AMD Radeon RX 590 Review

The AMD Radeon RX 590 is a graphics card aimed at gaming at Full HD and 2K resolutions. It is built on AMD’s 12 nm FinFET Polaris 30 design, a refresh of the 14 nm FinFET Polaris 20 chip used in the earlier RX 580. This review covers the RX 590’s architecture, build and connectivity, its performance across resolutions in both synthetic and in-game tests, and its thermal and power behaviour. The unit we reviewed is a factory-overclocked XFX model.

Design & Build

The RX 590 uses a dual-slot form factor and measures 241 mm, with an aluminium backplate on the rear. Its display outputs are three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and one HDMI 2.0b port. The card supports FreeSync and VR.

Specs & Architecture

The RX 590 is based on AMD’s 12 nm FinFET Polaris 30 design, where the earlier RX 580 used a 14 nm FinFET Polaris 20 chip. It reaches up to 7.1 TFLOPs and carries 36 compute units, 2304 stream processors and 32 ROPs; the ROP count matches the RX 580. Memory is 8 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, running at 8 Gbps.

The reference base clock is 1469 MHz with boost up to 1545 MHz. The XFX model we reviewed is factory overclocked and runs up to 1580 MHz, and can reach around 1600 MHz with manual overclocking. The RX 590 chip is also sold under other board-partner brands. In our testing, it runs about 15 percent faster than the RX 580.

Performance

The test system paired the RX 590 with an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processor on an MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC motherboard, with 16 GB of XPG SPECTRIX D80 DDR4 memory. Power came from an FSP Hyper K 700 W supply in an FSP CMT510 case, cooling was a Dark Aqua Force W240 liquid cooler, and storage was an XPG SX8200 M.2 SSD. The card ran at stock settings with a balanced power profile, and neither the card nor the system was overclocked during testing.

In synthetic tests, the card scored 5170 in Time Spy at 2K and 14125 in Fire Strike at Full HD, and reached 35833 in Night Raid. In Cinebench it returned a result of 106.

Both games were tested at Ultra settings. The table below shows average frame rates by resolution:

Game (Ultra)	Full HD	2K	4K
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey	46 fps	36 fps	22 fps
Far Cry 5	78 fps	56 fps	29 fps

Thermals & Power

At idle, during light tasks such as web browsing, the RX 590 sits at about 35 °C, rising to around 78 °C under sustained load. Under load it draws about 220 W, which is high for a card in this class and is its main drawback.

Who Is AMD Radeon RX 590 For?

The RX 590 suits users gaming at Full HD and 2K who want 8 GB of memory along with FreeSync and VR support. Because it runs only about 15 percent faster than the RX 580, users already on an RX 580 gain little from moving to it; the card makes more sense for users upgrading from an older or lower-tier card. It is less suited to 4K gaming, where frame rates in demanding titles fall below 30 fps.