NewEgg says it will ship on Monday 12(DEC)/3, so I should get it on Wednesday 12/5. Will of course update here on the experience...paid $279 for it (~$12 more than I paid for my 8GB 480 a year ago) and I get the three games with it--two of them which interest me--never could get into the "Devil May Cry" thing. It's amazing to me that anyone would could consider a 1060 over a 590 in the < $300 market--Yes, pretty much blows away the 1060--which is not in the same league, actually. I'm surprised, really, that the 590 reviews are not pointing out the many superior points of the RX-4/5xx-series over the 1060. 480/580/590 = 256-bit wide bus; 1060 = 192-bit-wide bus; 480/580/590 = 8GB vram, 1060 = 6gbs vram; 480/580/590 = Crossfire, 1060 = No SLI supported! Those are some awesome advantages, imo--nothing small about them. Indeed, I decided to go ahead and buy the Fatboy to tide me over until next year's < $300 AMD product, and I'm going to experiment with Crossfiring the two--the 590 with the 480--and see what happens. My reasoning is this: for games that allow X-firing of some kind, even if both GPUs are running at the speed of my 480, 1.305GHz stock, the performance should be far better than just running the single 590 @ 1.58GHz-1.6GHz. Also, I'm gaming wherever I can @ 3840x2160, so I'm anticipating some hefty fps gains here, too, via Crossfire. This will be the first time I have X-fired since I bought two 4850's many years ago... Should be fun--with games that worked the frame-rate gains were impressive, IIRC. Since it is so easy to Crossfire these cards (AMD doesn't even require a physical bridge), it really is surprising to see that the ability to Crossfire the discrete Polaris GPUs is not being mentioned much in reviews. I did see a review where the guy Xfired a 480 with a 580--went like clockwork, he said, and the frame-rate gains of the games that had profiles or could otherwise be crossfired were *substantial*, usually 70%-90% higher as a rule. Which is what you would expect. Sure--I'd never suggest that someone go out and buy two 590s just for the privilege of X-firing--but it does make sense for people like me who bought a Polaris GPU a year or two back--as I don't want to pay ~$500+ for a Vega GPU right now. So for me this makes perfect sense. I will report back at some point and update on how it goes...!
Its a decent performer indeed but i feel that from your 480 isnt that big of a jump. Well, im glad you are happy with it though. Did you get the 3 free games with it?
Can you do some Power Draw measurements? Maybe you have wall-socket wattmeter. And can show difference between idle and GPU test in 3DMark. And it would be lovely if you could add HWiNFO64/GPUz reported Power/Current.
Update: The card came about two hours ago--I have already installed it! I think that Undying (great little game, btw! Still installed on my drives!) in his post above might have thought I was going to replace the 480 with the 590--and he's right--doing that would not have been a rational move--even for the three free games (more on those is a second!), so I want to reiterate that this 590 (XFX Fatboy -stock clock @ 1580) is not replacing the old 480 (ASUS dual -stock clock @ 1305) --but 590 is now the Master unit in my Polaris Crossfire rig--using both GPUs simultaneously. (Of course, without a doubt--X-Fire is the only way to fly here--and I would not have replaced the 480 with the 590 independently unless I had a decent offer on the 480--then, and perhaps only then, would the 590 separately, coupled with the the free games, have made sense! But I found the notion of getting the games, the increased GPU power & being able to keep and utilize my RX-480 at the same time to be very seductive! Irresistible, etc.) I haven't had a reason to do Crossfire since I bought two HD-4850's many years ago--and was pleased with the results, then, which were often dramatic. Now, I'm ba-ack in the crossfire! (Who cares, tight? Yawn...) Anyway, as promised, here are my notes/impressions thus far: First though, some preliminaries: here's the system hardware I am using. Thought the info might save some Q&A later on: MSI x370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC UEFI bios 2.E0 Corsair CX-750M PSU (62a x1 12v rail) AMD Ryzen 5 1600 @ 3.8GHz (65W TDP), voltage set, 1.385V RAM 16GB 2x8GB, Patriot Viper Elite @3200MHz 16 16 16 36 1T, Gear Down, BankGroupSwapAlt, def voltage Stock AMD cooler (95W version--thanks AMD!) SATA LG MultiDrive DVD writer Boot: Samsung 960 EVO NVMe x4 250GB (UEFI boot partition) 2x 1TB WD Blue 7200 rpm ST2000DM S3 2TB ST4000DM004 S3 4TB AoC U3277PWQU 3840x2160 monitor AMD XFX Fatboy RX 590 8GB 1.580GHz clock AMD ASUS Dual RX-480 8GB 1.305GHz clock Realtek 1250 sound w/Nahimic Win10x64 1809 v 17763.134 UEFI Secure Boot ON 1) The Free games--let's get that out of the way. I'm the kind of person who looks at products for sale and then sort of blanks out any offers of "free games" with them because subconsciously I am thinking, "Gimmick! Sales Gimmick!" And I tend not to look at the "free stuff" very closely--I stay focused on the product as a rule. Same thing here. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to learn after I bought the Fatboy (There's just something magical about the way "Fatboy" rolls off the tongue...) that not only were these games not an afterthought or a gimmick--or old stock moldering on some digital shelf somewhere with no future--but these games were all fairly major AA/A-titles--that are all slated for shipping next year. Two of them in March and one in January of next year! Joke was on me--as I had it in the back of my head that whatever these games were I'd be able to download them immediately upon the purchase of the card. Ha-ha--very surprised to see that these were actually decent games that I will probably enjoy--well, maybe not DMC5...I looked at DMC2 or 3 way back when and never thought about the game series again. Surprising that these games actually do have a real retail value of $150--according to NewEgg--as they will certainly be priced there when the games ship next year! So no price inflating gimmick here. Basically a decent bundle, imo. 2) The actual product looks much better than any of the reviews images I've seen of it appear--it is also a far more substantial, solid, weighty product than it appears (to me) in pretty much all the reviews I looked at. I don't know what it was, but the review images (regardless of source) somehow conveyed an image of a flimsy cooler shroud--which isn't close to being true. It's not flimsy at all--it is very substantial in its heft and weight. Solid. I really don't know why all of those images looked that way to me--but they did. They didn't look "bad," or anything, just short of shoddy(?)--in a way. But the GPU is actually very nicely put together--fit and finish I found to be excellent. Generally this sort of thing isn't important to me because this is a product that stays hidden inside my case (as I prefer), but the difference between how the product appears in web shots and how it actually looks is worth mentioning. 3) Performance: the biggie! Just what I expected--I'm glad to say--As of now, I have only intensively tested the Heaven 4.0 benchmark and the the Valley Benchmark, by the same people. Tested at 3840x2160, DX11, Ultra Image Quality, Max tessellation and normal tessellation both in Heaven Benchmark, bench scores and frame-rate averages are both *double* what they were under just my 480, all other settings the same! 15 fps minimums with the 480 went to 30+ fps minimums in CF--30-35 fps maximums went to 60-70+ fps maximums in CF! I might add that the 590 is clocked at 1580 and the 480 at 1305, and there are no adjustments made to bring the Fatboy down to 1305, apparently. Additionally, I did the testing with AMD's Frame Pacing option turned on--I have no idea if this would actually increase the framerates if turned off--but it's all smooth sailing at the moment and the frame rates are so much better than what the single card had been providing me, it's currently not an issue. I will be testing a lot more as the month goes on, of course, and will update the performance results here when I can...! 4) Installation. Nothing to it--no more difficult than installing a single card. Before you install the second card, be sure and uninstall your AMD drivers first, then shut down the system. Put the new card in the first slot--where you had your primary card--then put your old card in the second slot, and plug your monitor into the new card--and boot up, install your drivers, and away you go. No other physical connections required. Took about 15 minutes--and that's only because I'm slow! 5) Power consumption. My PSU is identified in the hardware list above--so far--zero problems with power. I was careful to use separate circuits in my PSU connectors to hook up both GPUs--an 8-pin for the 480 and an 8 + 6 pin for the 590. Don't know if that actually helped anything, though. At any rate, it's not a problem. We shall see going ahead! Signing off of this experiment for now!
Update: Here are a couple of 3dMark Basic scores I ran this morning: These two scores are enough to show what's happening without reprinting every 3dMark score--they all show very nice benefit from Crossfire. So far there are zero visual artifacts from Crossfire that I can see. Crossfire seems to have come a long way from my memories of twin 4850s years ago. TimeSpy Basic v1.1 @ 3840x2160 Score 7951 ( in Top 20% of all recorded scores, says the 3dMk web site--better than 80% of all score submitted) FireStrike Basic v1.1 @ 3840x2160 Score 19466 ( in Top 7% of all recorded scores, says the 3dMk web site--better than 93% of all scores submitted) Configuration Graphics Card AMD Radeon RX 590 Vendor Pineview Industries Ltd. # of cards 2 SLI / CrossFire On Memory 8,192 MB Core clock 1,600 MHz Memory bus clock 2,100 MHz Driver version 25.20.14011.10001 Driver status Not Approved [the latest stock AMD driver release] Graphics Card (Secondary) Graphics Card AMD Radeon RX 480 # of cards 2 SLI / CrossFire On Memory 8192 MB Core clock 1305 MHz Memory bus clock 2100 MHz Driver name Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics Driver version 25.20.14011.10001 Processor Processor AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Reported stock core clock 3,800 MHz Maximum turbo core clock 3,799 MHz Physical / logical processors 1 / 12 # of cores 6 Package AM4 Manufacturing process 14 nm TDP 65 W General Operating system 64-bit Windows 10 (10.0.17763) Motherboard Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. X370 GAMING PRO CARBON AC (MS-7A32) Memory 16,384 MB Module 1 8,192 MB Patriot Memory DDR4 @ 3,198 MHz Module 2 8,192 MB Patriot Memory DDR4 @ 3,198 MHz Hard drive model 250 GB Samsung SSD 960 EVO 250GB _________________________________________________________________ Right now, the only real "fly in the ointment" I'm having is seemingly that Crossfire "breaks" occasionally (but it never "breaks" in an ongoing game--or anything like that!), for reasons I am still pondering, and requires a driver reinstall to correct (I am still looking at this. It may be just something I am inadvertently doing by constantly tinkering.) Again, I would not advise anyone going out and buying two of X to do Crossfire/SLI... Just spend the money on a faster single card of a similar cost. But, if you already own a card you like and you want to spend half as much to almost double your performance at high resolutions--then Crossfire is certainly an option. Take the money you save on a more expensive single GPU and put it on a nice 4k monitor...! Will keep updating here as new info and time permits.
Can you do standard Fire Strike just for RX-590? I am interested in Graphics score/fps in those actual tests.
Sure--I'll try and do that tonight... I was also wrong about the Crossfire "breaking" thing--I didn't fully realize that now through the Adrenalins, Crossfire can be turned off completely on a per game basis in each game profile, while leaving Crossfire turned on in the global settings--for the games for which no profiles exist as of yet, etc/ I'll get back..!
Firestrike Basic Rx-590 Alone total score 13,614; Graphics score 16,307 Sorry about the fps results--but this basic version of 3dMk stinks for reviewing the fps in the tests after they have been run. But hope this helps...One day I will have to break down and buy the darned benchmark...! Graphics Card AMD Radeon RX 590 Vendor Pineview Industries Ltd. # of cards 1 SLI / CrossFire Off Memory 8,192 MB Core clock 1,580 MHz Memory bus clock 2,000 MHz Driver version 25.20.14011.10001 Graphics Card (Secondary) Graphics Card AMD Radeon RX 480 # of cards 1 SLI / CrossFire Off Memory 8192 MB Core clock 1305 MHz Memory bus clock 2000 MHz Driver name Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics Driver version 25.20.14011.10001 Processor Processor AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Reported stock core clock 3,800 MHz Maximum turbo core clock 3,799 MHz Physical / logical processors 1 / 12 # of cores 6 Package AM4 Manufacturing process 14 nm TDP 65 W General Operating system 64-bit Windows 10 (10.0.17763) Motherboard Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. X370 GAMING PRO CARBON AC (MS-7A32) Memory 16,384 MB Module 1 8,192 MB Patriot Memory DDR4 @ 3,198 MHz Module 2 8,192 MB Patriot Memory DDR4 @ 3,198 MHz Hard drive model 250 GB Samsung SSD 960 EVO 250GB
Sorry, didn't mean to leave your good question out...oh, yeah, the arrangement sucks down the power--I think the most impressive thing yet is that my PSU is able to handle it even at max power and max fan profiles for both cards. No trouble thus far! The Corsair CX-750M PSU (62a x1 12v rail) is not the best of PSUs but it is semi modular and has a good brand name behind it, even if the manufacturing of the actual unit itself may leave something to be desired, possibly. Hard to say anything bad when it works reliably as it does. It's holding up fine, however. I haven't done Crossfire in many years so it's a bit like returning to class, etc. Things I'd forgotten & things that have changed, etc. An 8-pin for the 480 and an 8 & 6 pin for the 590--and it works well so far. I think my having a 65W TDP CPU helps the equation, but I'm probably pushing that, too @ 3.8GHz (600MHz overclock that runs without error--voltage bump there is required, but still under 1.4v.) I think the PSU here says a lot about overall power draw---I bought it because it was under $100 ($82 IIRC) at the time, and had a single 12v rail rather than split rails that are common today but which I'm not convinced are actually superior to a single 12v rail. Amperage was decent on the 12v, too. Anyway--the powerdraw has to be considerable, as you might guess. The numbers are all over the place--some say 225W TDP just for the 590, but other ads from the manufacturer say 185W TDP for the 590; 175W TDP for the 480. At any rate--I won't be doing any wattage testing from the wall--just taking things sort of informally--and I figure the draw can't be that horrific if my current PSU can handle it--plus some 120MM case fans. I don't go in for light shows and so on, so maybe that helps as well!
Dang, this was fun to read! It is rare to come across someone so well written and informative. Does the core clock gap between the 480 and 590 cause any issues? Can you leave the 590 stock and OC the 480 to bring them closer together? What are the temps like when both cards are being pushed, for example in 3dMark, Unigine or games that have great Crossfire scaling? What about temps on the Fatboy on his own?
@waltc3 : Isn't there button at end of the test for "View my results online"? That's how I get to all my results, then I click browse my results and add them to compare to get link with number (ID of test result). Anyway, my RX-580 1495/2360MHz did have 17670 Graphics score. I was like: "You have to tune your memory, man." But then again, you are running CFX and RX-480 will hold it back anyway. But Graphics Score for your card could be like 18500~18800 instead of 16307. I see that XFX Fatboy specs show 1600/2000MHz stock. That's something. Full OC could get it close to 20k Graphics score. What a nice GPU, too bad AMD could not get very good clocks at beginning on RX-480s. But maybe they did finally learn what kind of limitation they had in place and Navi will clock well.
Update: Here are some Heaven 4.0 bench scores, should be self-explanatory: These are so much better than what I was getting with just the 480--I included one done with the 480--that I was surprised. with the 18.12.2's Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 FPS: 40.5 Score: 1021 Min FPS: 18.1 Max FPS: 76.9 System Platform: Windows NT 6.2 (build 9200) 64bit CPU model: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor (3799MHz) x6 GPU model: Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics 25.20.15002.58/Radeon RX 590 Series 25.20.15002.58 (4095MB) x1 Settings Render: Direct3D11 Mode: 3840x2160 fullscreen Preset Custom Quality Ultra Tessellation: Normal Powered by UNIGINE Engine Unigine Corp. © 2005-2013 with the 18.12.1.1's: Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 FPS: 36.6 Score: 921 Min FPS: 15.9 Max FPS: 73.5 System Platform: Windows NT 6.2 (build 9200) 64bit CPU model: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor (3799MHz) x6 GPU model: Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics 25.20.14011.10001/Radeon RX 590 Series 25.20.14011.10001 (4095MB) x1 Settings Render: Direct3D11 Mode: 3840x2160 fullscreen Preset Custom Quality Ultra Tessellation: Normal Powered by UNIGINE Engine Unigine Corp. © 2005-2013 With the 480 solo: Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 FPS: 21.1 Score: 531 Min FPS: 12.6 Max FPS: 42.8 System Platform: Windows NT 6.2 (build 9200) 64bit CPU model: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor (3799MHz) x6 GPU model: Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics 25.20.14011.9004 (4095MB) x1 Settings Render: Direct3D11 Mode: 3840x2160 fullscreen Preset Custom Quality Ultra Tessellation: Normal Powered by UNIGINE Engine Unigine Corp. © 2005-2013 I'll keep on updating as time and my disposition allow...
Update: (Posted in the appropriate news section but put here, too, as it concerns my Crossfire setup): I just tested my RX-590/480 Crossfire system in SotTRaider DX12 mode--and the difference between 18.12.1.1 and these new 18.12.2 drivers is like night and day! The new drivers are much better, at least for my system! DX12 Crossfire is working, apparently. In the older driver set I either had to turn off Xfire for the DX12 mode or else run it in the DX11 mode. I had some odd difficulties installing them, for some reason, but I think that had to do with my Nahimic 3.x audio drivers under Win10--I don't use the AMD sound circuitry--I use the Realtek 1250 on the motherboard, and so every time I install a new Adrenalin driver I have to disable the AMD sound from the Device manager because this version of Nahimic 3.x, 1.2.8, for some very odd reason, does not allow me to select which sound defaults I prefer to use but defaults, always, to the AMD sound output which is not connected or used. Also, I tried to clean install the 18.12.2's initially, which always forces on the AMD sound device--if I simply install one driver over an older one, however, the Adrenalin software is smart enough to leave my device manager settings alone. I really like the so-called "universal" version of Nahimic 3.x, though--it is worth the small aggravations...
Maybe so, maybe...! But, really, it's nothing special--I don't go in for interior lighting of any kind, and if a peripheral, like my motherboard, offers that "feature," I turn it off, if I can. Completely air-cooled--no water. It's housed inside an ordinary mid-tower Antec case (black metal)--that cost me $65 when I bought via Amazon a long while ago. I actually like the case--tool free--and this is the second system I've housed in it. Really, if you can picture the equipment list I posted above--you can imagine precisely what it looks like. 100% utilitarian! But thank you for asking!...
Thanks so much for your kind regards! Yes, I still enjoy this stuff even after all of these years. I've thought about your question myself--as to clock disparities between the two. The answer is that I do not know how AMD handles that issue--it used to be that both clocks had to synchronize--and I have not actually tried to downclock the 590 to synchronize with the 480--but you've just given me another idea... It would be interesting to see what if any differences arise from synchronization. Right now there are no artifacts of any kind that are visible from the clock disparities, and I have little difficulty running with vsync off/Enhanced Sync. In games in which I see little in the way of tearing, I'll just usually run with vsync completely off--otherwise, Enhanced Sync gets rid of 90%+ of the page tearing in the other games. An inexpensive way to easily exceed the 60 fps barrier on a 60Hz monitor. The highest temps for the 590 when it's been run hard under load for an hour or so are maxed at ~84C, or so--which is actually the target temp set in Wattman stock, interestingly enough. (I just realized that when you asked me!) The 480 seems to plateau at ~70-80C or so, maxed--it's factory/bios locked at 1.305GHz; and I've only increased the 590 20MHz, from its factory bios lock of 1.58 GHz to 1.6Ghz. Still fiddling some with the fan settings, which right now are @ stock settings. I run with headphones so I never hear it--but when I take them off the fans are quite pronounced when both cards run under load, as you might imagine. Plus there are a couple of 120MM case fans, but those are very quiet, actually. Scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being too loud for comfort, I'd say both fans on full are a ~7.5...but then, as I mentioned, I'm usually always gaming with phones...! But of course when surfing the 'net, the fans are silent as a tomb--fortunately...
You are exactly right...! I have yet to to really work with my vram. I did try to OC to 2200 MHz on both cards--wasn't stable. However the mVs for 480 are 1000 (1v) and 950 stock for the 590. So tinkering in that department definitely comes next! I did try 2100Mhz on the Vram--and that was stable at stock voltages--but I could see little if any performance gain from it. Thanks for the tip!... EDIT: Graphics score for the Crossfire rig is 27,507; with both cards set to 2100MHz (8.4GHz effective) --
That's unusual as some of the biggest gains come from overclocking the memory as apposed to the core on GCN.
On my 480 if I get the memory voltage to 1150 its the recomended max voltage I will go from 2000 to 2100 mine is the 4g version so its crap on the memory. use HWinfo to check the memory errors Will make a video this weak about that explaning how to use it.
Hope all you guys are having a very Merry Christmas--wish you a happy New Year--it's a whole year before we rinse and repeat and do it all again... Not much to report that I haven't said--Crossfire 590/480 is still running great, and the more I familiarize myself with it the more I like it. The implementation is far better than it was years ago with twin 4850's. Still really pleased with the mutli-GPU support under SoftTR's DX12 mode--it seems very well thought out and implemented. With 4k resolutions becoming increasingly affordable these days (in actual RGB monitors) it would appear that D3d12's multi-GPU API functionality has a bright future--something I wasn't sure about before taking this route.