AMD Radeon RX 580: How Does It Stack Up?

AMD's Radeon RX 500-series graphics cards are here, but are they worth it? The latest cards are based on the same Ellesmere GPU architecture as last year's RX 480, so there isn't a ton to talk about. The $230 card has a faster core clock than last year's model, which means increased performance.

Sapphire Nitro+ RX 580. Credit: Tom's Hardware

(Image credit: Sapphire Nitro+ RX 580. Credit: Tom's Hardware)

Our friends at our sister sites Tom's Hardware and Anandtech, who posted very granular, detailed reviews, tested the new cards from third-party vendors (AMD isn't producing reference cards) and found a noticeable difference over the RX 480. In some cases, it even comes close to the Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060.

See all of the benchmarks by scrolling through the gallery below, and even more at the links above.

On the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark, the RX 580 ran the game at 74.7 fps at 1080p and 51 fps at 2560 x 1440. The GTX 1060 ran the test at 82.4 fps and 54 fps at the two resolutions.

Both the 1060 and the RX 580 ran Ashes of the Singularity at 51.7 fps at 1080p, and came within one tenth of a frame (45.7 fps on the 1060, 45.6 fps on the RX 580) at 1440p.

MORE: Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti: Everything You Need to Know

The Nvidia and AMD cards were neck and neck on Hitman at very high settings. At 1080p, the RX 580 rendered at 86.2 fps, just above the 1060's 84.8 fps. At 1440p, they played at  61.5 fps and 62.6 fps, respectively.

Want to use your new RX 580 for VR? It delivered a score of 7.1 on the SteamVR test, a small bump over the RX 480 (6.8) but lower than the GTX 1060 (8.1).

For even more benchmarks, see the gallery above and check out Anandtech and Tom's Hardware for in-depth reviews.

Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is an editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming as well as keeping up with the latest news. He holds a M.S. in Journalism (Digital Media) from Columbia University. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Kotaku, PCMag, Complex, Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag among others.