Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition 8 GB

[W1zzard]

Sapphire's RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition features an overclock on both the GPU and memory. What really helps against the GTX 1060 is that Sapphire included a "quiet" BIOS that rivals noise levels of the best GTX 1060 cards we ever tested.

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[pky]

With the default BIOS the card is already very quiet, reaching only 31 dBA. The real kicker is the "quiet" BIOS, which is whisper quiet—as quiet as the best GTX 1060 Ti cards that we tested!

When do we expect the GTX 1060 Ti reviews?

 

[Basard]

Hm, 980ti performance.... and it's quiet..... Well, it isn't horrible.

 

[W1zzard]

When do we expect the GTX 1060 Ti reviews?

Fixed, you wouldn't believe how often I wrote "RTX"

 

[SIGSEGV]

nice card and great review.
I do agree with the author, if it's priced around 240-250 then it'd make a solid profit for AMD.

 

[Capitan Harlock]

Wizzard can you please do the Monster Hunter World benchmarks you have done so far without Volume Rendering Quality turn on ?
Because that is not even necessary for the game.
Run better without it and show misleading results .

 

[cucker tarlson]

Finally,a mid-range card that can match 980Ti stock. It's what rx480 was hyped to be. Although it delivers the performance of 980Ti at the same power draw despite using 12nm. Multi monitor power draw is too damn high as well. All in all, cooling a 200W card is not a problem nowadays, so it's a good buy for mid-range, but a rather "premium" mid-range card at $280. I feel like its good but overpriced. $50 over 580, just too much for what it offers,which is extra 100-150MHz.

 

[RealNeil]

Good review. Nice performance improvement with the smaller silicone design. They also do crossfire, while 1060s are SLI gimped. Interesting development indeed.
I wonder what numbers you could get if you ran both of your 590 cards in crossfire? (yeah, sorry about making more work for you)

 

[cucker tarlson]

Good review. Nice performance improvement with the smaller silicone design. They also do crossfire, while 1060s are SLI gimped. Interesting development indeed.
I wonder what numbers you could get if you ran both of your 590 cards in crossfire? (yeah, sorry about making more work for you)

well,they do crossfire, but at $560 you can get a 1080ti and smash a pair of those.

 

[RealNeil]

This is a good move on AMD's part. Buy into decent performance for a fair price and be able to combine it with another card later on.
Sure, NVIDIA still offers SLI on some of their cards, but only on the most expensively priced offerings.

 

[newtekie1]

After reading both reviews, it seems AMD has really pushed the core as far as it's going to go as far as MHz is concerned. There really isn't any headroom left on the RX 590.

 

[cucker tarlson]

$230 for 580 that can hit 1500MHz, then next year they launch the same chip on 12nm which tops at 1600MHz at $280. That's friggin innovative.

 

[0x4452]

An OC 1060 is begging to enter the review graphs

 

[rtwjunkie]

So this has perfectly cemented itself as a 1920x 1080 card, maybe even the best choice. I think that’s great! 1440p, not so much.

 

[Vya Domus]

An OC 1060 is begging to enter the review graphs

Unlikely to change much, people always praise Pascal for more overclocking headroom compared to Polaris/Vega but in reality it's not like that. My 1060 overclocked doesn't see a huge improvement because Nvidia's boost algorithm is merciless and clocks down the card a lot further than the more rigid clocks AMD use. Pascal's well kept TDP levels come with a cost.

 

[Deleted member 158293]

This card may very well make it into my guest rig to take over from the venerable 280x parked there for years. Although the 280x still handles 1080 really well...

It's more a "want to" upgrade rather than a "need to" I guess.

 

[Divide Overflow]

Nice review W1zzard!
I should be receiving mine later today so I can retire my 290x. It should tide me over until custom cooling Navi solutions are reviewed later next year. AMD really does need to improve on their power efficiency, as well as performance though.

 

[Valantar]

A decent performance increase for a port to a slightly tweaked process node, but that pricing? No thanks.

Impressed by that cooler, though. Hope it sticks around for Navi.

 

[Casecutter]

Thanks for this W1zzard!
At this point this exact Sapphire is $280 at Egg, I figured it would be more being this same card in 580 trim had maintained at $300 more often than not. Was hoping it had a little more oomph for 1440p, but this still is about where I figured. Stinks that in Wattman they aren't giving more OC'n on the memory, as I think that what could've let it get a slight more of a stride. This for $280, or 20% more to step into a pedestrian GTX 1070 at $335? So yeah if today you can swing $50 extra it's a toss-up, until you say you can get a FreeSync 1440p dial-back a setting here-n-there and find a smooth immersive gameplay that is what this might really be it's win.

 

[W1zzard]

Uploaded new charts with performance data for the quiet BIOS

 

[jabbadap]

Hm, 980ti performance.... and it's quiet..... Well, it isn't horrible.

While yeah it's in the same ball park as dead old dog called gtx980ti FE(perf+power), that old dog will leave this one to dust after both are overclocked(AIB custom model gtx980tis are already out of touch for this).

nice card and great review.
I do agree with the author, if it's priced around 240-250 then it'd make a solid profit for AMD.

Solid profit for selling it for less? I kind of doubt there's a lot of new buyers left on this perf/price bracket. So take as much money as you can first and after sales stalls, make a very good looking discount to get rid of the rest stock. I surely hope this won't be very long living product before 7nm Navi takes over.

 

[WikiFM]

Seems the quiet Bios looses 3-4% for just 2 dbA less, same watts at load, not worthy. Also this Sapphire cooler seems much better than the XFX, that is 6 C hotter and 2 dbA noiser, even that XFX is a triple slot one that OCs the same and consumes 14 W more and is a tiny slower than the Sapphire.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I think that’s great! 1440p, not so much.

Unless one turns down the AA. I know I keep saying that, but it's a valid point.

 

[jabbadap]

Seems the quiet Bios looses 3-4% for just 2 dbA less, same watts at load, not worthy. Also this Sapphire cooler seems much better than the XFX, that is 6 C hotter and 2 dbA noiser, even that XFX is a triple fan one that OCs the same and consumes 14 W more and is a tiny slower than the Sapphire.

Fatboy has two fans, as does this... Or are you talking about some other XfX card, that I'm not aware of?

Unless one turns down the AA. I know I keep saying that, but it's a valid point.

Well turning down AA is a personal preference, some can do it some just can't stand aliasing. And off course it's highly depending on monitor DPI. Some 15" 1440p laptop screen won't need that much of AA while some 30" monitor does.

 

[Assimilator]

RX 590 which can't overclock beats GTX 1060 by 10%. GTX 1060 can easily be overclocked to pull that 10% back. GTX 1060 costs $50 less and consumes 25% less power.

Then there is the GTX 1060 GDDR5X waiting in the wings, which could very well be a performance monster, while Polaris has nothing left in the tank.

I would say "good try AMD"... but that would imply an attempt was made.