AMD’s Radeon RX 590 inches closer to launch, will take on Nvidia’s GTX 1060

By Chuong Nguyen Published October 25, 2018

AMD RADEON RX 480 — Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

AMD‘s Radeon RX 590 is now all but officially confirmed. Though AMD has not yet announced the card, the Radeon RX 590 made an appearance at the Eurasian Economic Union certification office after third-party manufacturer PowerColor submitted the graphics card for regulatory approval. The government listing shows two product codes, an AXRX 580 8GBD5-3DH/OC and a second AXRX 690 8GBD5-3DH/OC. The second product code is believed to be for the Radeon RX 590, while the first code may be for an overclocked version of AMD’s current RX 580 with more video memory, according to TechRadar.

This isn’t the first time that we’re hearing about the Radeon RX 590. Previously, the chip was spotted going through 3DMark’s benchmark tests. The results of those earlier leaked benchmarks put the performance of AMD’s Radeon RX 590 directly in between the performance of Nvidia’s competing GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 cards. This should give most gamers quite a bit of graphics performance, but if the early benchmarks are to be believed, the Radeon RX 590 still won’t be able to top Nvidia’s flagship GTX 1080 card. As such, the Radeon RX 590 is expected to be a competitive mid-range graphics card, and if AMD is able to price the new GPU aggressively, this could be a big win for gamers or those wanting a virtual reality-compatible system.

Recommended Videos

From the performance benchmarks, it appears that AMD is pushing for faster clock speeds with the RX 590. The graphics card clocked in at 1,545MHz, compared to the RX 580’s 1,340MHz. The new RX 590 is expected to share the same 8GB GDDR5 memory and 2,000Hz memory bus clock speed as the Radeon RX580. Though we don’t know when the RX 590 is expected to be announced, earlier reports suggested that AMD could refresh its Radeon RX 500 lineup in 2019. The new cards could be built on a new 12nm manufacturing process as part of AMD’s Polaris 30 architecture.

To compete against the Radeon RX 590, rival Nvidia may also be working on a more affordable GPU option that delivers more performance to counter AMD in the mid-range space. Earlier this week, we reported that Nvidia may be refreshing its GTX 1060 card with faster GDDR5 video memory to give it a performance boost.

Computing Writer

Silicon Valley-based technology reporter and Giants baseball fan who splits his time between Northern California and Southern…

Topics

Computing

AMD may finally have an answer to Nvidia’s dominance

RX 7900 XTX installed in a test bench.

Although AMD makes some of the best graphics cards, there's one thing it has always struggled with when compared to Nvidia: ray tracing. Even though RDNA 3 brought some improvements in that regard, Nvidia remains the king of ray tracing. However, a new leak about the upcoming RDNA 4 generation tells us that things might be about to change -- and the PlayStation 5 Pro might already benefit.

The scoop comes from Kepler_L2 on X (formerly Twitter), who shared a list of ray tracing features that are being added with RDNA 4. The leaker also claims that most of these should be available in the PS5 Pro, which won't run on RDNA 4 entirely, but is said to utilize parts of it to supplement the RDNA 3.5 chip that it'll house.

Computing

Details on the upcoming AMD and Nvidia GPUs just got leaked

The RX 7900 XTX.

Seasonic, a prominent PSU manufacturer, has reportedly revealed several upcoming GPUs from AMD's Radeon RX 7000 series and Nvidia's RTX 5000 series on its website. Seasonic listed the unreleased GPUs on its Wattage Calculator webpage, mentioning at least four new AMD and five new Nvidia models, although they seem to be removed at the time of writing this article.

As per a report, Seasonic’s website referenced high-end models of AMD's forthcoming Radeon RX 7000 series, including the RX 7990 XTX, RX 7950 XTX, and RX 7950 XT. This is the first time these specific models have been spotted anywhere online, adding to the anticipation surrounding AMD's next-gen GPUs. However, it's worth noting that this isn't the first time AMD has introduced a high-end refresh. Previously, it launched the "XX50" models as part of the RDNA 2 refresh, which included the 6950 XT, 6750 XT, and 6650 XT.

Computing

AMD may lose a golden opportunity to beat Nvidia this year

A year and a half after the launch of RDNA 3, AMD's graphics card lineup has grown a little stagnant -- as has Nvidia's. We're all waiting for a new generation, and according to previous leaks, AMD was getting ready to release RDNA 4 later this year. Except that now, we're hearing that it might not happen until CES 2025, which is still six months away.

Launching the new GPUs in the first quarter of 2025 is a decision that could easily backfire, and it's never been more important for AMD to get the timing right. In fact, if AMD really decides to wait until January 2025 to unveil RDNA 4, it'll miss out on a huge opportunity to beat Nvidia.
There's never been a better time
Who's a PC hardware enthusiast's best friend during the period between one generation of GPUs and the next? Various leakers, of course. Without them, we'd be kept in the dark for months on end.