[SOLVED] Is the AMD Radeon RX 590 a good card for my rig?

[Jeffsta]

My Budget is $300 U.S. and under. I'm looking at the Tom's Hardware All GPU's Ranked. I can't help but notice that if I want 8GB memory in a GPU, which I was told was the "sweetspot", then I would either have to go way over budget to get a Nvidea GeForce GTX 1080, or get this XFX AMD Radeon RX 590 Fatboy, which would be under my budget and allow me to upgrade my PSU if needed. Is that Radeon RX 590 a good card? Do I need to upgrade my PSU? I want to play games like GTA5 and do some video editing. I shop at newegg, microcenter, and amazon but would buy that GPU at Walmart if you think it's good.

My Rig,
Corsair Carbide SPEC-01 Gaming Case
Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 Motherboard
Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz LGA 1150 Processor
Raijintek Pallas CPU Cooler w/ Fan
XFX TS550 PSU (4 1/2 years old)
HyperX Savage 16GB DDR3 1866
EVGA Geforce GTX 750ti
LG BDRW
2 x 140mm Red LED Case Fans
3 x 120mm Black Case Fans

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hey there,

Very key to the decision is what resolution you game at?

If it's 1080p 60hz then the RX590 will be perfect for you. Your CPU may bottleneck a GTX1080 in certain games. Getting it would not be a perfect answer. You may feel abit underwhelmed by the performance.

Either way, I'd defo think about a new PSU. The RX590 is power hungry, and so is the GTX1080. With your PSU at 4.5 yrs, it's time to consider it. After that, I'd think about a system upgrade, and not put any more money into your current system.

 

[Darkbreeze]

This is the best card you can get for under 300 bucks.

PCPartPicker Part List

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6 GB SC ULTRA GAMING Video Card ($283.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $283.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-06 15:51 EST-0500

That gives you probably at least five years (Or more) of competent performance for Ultra settings at 1080p, and medium to high (Or even Ultra depending on the demands of the title) for 1440p. It would also give you very decent performance for any GPU acceleration enabled video editing applications. If you could stretch the budget a little more you could fit an RTX 2060 with RT support in there that would even improve things further however the 1660 ti does well enough and is a much better choice than the RX 590.

You might consider a better PSU as well since the XFX TS series you have MIGHT be fairly old. How old it is would be a factor.

 

[Jeffsta]

Thank's for the quick responses! I like both of your answers. Too bad I can only choose 1 as the best. And yes, my display is 1080p 60Hz.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Unless money is the bigger consideration, then the RX 590 is not the card you want. It's performance is significantly outmatched by the GTX 1660 ti.

Especially in 1% low performance.

A Blast from the Past: GeForce GTX 980 Ti vs. GTX 1660 Ti vs. RTX 2060

Today we're revisiting the GeForce GTX 980 Ti to see how it stacks up to the newly released RTX 2060 and GTX 1660 Ti, particularly in more...

www.techspot.com

 

[King_V]

If you're buying in the US, I would go for the 1660 Super instead. Performs about equal to the 1660Ti, but costs about $30 or so less in general.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Seems to be enough of a FPS advantage in some games to make it worth it to me. At 1080p the Techspot review showed about 10FPS HIGHER 1% minimum frame rates, on average, with the 1% minimums on the 1660 ti hovering just about 60FPS with the highest possible settings, which means the 1660 super had low FPS dips of around five to ten FPS below 60FPS. I'd pay an extra 30 bucks to NOT have that be a potential problem. Certainly the quality settings and CPU play a role in that as well and some amount of it might be able to be mitigated, but if you want 1080p Ultra everything above 60FPS performance with no dips below that, then I'd spend the extra thirty bucks.

Might also want to consider keeping an eye open for a 4790k to slap in there which should give you a nice bump in clock speed if you are not already overclocking AND, maybe more importantly, four extra threads that would undoubtedly make a difference for any of the many games now with fairly good threaded optimizations.

 

[Jeffsta]

Wow, thank you very much Darkbreeze! I've been struggling for hours with this decision, but you have made it very easy.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Sorry, that SHOULD have said "10FPS HIGHER 1% minimum frame rates, on average" instead of "10FPS, on average" which would have meant it really sucked. LOL.

 

[antonr]

My Budget is $300 U.S. and under. I'm looking at the Tom's Hardware All GPU's Ranked. I can't help but notice that if I want 8GB memory in a GPU, which I was told was the "sweetspot", then I would either have to go way over budget to get a Nvidea GeForce GTX 1080, or get this XFX AMD Radeon RX 590 Fatboy, which would be under my budget and allow me to upgrade my PSU if needed. Is that Radeon RX 590 a good card? Do I need to upgrade my PSU? I want to play games like GTA5 and do some video editing. I shop at newegg, microcenter, and amazon but would buy that GPU at Walmart if you think it's good.

My Rig,
Corsair Carbide SPEC-01 Gaming Case
Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 Motherboard
Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz LGA 1150 Processor
Raijintek Pallas CPU Cooler w/ Fan
XFX TS550 PSU (4 1/2 years old)
HyperX Savage 16GB DDR3 1866
EVGA Geforce GTX 750ti
LG BDRW
2 x 140mm Red LED Case Fans
3 x 120mm Black Case Fans

I have the I5 4690 and RX 570 and they are matched in heaven . So your RX 590 , which is more powerfull , is going to no problem at all , seeing that you have the 4690K which can even be overclocked.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I have the I5 4690 and RX 570 and they are matched in heaven .

That depends greatly upon your use case and expectations. What is great for one person, is not acceptable for the next. Especially if they expect to still have similar performance a few years down the road when the demands of games has been moderately increased, which it surely will have been since it always does.

When the time comes that a CPU and platform upgrade become NECESSARY, and I expect that it probably will before too long depending on the games you play and the FPS target, a wise person will have purchased a graphics card that is still going to be capable of supporting the desired quality settings rather than again having to make an expensive hardware upgrade to remain at least reasonably balanced with the new CPU. In this case, they would probably not have to do that for an extended period of time assuming a continued target of 1080p.

 

[antonr]

That depends greatly upon your use case and expectations. What is great for one person, is not acceptable for the next. Especially if they expect to still have similar performance a few years down the road when the demands of games has been moderately increased, which it surely will have been since it always does.

When the time comes that a CPU and platform upgrade become NECESSARY, and I expect that it probably will before too long depending on the games you play and the FPS target, a wise person will have purchased a graphics card that is still going to be capable of supporting the desired quality settings rather than again having to make an expensive hardware upgrade to remain at least reasonably balanced with the new CPU. In this case, they would probably not have to do that for an extended period of time assuming a continued target of 1080p.

Thank you, noted. Yes your argument is true. Helpful.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I think personally, you have the i5 now, which is going to limit you a bit going forward due to lack of threads. I think I would do these upgrades.

Power supply
Better CPU (something like an i7 4770k or similar)
New GPU

If you go for the other upgrades, I think on GPU, you should look at either the RX 580 or the gtx 1650 super.

The 590 is not a bad card, I had one for a short time, but if you're staying at 1080p 60hz, the 580 is only just behind it.

Have a look here.

Radeon RX 590 vs. RX 580 vs. GeForce GTX 1060

While technically a new GPU, the Radeon RX 590 is in essence the same RX 580 with a 15% overclock. What we have here is Polaris 20...

www.google.com

Basically the 590 is an overclocked 580. The other thing you need to consider, going forward, the i5 will limit you. Quad core cpus with only 4 threads are starting to struggle in some titles. Battlefield 1 for example was one example. I'm sure there are a lot more going forward. So I say upgrade that, sell your i5. Didn't see in the opening post, but if you don't have an SSD, use the funds from your i5 to get an SSD which would help it just to feel faster in day to day use. If you have one already, put the money aside towards a new system fund, or save for a new display.

I know the RX 580 isn't as flashy as the 590, but compared to your 750ti, it will be a HUGE upgrade. I had a Vega 56, but downgraded to an rx 580 since I got a good deal on selling it. And needed to do the responsible thing and pay some bills. But in the process I got a used rx 580 for about 100 dollars.

I did also purchase the new Jedi game with Christmas money. I started playing last night a little, keep in mind as someone who was used to the Vega 56. I play at 1080p though and have a 144hz monitor with freesync. However, I set the graphics to high settings, and it was perfectly fine. No I'm not getting 144 fps. But at good settings, it was playable and I could enjoy the game on it. I've used a 1050ti in the past, which was faster than your current 750ti. Let me tell you, even an rx 570 or 580 from what you have now is going to be a massive upgrade from what you've got now.

If you feel like it, look around in the used market the 580s on what can still be had around 100 dollars if used doesn't scare you, since there are a lot of mining cards being sold these days. But an i7 would max out your current platform, and the newer card would still let you enjoy some nicer visuals. The PSU upgrade is wise for the future, then it and GPU can be carried to a new build later if you wanted.

 

[King_V]

To follow up on @ohio_buckeye 's post.... which I pretty much agree with, but, if I were to narrow it down to two choices:

1 - RX 570 in terms of bang for buck. A few times, the 4GB variant has plunged down to $99.99 after rebates. As of today, though, the lowest priced one I've seen is $119.99.
2 - GTX 1650 Super - something on the order of RX 580 to RX 590 performance, and the cheapest 1650 Super is the price of the cheapest RX 580 ($159.99), yet consumes significantly less power. It occasionally flirts with RX 590 level performance, for less money and FAR less power consumption than the 590.

I like and generally prefer AMD, but today, I couldn't consider either the RX 580 or RX 590 given the existence of the GTX 1650 Super.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

If you really want to be lower cost on the gpu. The RX 470 for example can be found for under 100 dollars used which is not much slower than the RX 570.

However, especially used, if you can score a good RX 580 8gb for about 100 or just over, that's a good deal imo.

 

[King_V]

True enough - I was trying to stick to new parts with warranty, though.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Point taken. Whichever of those you can get a good price on is fine.

 

[Jeffsta]

I think I would do these upgrades.

Power supply
Better CPU (something like an i7 4770k or similar)
New GPU

I found this used i7 4770k on ebay for $169 U.S. Is that a good deal? I noticed the i7 4790k is around 150-200 bucks more.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4770K

 

[Darkbreeze]

Pretty close in performance, but maybe just a tad wider than what CPU boss is showing. CPU boss and GPU boss are not very definitive in my opinion.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-4770K-vs-Intel-i7-4790K/1919vs2275

Not enough difference to justify a 50 dollar or more price difference though, in any case or stretch of the imagination.

This might even be the better deal though especially if you have no desire to overclock.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core...sh=item4b71f79c4b:g:dNIAAOSwUeBeEWjF&LH_BIN=1

 

[Jeffsta]

Would the i7-4770k be a big improvement over my i5-4690k? Since this was a bit off topic, I started another thread here this morning. One person said it wouldn't make much of a difference, and another person said it would give me 25% more speed.

 

[Darkbreeze]

You can decide for yourself.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i5-4690K-vs-Intel-i7-4770K/2284vs1919


If it's a game that can use more than four threads, or if you are doing any multitasking like recording or streaming or browser based activities WHILE gaming, then yes, it will definitely see some improvement. Plus, if you overclock it you will obviously gain some additional single core and overall performance. You could take any of the 4th or 5th gen CPUs to around 4.5Ghz easily without even having a high end board so long as you have sufficient cooling. That extra 500mhz will make a difference as well PLUS if you factor in also having four additional hyperthreads, then for the price it might be worthwhile.

Truthfully, if it were me, unless there is NO way you could manage to scrape together the rest of the money you'd need to do it over the next few months, it is money that would be better spent being saved towards a platform upgrade that would give you MUCH better performance, like this.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($194.98 @ Walmart)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.99 @ Best Buy)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($69.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $379.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-08 15:41 EST-0500



But if that isn't an option for the near to mid term future then upgrading to one of the 4th or 5th gen i7's is your only other real alternative. Or, you could keep your i5 and OC the shiznit out of it. Might help some.