Earlier this year, AMD unleashed its Vega architecture with the Vega 64 and Vega 56-based video cards. These cards showed significant improvements over what we were getting performance wise with the Polaris-based RX 500 series video cards. The Vega cards still carry a premium over the fully capable RX 5 series cards, however.
Packing a punch at 1920x1080, the Polaris-based cards deliver excellent performance for your dollar. Last year I looked at the RX 580 GTS 8GB from XFX and now am putting the RX 570 8GB RS version to the test as I look at the XFX RX 570 RS 8GB XXX Edition. XFX offers this card in three iterations, including the XXX edition I am looking at, along with a pair of Black Edition cards.
Mid-range gaming is a very healthy spot to make your mark. The RX 570 RS 8GB XXX edition is a factory overclocked card that uses 8GB of high-speed GDDR5 memory to keep the card from being handicapped. As I saw previously, the RX 500 series cards are fully able to deliver a great 1920x1080 gaming experience in every game I can test. Bumping up to 2560x1440 was even possible on the RX 580 cards I tested. I expect no less from this card from XFX.
Priced at $269 the RX 570 RS 8GB sits squarely in a good price/performance spot. The key is, will it deliver the same great gaming experience as its RX 580 cousin?
XFX RX 570 RS 8GB XXX Edition Closer Look:
If you look for your XFX products at your local brick and mortar location, the dark packaging with red accents is easy to spot on the shelf. The front of the package has the XFX logo up top with a graphic of the RX 570 RS 8GB XXX Edition. The red bar across the box lists the model number, Radeon RX 870 8GB, with badges to the left and right that let the user know this is a factory overclocked RS Edition card. Along the bottom of the box are the AMD-specific features that state this card is VR ready, HDR ready, supports AMD FreeSync technology, and is built on the 14nm FinFET process. The backside again looks at the feature set of this card from XFX. The highlights are XFX's use of Supercell 100mm fans on the Ghost Cooling solution, with the fans supporting ZeroDB load sensing technology.
Inside the package is a bare-bones box that holds the card in place during shipping. While I think foam does a better job of insulating the card from damage, XFX's all cardboard option just works. The accessory package includes a driver disk, dual 6-pin to 8-pin Molex power adapter, warranty card, and a warning card that advises you to grab the latest driver from the web rather than using the version on the disc. Smart advice really!
XFX has several versions of the RX 570 with 8GB VRAM. This one is the RS XXX Edition, which comes with the lowest overclock of the bunch by roughly 40MHz between this card's 1286Mhz core clock and the others running at 1328MHz. The front view shows off the unique design of the card with a pair of Supercell 100mm fans dominating the view. The shroud has a two-tone gloss and matte finish. The back side of the card has an aluminum backplate that serves multiple purposes by adding stability to the PCB and cooling the back side of the VRM package via strategically placed ventilation holes. The XFX logo stands out prominently on the backplate.
Measuring 243 x 124 x 40mm, this card easily fits in most chassis. This Polaris-based card is built around the 14nm FinFET Polaris GPU and is for use in a motherboard equipped with a PCIe Gen3 16x slot. The top side of the shroud provides a visual of the XFX logo that lights up, along with a view of the pair of 8mm composite heat pipes that are integral to the cooling solution. The bottom view shows how robust the heat sink package is and the amount of space occupied by the heat sink.
Display connectivity on the XFX RX 570 RS 8GB XXX Edition consists of a single DL-DVI-D port, a single HDMI 2.0b port, and a trio of HDR-ready DisplayPort 1.4 ports that support up to four displays. The openings in the I/O panel continues to be the large XFX logo that allows for plenty of airflow to come out of the card; the bulk of the thermal load will be dumped into the chassis. This is not a new problem, as we see it on most cards with this cooling design. Modern chassis are well equipped to turn over the case air volume fairly regularly with large 120mm and 140mm fans to manage the airflow.
The back end of the shroud hangs over the card to fit the entirety of the cooling package. The back plate mirrors the angled design of the shroud, but sits closer to the end of the PCB.
The RX 580 does support CrossFireX technology if you want to push your 4K gaming to higher FPS levels. Gone are the bridge connections of the past, as AMD moved on to XConnect technology to pass the cross card communication through the PCIe 3.0 bus. This cleans up the look in your chassis.
A single 8-pin PEG connection helps supply up to 200 watts of power when you combine the 75W from the PCIe bus and the 125W from the power supply through the 8-pin PEG connection. XFX recommends at least a 500W PSU as the minimum requirement, with a preferred PSU with a rating of 550W or better when using the RX 570 RS 8GB XXX Edition. A small switch is located just forward of the 8-pin power connection. This switch lets you choose between the factory parameters on one side and a GPU mining optimized BIOS on the other side of the switch.
Peeling the heat sink package off the card shows just how much space is occupied by the new composite heat pipe-based cooling solution. It virtually fills the whole of the fan shroud . XFX uses its XL Ultra Low Noise Inductors to reduce any coil whine on the 5+1 phase digital VRM circuit. The bulk of the all-digital power circuit covers the front third of the PCB.
XFX is known for its cooling solutions. The solution used on the RX 570 RS 8GB XXX Edition features a large aluminum fin array that connects to a captured copper base plate. A pair of XFX's 8mm composite heat pipes carries the thermal load from the GPU, VRM, and GDDR5 memory to the large fin array. As you can see, the heatsink is a multi-purpose part and supports up to three heat pipes, although two are used on this iteration.
XFX's composite heat pipe uses a sintered bronze inner structure that rides against an internally micro-grooved copper outer layer to employ both liquid and capillary action as a means to improve cooling efficiency by up to 30%. A thermal pad is used to interface with the digital VRM circuit, while a moderate layer of thermal compound is used between the copper plate and 14nm FinFET silicon.
Memory cooling on this card comes by way of the airflow provided by the Supercell 100mm fans.
A pair of First D 100mm fans is used to provide the airflow through the heat pipe-based cooling solutions. These fans, part number FDC10U12S9-C, are a 100mm diameter fan with 11 blades to provide a steady stream of airflow to cool the GPU, as well as the VRM components and memory. XFX calls these fans its Supercell fans that are designed to lower fan noise by 10% while improving airflow by 10% to maximize the cooling potential of the cooling package. As a Zero DB fan, these fans can sit idle until the thermal load increases to a predetermined setpoint [usually around 60 °C] and then cycle on to keep the card's components cool.
As a refresh, we are going to see the same 4th Generation 14nm FinFET GCN core, renamed Polaris 20, based on the Ellesmere architecture powering this generation of RX 500 series products. Packed into the 232mm² sized die are 5.7 billion transistors that make up the 32 compute units, 2048 Stream processors, 128 texture units, and 32 ROPs.
The baseline core clock speed on this card comes in at 1286MHz from the factory and is tuned with XFX's True Clock technology. This is a significant boost over the reference clock speeds of 1168MHz. A total of 8GB of Micron GDDR5 memory is used on the RX 570 RS 8GB XXX Edition. It's a nice bump up from the 4GB used on earlier RX 570 cards. The 8GB of Micron VRAM runs at an effective data rate of 7000Gbps or 2000MHz through a 256-bit bus to ensure you have plenty of memory bandwidth available.
As I have seen with other RX 500 series cards from XFX, its unique look sets the brand apart from others. After looking at the RX 580 GTS last year, this card uses many of the same visual styling cues. I find that the apple does not fall far from the tree here with the design and hardware continuity that delivers a great performing video card.
Is AMD Radeon RX 570 8gb good for gaming?
The Radeon RX 570 is an AMD video card categorized as High Performance. It is 8 generations old. The Radeon RX 570 will run 98% of the top 12,000 PC games. It will also run 82% of these games at the recommended or best experience levels.
What is the RX 570 8gb equivalent to?
The NVIDIA equivalent of an RX 570 is a GTX 1060. There is a price sweet spot for every product line, usually somewhere around the xx60 level.
How old is RX 570?
The Radeon RX 570 is a mid-range graphics card by AMD, launched on April 18th, 2017. Built on the 14 nm process, and based on the Polaris 20 graphics processor, in its Polaris 20 XL variant, the card supports DirectX 12.
Is RX 570 8gb future proof?
Built on the future-proof Polaris architecture, the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon™ RX 570 graphics card plays your favorites at a smooth 1080p, from the latest eSports games and MOBAs to the most popular, graphically-intensive AAA titles.