PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5 Review

BENCHMARKS

3DMARK FIRE STRIKE – SCORE

First up we take a look at 3DMark Fire Strike, a DirectX 11 benchmark that runs at 1920×1080. The differences between the stock and overclocked speeds of the Red Devil are minimal, but our averaged results showed the non-overclocked speeds taking the win here. The stock speeds of the Red Devil were enough to gain a 16% increase in performance over the GTX 970.

3DMARK TIMESPY – SCORE

Moving on to 3DMark’s DirectX 12 benchmark which runs at 2560×1440, we see the overclocked results of our Red Devil pulling out ahead of the GTX 970 by 23%.

UNIGINE HEAVEN

Unigine Heaven offers another synthetic benchmark to gain insight from, and this time, at 1080, we have a much tighter race, with the overclocked Red Devil performing slightly better than the stock clocks, and besting the GTX 970 once again.

Increasing the resolution in Unigine Heaven to 2560×1440, we widen the margins a bit, with the stock Red Devil beating out the GTX 970 by about 8%, and trailing the overclocked speeds by 4%.

UNIGINE SUPERPOSITION

Unigine’s latest benchmark, Superposition, not only provides us with another tool to compare hardware with, but it also features gorgeous visuals. It even includes a VR mode for those users with an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. At 1080 and High settings, the PowerColor Red Devil continues to perform well, with the overclocked settings keeping a slight lead.

STEAMVR PERFORMANCE TEST – SCORE

Valve’s SteamVR Performance Test provides a good understanding of just how well a system will perform when paired up with a VR headset like the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift. While the GTX 970’s score of 6.6 is in the “Good” category, and the Red Devil scored just over 7.0, both cards are suitable for VR applications. We have direct hands-on experience with the GTX 970 and the HTC Vive, and the results are flawless.

VRMARK ORANGE ROOM – AVERAGE FPS

All three cards scored well above the recommended 90FPS for VR use, besting the minimum specification by quite a margin. Again the stock and overclocked results of the Red Devil were quite tight, both beating out the GTX 970 by right around 30FPS.

ASHES OF THE SINGULARITY – AVERAGE FRAMES – DIRECTX 12

Moving over to Ashes of the Singularity, our 1920×1080 results from the PowerColor Red Devil gave us an average FPS of 63.6 at stock speeds and 66 when overclocked. 60FPS is often considered to be the minimum recommended framerate for some types of games, and the 580 has no trouble here.

Bumping up the resolution to 2560×1440, we dip just below 60FPS at stock speeds, with an average of 56.9FPS. The overclocked Red Devil was still able to stay above 60, at 60.6FPS.

Cranked up to 4K, AOTS was pushing both the GTX 970 and the RX 580 hard. Results in the 40-50FPS range are still playable in an RTS type of game, and the 4K resolution brought all three results a bit closer than we have seen in our other results.

GRAND THEFT AUTO 5

The open world of Grand Theft Auto 5 presented us with a few curveballs during our testing. At a resolution of 1920×1080, the GTX 970 showed a 30FPS increase over the RX 580.

The same result was seen at 2560×1440, with the GTX 970 keeping a slightly smaller advantage over the RX 580.

All the way up at 4K, we see the RX 580 reclaim the lead over the GTX 970. While we were a bit surprised by the quite large performance edge the 970 had over the 580 at lower resolutions, we expected that the 4K resolution would take advantage of the extra video memory the Red Devil provides, resulting in better results for the PowerColor card.

TOM CLANCY’S THE DIVISION

The Division has been one of our favorite games since it came out in early 2016. As such, we have included the built-in benchmarking tool results here in our review. At 1920×1080, the Red Devil brings home 88.1FPS, and jumps to an average of 96.7 when overclocked. This type of headroom is nice to see at 1080 resolutions.

Moving up to 1440, the Red Devil still pumps out just over 60FPS at factory settings, and 67.5FPS when overclocked. That is quite the jump up from the barely playable 39.7FPS the GTX 970 was able to muster at 1440.

4K we are brought back down to earth, with sub-40FPS results. The RX 580 is just not build to run 4K resolutions with high settings. Making adjustments here and there can probably make gains towards playable framerates, but at low settings and 4K resolution, things might look pretty bad.