ASRock Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX580 8G OC Review: A Solid Rookie Effort

[FormatC]

ASRock is stepping out with its first add-in graphics card, the Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX580 8G OC. This mainstream solution flies under the radar with a cost-conscious design, but should shine against competing models once it's available.

ASRock Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX580 8G OC Review: A Solid Rookie Effort : Read more

 

[Ulikedat]

At least it's a looker and the competition just got a bit more heated (no pun intended).

 

[alextheblue]

I have to wonder, since aiming for a cut-down budget design, why not an RX570? An entry level RX580 with halfway decent cooling can be had new for $270. The cheapest 570 I've seen is a reference model for $250. Push a budget aftermarket RX570 closer to $200 and undercut everyone else. Clocks and TDP would be lower (especially if they stuck close to reference), which would have further reduced board and cooler costs.

Or perhaps yields are so good at this point, that there just aren't many cut-down Ellesmere chips getting pushed out the door?

 

[BulkZerker]

@alextheblue they are pushing the bang for buck at every point it seems. It begs to wonder if some "cheap" (like as5) thermal paste would help or not. Certainly an aftermarket heatsink would help the temps.

 

[TJ Hooker]

If this card is like most 580s, it will respond quite well to lowering the core voltage. With some undervolting (and maybe a slight underclock), you could likely improve power, thermals and noise noticeably with no (or little) impact on performance.

 

[AnimeMania]

What's going on with the numbers for GTX 1060 3GB with certain games like Hitman and DOOM, they can't really be that bad, can they?

 

[gca.roberts]

The 1R0 marking on the GDDR5 VRM inductor means 1.0uH, not 1.0mH.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

This is quite a nice card, especially for those looking to switch to FreeSync and the open drivers that AMD provides (For accelerating stuff like data compression or video encoding).

Like all cards, I just wish it was available, this crypto craziness is on the downslope for now, but you never know when cards are just going to be missing from the shelves for months.

 

[Olle P]

I have to wonder, since aiming for a cut-down budget design, why not an RX570? ...

Around here there's almost no price difference between a 570 (4GB) and 580 (8GB). The latter is significantly better at the all important 1080p so that's where to make profit.

If this card is like most 580s, it will respond quite well to lowering the core voltage. ...

One can only hope. The 180W drawn is a bit steep IMO.

What's going on with the numbers for GTX 1060 3GB with certain games like Hitman and DOOM, they can't really be that bad, can they?

Seems off topic...
The 3GB is a cut down version of the 6GB, with fewer ROPs and less memory bandwidth. 3GB VRAM is also insufficient to run newer games efficiently.

 

[AnimeMania]

What's going on with the numbers for GTX 1060 3GB with certain games like Hitman and DOOM, they can't really be that bad, can they?

Seems off topic...
The 3GB is a cut down version of the 6GB, with fewer ROPs and less memory bandwidth. 3GB VRAM is also insufficient to run newer games efficiently.

According to another review on Tom's Hardware, the GTX 1060 3GB had 68.1 FPS on Hitman at Ultra Levels.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-graphics-card-roundup,4724-2.html

The GTX 1060 3GB in this article had 21.2 FPS on Hitman at Very High Levels. I don't think it is off topic if I am questioning the reliability of the benchmarking process used here. I was just wondering why the results seem to fluctuate so wildly. One value is 3 times higher than the other.

 

[alextheblue]

Around here there's almost no price difference between a 570 (4GB) and 580 (8GB). The latter is significantly better at the all important 1080p so that's where to make profit.

That was my point. There's less competition for cheap RX 570s. Their 580 design cuts down on costs across the board (pun intended). They could cut down even further with the lower-TDP (and presumably cheaper) RX 570 and undercut the entire field substantially. An RX 570 at ~$200 would be enticing for budget builds.

When they first came out there was often a substantial price difference between full Ellesmere and cut-down Ellesmere. That's why I'm speculating that there just isn't enough supply of 570 chips to make this possible.

 

[alextheblue]

The GTX 1060 3GB in this article had 21.2 FPS on Hitman at Very High Levels. I don't think it is off topic if I am questioning the reliability of the benchmarking process used here. I was just wondering why the results seem to fluctuate so wildly. One value is 3 times higher than the other.

What you're looking at is very likely the result of drivers over the last ~15 months. If it was testing methodology, why doesn't the 6GB version suffer in Doom and Hitman? What it looks like to me is that the current drivers aren't being as efficient with memory allocation and you're dipping into system RAM on the 3GB model, or there's some bug that's causing memory usage issues. If the card was performing poorly in all games I'd say there's an issue with the card. But it performs "as expected" for some titles, and not for others. But Doom and Hitman? Drivers are what I'd blame.

Also, look at both those articles again. Look at The Witcher 3 1440p average FPS for the 1060 6GB. The fastest 1060 scored 52.1 on the older article, and the unnamed (probably more pedestrian to go against the el cheapo ASRock 580) 1060 6GB on the newer article scored 52.2. So there are driver improvements, but it seems they unintentionally caused problems with certain games for the 3GB model. You can probably drop settings a notch and get RAM consumption back under control and performance would rocket back up.

 

[ohenryy]

It's about time Asrock has it's own VGA lineup. Most others have it and they are actually the ones I was most looking for to see doing some graphics cards.
It's a good start with the 580, the card is a well worth competitor to the 1060's out there and I do think it's a better choice. If you have a Freesync, this card is a no brainer.
Now we just need to start seeing the card available and at normal prices...

 

[Olle P]

... Their 580 design cuts down on costs across the board (pun intended). They could cut down even further with the lower-TDP (and presumably cheaper) RX 570 and undercut the entire field substantially. ...

I'm not so sure about that.
1. The tested RX 580 doesn't seem to have that substantial reductions in production cost. It still has 8GB of fast memory and four outputs.
2. I don't think that currently the wholesale price of 570 and 580 GPU chips doesn't differ a lot from each other.
3. Even if ASRock were able to sell 570 cards at a significantly lower price the vendors could just increase their own margins instead.

 

[Olle P]

The GTX 1060 3GB in this article had 21.2 FPS on Hitman at Very High Levels. I don't think it is off topic...

Sorry about my "off topic" remark. I didn't check the gaming results very close and definitely not in comparison to other tests.

What you're looking at is very likely the result of drivers over the last ~15 months. ...

Updated graphics drivers is a possible explanation, yes.
You can for example see a similar impact on Rise of the Tomb Raider, where the "average" FPS has dropped from 69 to 44 with the same settings.

Other possible factors:
* Different CPU and RAM speed/latency used for the tests.
* Impact from Spectre/Meltdown patch. (Should affect the faster cards even more though.)
* Different specs between the previously tested MSI Gaming X and the card now used. (The MSI card is ~10% faster than reference while running in "OC mode".)
* Updated (more demanding) game files.
* Ran the test using a different part of the game?

 

[alextheblue]

1. The tested RX 580 doesn't seem to have that substantial reductions in production cost. It still has 8GB of fast memory and four outputs.
2. I don't think that currently the wholesale price of 570 and 580 GPU chips doesn't differ a lot from each other.
3. Even if ASRock were able to sell 570 cards at a significantly lower price the vendors could just increase their own margins instead.

1) They cut wherever they could, aside from wanting to compete head-to-head with 8GB models. They designed a cheaper, smaller board design with reduced componentry costs. This would be even easier with a 570-specific design, given lower power demand (cheaper PD circuitry) and lower TDP (even smaller/cheaper HSF). A 570 at a low price point could also slash VRAM in half to 4GB since it would be pitted against other 4GB 570s and 1060 3GB.
2) I have no data on this. Link? That's why I was speculating about 570 chip supply from AMD.
3) The vendor margins bit is true of anything they release. They could try to sell this cheaper 8GB RX 580 and get it bumped by $30-50 (better than $200+ over MSRP like it was!). As supply loosens and mining ETH winds down, that will start to rectify itself, because there are lots of vendors. All you need is good supply and one vendor selling at/near MSRP to bring pricing in-line at the others.

At least until something takes over for ETH and is also ASIC-resistant (for a while). :/

* Impact from Spectre/Meltdown patch.

Hah, I almost forgot about that one! My only Intel systems currently are non-gaming machines so I tend to not think about it. It wouldn't explain the huge crash in performance between the 3GB and 6GB models though... but it does offset some of the performance gains they made in their drivers.

 

[Olle P]

2. I don't think that currently the wholesale price of 570 and 580 GPU chips doesn't differ a lot from each other.

2) I have no data on this. Link? That's why I was speculating about 570 chip supply from AMD.
... All you need is good supply.

Pricing is a speculation from my side, based on the supply argument below.
Since the retail prices have gone way up one can expect all parties involved wanting to get a piece of the action and doing so by increasing their sale prices.
Then there's the question of what constitutes a "good" supply. There's no apparent shortage of AMD based graphics cards in Sweden today, at the current prices, so if vendors could make a profit by cutting the consumer prices and sell more they probably would. If the vendors has paid (way) above MSRP to get the cards in the first place they can't reduce the prices without making a loss on each sale.

 

[alextheblue]

If the vendors has paid (way) above MSRP to get the cards in the first place they can't reduce the prices without making a loss on each sale.

That's true, and it slows down overall price reductions across the market. But a card which is new to the channel and sold at a lower price wouldn't have that problem. The problem would again become supply-related retailer gouging. If they could supply an infinite number of a new card at a low price, all it takes is one vendor sticking to MSRP to keep the rest from gouging.

 

[HugoMeira]

What happened to GTX 1060 3GB? He simply died in 3 games that are dependent on vram at very high or ultra. This board has always been a nvidia cheat. I prefer RX470 / 570 or RX 580 4GB.

 

[HugoMeira]

What happened with GTX 1060 3GB? Simply died in 3 games that are dependent on vram at very high or ultra. This board has always been a nvidia cheat. I prefer RX470/570 or RX 580 4GB.