When AMD pushed out the Radeon RX 590 in late-2018, its key spec was that the "Polaris 20" die had been ported to GlobalFoundries 12LPP (12 nm) silicon fabrication node, yielding headroom to dial up clock speeds over the 14 nm RX 580. The underlying silicon was labeled "Polaris 30" as it was the second major version of the "Polaris 10" die. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 16-series beat the RX 590 both in performance and price, with even the GTX 1650 Super performing on-par, and the GTX 1660 beating it. It turns out that AMD has a lot of unsold 14 nm "Polaris 20" inventory to go around, and it wants to release them out as the new RX 590 GME.

An Expreview review of an XFX-branded RX 590 GME confirms that the the chip is indeed based on the "Polaris 20 XTR" silicon which is built on the 14 nm process. The card has GPU clock speeds that appear similar to reference clock speeds of the RX 590, with 1460 MHz base compared to 1469 MHz of the original RX 590. But this is where the similarities end. In its testing, Expreview found that the RX 590 GME is on average 5% slower than the RX 590, and performs halfway between the RX 580 and the original RX 590, which are differentiated by a roughly 10% performance gap. The 5% performance deficit would put the RX 590 GME on par with the new RX 5500 XT 4 GB, and trading blows with the GTX 1650 Super. Thankfully, the RX 590 GME is priced lower than RX 590 cards (about 7.7% cheaper), and could be very region-specific. The fact that the RX 590 GME is being sold with full AIB partner branding and retail packaging, shows that this isn't an OEM-only product. Read the complete review in the source link below.

German publication Heise.de got its hands on a Radeon RX 5500 (OEM) graphics card and put it through their test bench. The numbers yielded show exactly what caused NVIDIA to refresh its entry-level with the GeForce GTX 1650 Super and the GTX 1660 Super. The RX 5500, in Heise's testing was found matching the previous-generation RX 580, and NVIDIA's current-gen GTX 1660 (non-Super). When compared to factory-overclocked RX 580 NITRO+ and GTX 1660 OC, the RX 5500 yielded similar 3DMark Firestrike performance, with 12,111 points, compared to 12,744 points of the RX 580 NITRO+, and 12,525 points of the GTX 1660 OC.

The card was put through two other game tests at 1080p, "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," and "Far Cry 5." In SoTR, the RX 5500 put out 59 fps, which was slightly behind the 65 fps of the RX 580 NITRO+, and 69 fps of the GTX 1660 OC. In "Far Cry 5," it scored 72 fps, which again is within reach of the 75 fps of the RX 580 NITRO+, and 85 fps of the GTX 1660 OC. It's important to once again note that the RX 580 and GTX 1660 in this comparison are factory-overclocked cards, while the RX 5500 is ticking a stock speeds. Heise also did some power testing, and found the RX 5500 to have a lower idle power-draw than the GTX 1660 OC, at 7 W compared to 10 W of the NVIDIA card; and 12 W of the RX 580 NITRO+. Gaming power-draw is also similar to the GTX 1660, with the RX 5500 pulling 133 W compared to 128 W of the GTX 1660. This short test shows that the RX 5500 is in the same league as the RX 580 and GTX 1660, and explains how NVIDIA had to make its recent product-stack changes.

While AMD is giving all signs of being preparing to release their latest entries into the midrange graphics card market in the form of theRX 5500 and RX 5300 series of graphics cards based on Navi, AMD's AIB partners are giving the slow burn on existing inventories of AMD's Polaris graphics chips. MSI, in this case, seems to have bet on a slight redesign of their previously-released RX 580 Armor and Armor MK2.

Changed is the color scheme - MSI went full black on this one. There's also a redesigned PCB, a redesigned I/O bracket (which keeps four display connectors), and a new cooler shroud. The heatsink's surface area also seems to have been increased, which should provide lower operating temperatures (anything beyond that, such as higher overclockability and longer lifespan, are speculations). The redesigned Armor keeps the single 8-pin PCIe power connector. No other details are available at time of writing.

Yeston have revealed an addition to their AMD graphics-card lineup in the form of the "CUTE PET" RX 580. The name implies exactly what this card is all about: a colorful, teenage theme in blue and pink with PCB cutouts that resemble a... well... Cute pet. There are RGB elements in the cut-outs for the eyes, ears and mouth of the "CUTE PET", the eyes are confused spirals built from the dual-fan cooling design, there's a blue backplate with cloudy cut-outs...

It's no news that AMD's Radeon RX 570 graphics card is carved out of the same "Polaris 20" silicon as the RX 580, by disabling 4 out of 36 GCN compute units. AMD kicked a controversy recently, when it launched a China-specific Radeon RX 580-branded SKU with the core-configuration of the cheaper RX 570, confusing Chinese consumers. It turns out that this RX 580 2,048 SP SKU is based on the same exact ASIC variant of the "Polaris 20" silicon as the RX 570, with the only difference being device ID.

We watch a lot of GamersNexus content. Our GPU Database curator noticed something interesting in their recent teardown of a Dataland Radeon RX 580 (2,048 SP) graphics card directly imported from China. The unique ASIC sub-variant code etched on the GPU's aluminium reinforcement brace matches that of the RX 570. AMD internally refers to the RX 570 as "Polaris 20 XL," and its ASIC code etched is supposed to be "215-0910052." For the RX 580, the real one, aka "Polaris 20 XTX," the code etched is "215-0910038." Thanks to GamersNexus' high-resolution filming, our curator was able to spot the ASIC code for "Polaris 20 XL" on the Dataland card's GPU. This confirms that AMD merely took an RX 570 and gave it a different device ID to create the RX 580 2,048 SP, leaving consumers to wade through the confusion.

Sapphire is developing a premium variant of its upcoming Radeon RX 590 series, called the RX 590 NITRO+ Special Edition, much like the "limited edition" branding it gave its premium RX 580-based card. Komachi Ensaka accessed leaked brochures of this card, which will bear an internal SKU code 11289-01. The brochure also confirms that the RX 590 features an unchanged 2,304 stream processor count from the RX 580, and continues to feature 8 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface. All that's new is improved thermals from a transition to the new 12 nm FinFET silicon fabrication process.

The Sapphire RX 590 NITRO+ SE ships with two clock-speed profiles, that can be probably toggled on the hardware by switching between two BIOS ROMs. The first profile is called NITRO+ Boost, and it runs the GPU at 1560 MHz, and the memory at 8400 MHz (GDDR5-effective). The second profile, called Silent Mode, reduces the engine clock boost to 1545 MHz, and the memory to 8000 MHz. For both profiles, the fan settings are unchanged. The fans stay off until the GPU is warming up to 54 °C, and spins at its nominal speed at 75 °C. It cuts off at 45 °C. The nominal speed is 0 - 2,280 RPM and the maximum speed is 3200 RPM.

The flood of leaked AMD Radeon RX 590 graphics cards continues with the latest one being from XFX. Sporting a new naming scheme, the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy is very similar to the RX 580 GTS series. It features the same dual fan cooler used on the RX 580 GTS, which takes up roughly 2.5 slots. Even the backplate remains the same with no changes to speak of, meaning side by side you wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless you look at power delivery which is where the designs diverge. The RX 590 Fatboy utilizing an 8+6 pin design compared to the RX 580 GTS series and its single 8-pin design. In regards to display outputs that remains the same between the two with three DisplayPorts, one HDMI port, and one DVI-I port being standard.

When it comes to clock speeds the XFX RX 590 Fatboy OC+ at least according to Videocardz will come with a 1600 MHz boost clock. That is an increase of roughly 200 MHz over XFX's highest clocked RX 580. With such a high boost clock the additional 6-pin power connector is likely included for improved power delivery and depending on luck may allow for more overclocking headroom. Considering no vendor releases just one version of a graphics card it is likely that a few more variants will be available at launch. Sadly no pricing information is available as of yet.

Thanks to some photographs by Andreas Schilling, of HardwareLuxx, it is now confirmed that AMD's Radeon RX 590 will make use of the 12 nm FinFET process. The change from 14 nm to 12 nm FinFET for the RX 590 brings with it the possibility of both higher clock speeds and better power efficiency. That said, considering it is based on the same Polaris architecture used in the Radeon RX 580 and 570, it remains to be seen how it will impact AMDs pricing in regards to the product stack. Will there be a price drop to compensate, or will the RX 590 be more expensive? Since AMD has already made things confusing enough with its cut down 2048SP version of RX 580 in China, anything goes at this point.

AMD late Monday updated its Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.10.1 beta drivers, without changing version numbers, to support some of the new regional SKUs the company launched over the weekend, including a variant of the Radeon RX 580 with only 2,048 stream processors instead of the normal 2,304; and the RX 580G and RX 570G. Besides this, the driver is unchanged from the original 18.10.1 drivers AMD released late last week. We have uploaded these latest drivers to our Downloads section.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.10.1

In a silent event that occurred earlier today, AMD's Chinese product page for the Radeon RX 580 graphics card now shows a new addition- the RX 580 2048SP. Contrary to every other RX 580 on the website, including OEM and system integrator solutions, this new SKU has 256 fewer stream processors (2304 vs 2048, respectively). As it turns out, this appears to be a China-only graphics solution that launched on October 15, 2018 and TechPowerUp can confirm this is a Polaris 20-based Radeon product as well.

Looking purely at the specifications, this appears to be an RX 570 with a higher boost frequency (up to 1284 MHz vs 1244 MHz), so this is a confusing strategy by AMD to call it an RX 580 instead. The tinfoil hat nearby suggests that this may well be taking advantage of consumers who go simply by the name scheme and do not look up what a stream processor is, and indeed this is similar to what AMD did last year with the downgraded Radeon RX 560 that started out to be a Chinese-region product and then found its way elsewhere as well. Retailers have started listing this as a product available for consumer purchase already, and a search for RX 580 brings up both these and the other versions together. Not cool, AMD, not cool.

Benchmark scores for 3D Mark's Time Spy have surface, and are purported to represent the performance level of an unidentified "Generic VGA" - which is being identified as AMD's new 12 nm Polaris revision. The RX 590 product name makes almost as much sense as it doesn't, though; for one, there's no real reason to release another entire RX 600 series, unless AMD is giving the 12 nm treatment to the entire lineup (which likely wouldn't happen, due to the investment in fabrication process redesign and node capacity required for such). As such, the RX 590 moniker makes sense if AMD is only looking to increase its competitiveness in the sub-$300 space as a stop-gap until they finally have a new graphics architecture up their shader sleeves.

This news post really does serve as a symbolic gesture for the state of the GPU market in the last months (going on to a year now, really). Mainly due to increased demand from crypto users looking to farm and mine their way to financial security and shortages of GPUs, the time to buy a new or even second-hand, latest generation graphics card hasn't been the best. However, now, we're seeing something that wasn't seen for a long time: actual decent pricing in graphics cards. It's still a process, but in that process, this Gigabyte AORUS RX 580 deal at Amazon is the proverbial pin in a haystack.

The Gigabyte AORUS Radeon RX 580 8GB (GV-RX580AORUS-8GD) is available now from Amazon for $209.99 (after a $20 mail-in rebate). If you're in the states and looking for a graphics card that guarantees 1080p performance at max settings, or a decent 1440p experience with somewhat reduced IQ, this could be the graphics card for you - and judging by its Best Seller status, it may very well be the same for many other customers. And for now, there's even stock - how about that. If you're shopping from outside the states and still find this deal mesmerizing (here in Portugal a similar graphics card would go for $410 so... yeah. Take the deal). Here's hoping this is a sign of the incoming times, and not just a freak event.

Today, gamers around the world will face off against an ancient, forgotten evil power in the highly anticipated Strange Brigade. AMD and Rebellion have worked closely to ensure smooth, immersive gameplay on Radeon RX Graphics in Strange Brigade.

• FreeSync 2 HDR: Brings low-latency, high-brightness pixels and a wide color gamut to High Dynamic Range (HDR) content for PC displays, enabling Strange Brigade to preserve details in scenes that may otherwise be lost due to limited contrast ratios. Ultimately, it lets bright scenes to appear much brighter and dark scenes to be truly dark - all while keeping details visible.
• Asnychronous Compute: Strange Brigade by default has asynchronous compute enabled improving GPU utilization, input latency, efficiency and performance by tapping into GPU resources that would otherwise be underutilized. For example, running various screen space effects during the shadow map rendering.

AMD today released version 18.8.1 beta of its Radeon Software Adrenalin drivers that keep your graphics card's performance equal to that of a well/oiled machine (figuratively, of course). The new software version brings driver-level support and improvements for the upcoming (and highly awaited) Monster Hunter: World. for that game, this driver release promises up to 5% and 6% increased performance on AMD's RX Vega graphics card and RX 580, respectively, compared to AMD's 18.6.1 driver release at 1080p.

This driver also adds support for World of Warcraft : Battle for Azeroth, We Happy Few, and Madden NFL 19. Another interesting additions are the extended functions for the Vulkan API, supporting more commands than previous driver versions. As always, you can download these drivers right here on TPU - just follow the link below. Feel free to jump towards after the break for some more details on this driver release.DOWNLOAD:AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.8.1 Beta

At the XFastest Network event in Japan, ASRock shared some slides detailing its overall graphics card strategy up to February 2019. There are some interesting bits of information that can be gleaned/extrapolated from it. One bit of information that seems to be set in stone is the introduction, come August, of revised versions of some graphics cards (namely, the RX 570 and RX 580 models) under the MK2 marketing - likely revised in their cooling apparatus. That the RX Vega versions of ASRock graphics cards won't be receiving such a revision seems clear as well: there's no reason for the company to withhold information on that. The others, however, are more prone to speculation.

First of, the fact that ASRock still only lists AMD graphics cards likely means the company will remain an exclusively AMD-aligned AIB. Secondly, the absence of any new AMD graphics cards in the ASRock lineup, while noteworthy and prone to speculation, doesn't really say much. AMD certainly wouldn't look lovingly towards ASRock should they out information on a new RX600 series or other AMD products ahead of time. Likewise, ASRock wouldn't want publicity on a new deal with NVIDIA to hit the roads ahead of time. As such, let's just stay with the MK2 graphics cards and ASRock's lineup - and codification for its products, which they kindly shared during the event.

A report via PCGamesN points to some... interesting performance positioning when it comes to NVIDIA and AMD offerings. Battlefield V is being developed by DICE in collaboration with NVIDIA, but it seems there's some sand in the gears of performance improvements as of now. I say this because according to the report, AMD's RX 580 8 GB graphics card (the only red GPU to be tested) bests NVIDIA's GTX 1060 6GB... by quite a considerable margin at that.

The performance difference across both 1080p and 1440p scenarios (with Ultra settings) ranges in the 30% mark, and as has been usually the case, AMD's offerings are bettering NVIDIA's when a change of render - to DX12 - is made - AMD's cards teeter between consistency or worsening performance under DX 12, but NVIDIA's GTX 1060 consistently delivers worse performance levels. Perhaps we're witnessing some bits of AMD's old collaboration efforts with DICE? Still, It's too early to cry wolf right now - performance will only likely improve between now and the October 19th release date.

In what looks like a move to get rid of ASUS-branded AMD Radeon graphics cards, the company announced a massive game-bundle promotion in the UK. The company is giving away Steam keys to four fairly old games with its Radeon RX Vega, RX 580, and RX 570 based graphics cards, that include not just ROG Strix models, but also Dual Fan, and Expedition sub-branded ones. Among the games are "The Surge" (2017), "Blood Bowl" Legendary Edition (2010), "Sprintires: MudRunner" (2017), and "Farming Simulator 17" (2017). Participating retailers include Aria, OCUK, Scan, Box, CCL, E-Buyer, and Novatech.

MSI is proud to present a brand new series based on AMD's "Polaris" chipsets, the Radeon graphics-based MECH series. Equipped with the new thermal design, the Radeon RX MECH series doesn't just allow for higher core and memory speeds but also provide increased performance in games. The outstanding shapes of the eye-catching MECH series cooler are intensified by a fiery red glow piercing through the cover, while the MSI dragon RGB LED on the top can be set to any of 16.7 million colors to match your mood or build. A completely custom PCB design featuring enhanced power design with Military Class 4 components enables higher stable performance to push your graphics card to the max. A classy matte black metal backplate shows the MECH 2 cards more structural strength and provides a nice finishing touch.

"AMD Radeon has always been committed to the best interest of gamers: a dedication to open innovation such as our contributions to the DirectX and Vulkan APIs, a commitment to true transparency through industry standards like Radeon FreeSync technology, and a desire to expand the PC gaming ecosystem by enabling developers everywhere. It is these values that result in a thriving PC gaming community, and explain why so many gamers continue to rally behind the AMD Radeon brand," said Scott Herkelman, vice president and general manager, AMD Radeon Technologies Group.

It's been extensively reported that ASRock's primary motivation behind entering the graphics card market is the crypto-currency wave. The company stitched together a lineup of graphics cards based on AMD Radeon RX 500 series, with its fastest card being the RX 580 Phantom Gaming X. It's now being reported that AMD is preventing ASRock from selling its graphics cards in the EU. The reasons behind the move are unclear, but from what we can tell, ASRock hasn't been given a region-specific permission to sell its graphics cards in the EU. This probably indicates a swelling inventory of AMD Radeon graphics cards from other AIB (add-in board) partners, due to waning interesting in GPU-accelerated crypto-currency mining.

MSI has partnered with AMD to bring their new 'Combat Crate' bundles to the gaming market. These Combat Crates are comprised of a Ryzen 5 1600 or Ryzen 7 1700 processor, a MSI B350 Tomahawk motherboard, and, last but not least, a MSI RX 580 Armor graphic card. With the Ryzen 2000 Series processors already out and B450 motherboards probably on the way, the primary goal of this partnership is probably for both companies to clear their last-gen stock. The description on the packaging reads:

The AMD Combat Crate comes stocked with essential hardware you need to push your game to the next level and lay waste to the competition. With a lightning-fast Ryzen processor, powerful RX graphics backed by revolutionary Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition and a feature-ready MSI motherboard - the AMD Combat Crate is the ultimate arsenal for gamers.

ASRock's Phantom series of graphics cards have been rumored and officially launched for a while now, but actual availability thresholds have been elusive. Now, a hard date has come out of the woodwork: ASRoc's first foray into the graphics card market with materialize with custom designs of AMD's RX 580 and RX 570 graphics cards on April 19th.

The Phantom series of graphics cards are ASRock's own takes on AMD's Polaris silicon. The graphics cards will apparently ship with three distinct operating modes: a "Silent" mode, an "OC" mode, and standard clocks. The Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX 580 8 G will ship with 1,324 MHz clocks on silent mode; 1,435 MHz on OC mode; and 1380 MHz in the standard mode. The second card to be on offer on April 19th will be the Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX 570 8G, with clocks at 1,228 MHz on silent mode; 1,331 MHz on OC mode; and 1380 MHz in the standard mode. Connectivity options for both graphics cards is set at 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI, and 1x DVI ports. No pricing information is available at time of writing.

AMD is giving final touches to the new Radeon RX 500X-series graphics cards. Product page placeholders for RX 580X, RX 570X, RX 560X, and RX 550X surfaced on AMD website. The specifications tabs on these pages are blank, so there's no official information on what the "X" denotes. It's curious to see AMD give the extension to even lower-end SKUs such as the RX 560 and RX 550.

The company has, in the past, come up with extensions such as "D" to denote OEM-specific SKUs with different specifications than the retail-channel (AIB) products. Going by the convention of "X" denoting higher performance on certain AMD Ryzen processor SKUs, the RX 500X series could have one of several improvements - a new silicon fabrication process facilitating a clock-speed bump, or faster memory, or even some speed boosting feature similar to Ryzen XFR (extended frequency range). We'll know soon enough.

It was only a matter of time before ASICs turned the tide on GPU-accelerated crypto-currency mining. Bitmain announced the Antminer E3, an ASIC miner purpose-built for Ethereum mining. Priced at $800 (or less than the price of an AMD Radeon RX 580 in January), this ASIC draws about 800W of power, and offers a hash-rate of 180 MH/s. To put that into perspective, an RX 580 only has about 30 MH/s, and draws around 200W at typical mining load. Bitmain has begun accepting orders for the Antminer E3, with shipping to commence in July. At its price, no GPU in the market can match the economics of this ASIC, and hence, VGA prices could begin to cool down, and GPU miners could find it hard to hodl on to their overpriced VGAs.

GIGABYTE today rolled out the RX 580 Gaming Box, an external graphics enclosure with a factory-fitted graphics card. The company's Gaming Box line of external graphics enclosures made their debut with Aorus-branded boxes based on GeForce GTX 1070 graphics cards. The company later launched an Aorus-branded GTX 1080 Gaming Box. The new RX 580 Gaming Box (model: GV-RX580IXEB-8GD) encloses a Radeon RX 580 8 GB graphics card, with its core clocked at reference clocks of 1257 MHz core and 1340 MHz boost, out of the box, although a software-toggled "OC Mode" spools up the boost clock to 1355 MHz. The memory is untouched, at 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective).

The enclosure takes in a Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps) connection, with which it drives not just the graphics card, but also a 3-port USB 3.0 hub. A fourth (orange) USB 3.1 port lacks any data connection, but is a Quick Charge 3-compliant USB port, for charging your devices. Powering the enclosure is a 450W internal PSU with over 90% efficiency. GIGABYTE claims this meets 80 Plus Gold efficiency standards, although is not certified with the 80 Plus logo. Display outputs from the graphics card include three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0. The enclosure features mesh side windows, and an RGB LED strip controlled with GIGABYTE RGB Fusion software. The company didn't reveal pricing.

MSI today introduced its Radeon RX 580 Armor MK2 graphics card series, available in standard and OC variants. Both feature 8 GB of GDDR5 memory. The two cards feature the same Armor MK2 product design that the company debuted with the RX 570 Armor MK2 series, earlier this month. The standard variant offers out of the box clock speeds of 1353 MHz core, which is slightly higher than AMD-reference clocks of 1340 MHz. The OC variant tops that with 1366 MHz out of the box. Both variants leave the memory untouched at 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective).

The Armor MK2 series is positioned a notch above the original Arsenal-series Armor SKU, in featuring a pair of updated TorX 2.0 fans, red-colored accents in place of white on the cooler shroud, and the addition of a metal back-plate with red accents. It hence sits in between the Armor and Gaming series. TorX 2.0 fans feature double ball-bearings, and an improved fan blade design for higher air-flow, allowing MSI to lower the fan speeds, and with it, noise. The fans stay off when the GPU is idling. The PCB design is unchanged between the Armor MK2 and the original RX 580 Armor series. The company didn't reveal pricing.