Vega 56.

I would go up to £350 quid at xmas I think, whatever that is in dollars.

Or i might just wait some more, and some more.
 
Never mind, I looked at other reviews and the GTX1070 is indeed in another league. Now wether its worth the extra dough is another matter.

I still think the 1070Ti has the best price/performance ratio.
 
She looks to be a solid offering in the midrange! Lets see if the re-jigged 1060 can beat it. But if its only the rumored memory speed bump, from the looks of this review, it wont be enough!

love the midrange competition, haha not so much at the highend...although Vega does quite well in the new BFV, anyways thanks for the review guys!
 
performance looks pretty decent for those people still on the 200/300 or nvidia 960/970 cards.. but for the performance jump from the 580 to 590 i think i might just end up spending a little extra and grab a vega 56 or gtx 1070 on black friday or something. if i had 60hz displays i'd be all over this card though, being able to run max settings at 1080p on a sub 300 dollar card is pretty sweet.
 
Love all the people who said there was no way in hell a 590 was going to run this price range. The rumors were around the $299 mark. So beating that rumored pricing I suppose is fine but people are still going to feel like it should be lower. I currently see four 590's listed on Newegg right now. Three are at $279.99 and the fourth at $369.99 (auto-notify).
 
Decent card for a decent price and the games bundle is a nice addition.
 
Great review. As I suspected the RX 590 really does beats out the GTX 1060. AMD really needed a win at the mid-range GPU level and they got it with the 590. 20% faster on average than the GTX 1060 and an additional 2GB of VRAM, what's not to like?

If you're needing an upgrade and want to spend under $300, it looks like this new AMD card is a winner. Nice stuff!

Now what about Navi?

Colonel_Blimp said:
Great review and food for thought for me, hanging on to my 280x as I am.

I wonder what kind of performance you would get if you could push that core to close to 1060 levels.

Now I'm torn between this 590 and stumping up a bit more for a Vega 56.

I would go up to £350 quid at xmas I think, whatever that is in dollars.

Or i might just wait some more, and some more.
Click to expand...

What resolution is your monitor? If it's 1080P, the 590 will give you all the performance that you practically would need. However if it is 1440p, you should seriously consider stumping up more cash for the Vega 56.
 
AMD still not challenging Nvidia on the high end :sleep:

Sorry, Yes this is a good card for the price bracket. But wake me up when they Hit the High end segment causing competition and making the market better for us customers. Better prices, better performance etc.. Until then, I'm done celebrating their Mediocrity.

This is how we get $1200 Non-Ti graphics cards from Nvidia. /EndRant
 
Stoly said:
At long last a GTX 1060 Killer.
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Yeah but a few years to late imho. The 1060 is literally over 2 years old (release date July 2016). Nvidia queue'ing up something that will fuck over amd's world in 3...2...1...


I'm happy the performance is there. While I want the card to do well, $300 is no joke and after buying a 1070 on the FS thread for just $200 I kinda feel like $280-300 is way to high for a 2nd gen rehashed card. It's almost better just go green and buy used 1070's at this point.
 
This may be a stupid question but I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere in the article, this card has a dual bios for “performance” or for “stealth” one being quieter fan settings.

I’m just curious if perhaps the underwhelming fan curve and 80C temps are to do with the Stealth bios by chance.
 
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Priced very well even up here in canada, newegg has some Rx590's at the same price point as the 580's.

Great review as always kyle
 
Insomniator said:
or will a 590 literally cook itself in even a well designed mITX build?
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I have a, lets call it - "Semi poorly cooled" Ophion ITX case. Send me a 590 and I'll send you some temp numbers :)

I have a 1080 in it now, card peaks at 80-85c, but never thermal throttles.
 
As i expected.

Riccochet said:
I don't care if a card pulls 1000W
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Maybe if you paid the same high price for 1 kw/h as i do you would think different.

I am holding out for a better performer from AMD, and i am not really in a hurry, so some tine before next summer and i am good.
 
trentchau said:
Yeah but a few years to late imho. The 1060 is literally over 2 years old (release date July 2016). Nvidia queue'ing up something that will fuck over amd's world in 3...2...1...
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Considering Nvidia has already shown their hand for this generation, I don't think so. Roughly, their new lineup is 2080Ti = Titan, 2080=1080ti, and 2070=1080, in performance AND price. So we could extrapolate from there that 2060=1070, 2050=1060. That will be equal in price and performance, so the price range of Nvidia's new card that will compete with the 590 will be the new GTX2050, which will perform about the same as the 1060. So this card looks to be very competitive with whatever Nvidia is going to have coming out.
 
Very nice review ! With the games the cost could be $150 in the end and we all know how they fall from grace in price so it's a most have just for the games with 1700x selling at $149 would make a nice budget system with 8 core cpu and Team selling 16Gb pf 3200Mhz at $109 a $ 50 Gigabyte AB350M =DS3H with 370x chipset = $460 upgrade path for someone .

about the 1060 as I don't think Nvidia wants to really go there as to step closer to 1070 level and make money as it really raised the bar of a mid- range card as what R9-285 has became.
 
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Insomniator said:
Has this ever been meaningfully tested? Are we talking about the same watts as in a 100w light bulb worth of difference?

Just turn a lamp off... or don't... who cares. Unless I'm mistaken about this.

Also, lots of people are saying this card (and the 580) are unsuitable for a mITX/mATX build. Is that just because the 1060 exists and is better, or will a 590 literally cook itself in even a well designed mITX build?
Click to expand...

I have two pretty much equal machines on the same room used for kids and guest, i7 [email protected] with an R9 280X, both 16GB RAM, both 1TB Spinner and 256gb SSD, both same case Corsair 300R the other machine difference it's the i7 [email protected] and GTX 970.. the difference it's quite notable when one machine or the other are being used as that room is only cooled by a 12K BTU Air conditioner Unit.. and the difference between those machines are mainly the GPUs from 175W GTX 970 (Gigabyte G1 Gaming) and 255W 280X (Gigabyte Windforce)

Rauelius said:
Wonder how this compares to the GTX980-Ti? I figure the 1070 is a little faster than the 980-Ti, and in some games it looks close to the GTX1070, so by transitive properties, I am assuming the RX-590 is more or less equal to the 980-Ti...may need to get this for the Wife...
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Not even close, GTX 1060 6GB, RX 580 and now the RX 590 are just in the GTX 980 class performance, in fact when new they were more close to GTX 970 just a bit better sometimes, and now the are more in the range of AIB GTX 980.

Colonel_Blimp said:
Great review and food for thought for me, hanging on to my 280x as I am.

I wonder what kind of performance you would get if you could push that core to close to 1060 levels.

Now I'm torn between this 590 and stumping up a bit more for a Vega 56.
Click to expand...

Go with Vega56.. and you should be doubling your performance. with RX 580/GTX 1060 yo should expect a 50% performance bump, 60% - 65% with the newer RX 590 but still those are far of Vega56/gtx 1070.
 
trentchau said:
Yeah but a few years to late imho. The 1060 is literally over 2 years old (release date July 2016). Nvidia queue'ing up something that will fuck over amd's world in 3...2...1...


I'm happy the performance is there. While I want the card to do well, $300 is no joke and after buying a 1070 on the FS thread for just $200 I kinda feel like $280-300 is way to high for a 2nd gen rehashed card. It's almost better just go green and buy used 1070's at this point.
Click to expand...


true but not everyone is willing to jump into the used market so it's price still makes sense at current market prices for new cards.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
true but not everyone is willing to jump into the used market so it's price still makes sense at current market prices for new cards.
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This card for $290 or a brand new 1070 for $310 or a Vega 56 for $330 (both of which have come up in the past month)? This is a $200 card priced $90 too high.
 
kirbyrj said:
This card for $290 or a brand new 1070 for $310 or a Vega 56 for $330 (both of which have come up in the past month)? This is a $200 card priced $90 too high.
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exactly what I've just said in another thread, I consider this an irrelevant GPU, it doesn't appeal their actual customer, it doesnt offer anything great for make nvidia customer jump the ship, it doesn't fill the gap between RX 580 and Vega56 and is priced too close to it.. useless.
 
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It sounds like a good card for 1440p and the ram bandwidth does not slow it down as much as anticipated..

Thanks for the review Brent :)

*** checking some other reviews on other sites the 1440p seems a bit of a hit and miss , was impressed with Forza 4 score.
 
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kirbyrj said:
This card for $290 or a brand new 1070 for $310 or a Vega 56 for $330 (both of which have come up in the past month)? This is a $200 card priced $90 too high.
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Didn't you hear? $300 is the new $200 :D:D:rolleyes::rolleyes:

I don't think its a bad price. But I guess many people were expecting performance more in line with a GTX1070 (wishful thinking IMO)
 
kirbyrj said:
This card for $290 or a brand new 1070 for $310 or a Vega 56 for $330 (both of which have come up in the past month)? This is a $200 card priced $90 too high.
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pretty sure the reason for the games as to make it a $170 dollar card if you buy these games ahead of time It would cost you this price once games release .

Be nice to see it run on a Ryzen platform to see where chipset and driver is currently at .
 
Seems like a really nice card and I like the OC boost.

But there's a very large gap between it and the Vega 56 performance and price wise. Still looking for that VR & 1440p card below $300. I refuse to buy NVIDIA 1070 given their @#$@#%$ business practices.
 
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Man, looking back at the r9 Fury in this case. They should have grabbed that chip out of the EOL bin and slapped it on 12nm and worked it with some GDDR5x and sent it out the door. That GPU with higher clocks wants to go fast and would have yielded better performance vs polaris refresh.
 
jardows said:
Considering Nvidia has already shown their hand for this generation, I don't think so. Roughly, their new lineup is 2080Ti = Titan, 2080=1080ti, and 2070=1080, in performance AND price. So we could extrapolate from there that 2060=1070, 2050=1060. That will be equal in price and performance, so the price range of Nvidia's new card that will compete with the 590 will be the new GTX2050, which will perform about the same as the 1060. So this card looks to be very competitive with whatever Nvidia is going to have coming out.
Click to expand...

The last several years, Nvidia has released something immediately after AMD. I wouldn't be shocked to see a 2060 announced within a short period.

If this does sell for $289 new though, you gotta be really a hard core AMD(Anti Nvidia) guy to not get a 1070 IMHO. But I can understand what another person posted that some people aren't comfortable buying used, and this is what's in their budget.
 
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