The upcoming launch of AMDs new RX500 GPU line has been a pretty poorly kept secret with new leaks appearing almost daily. None of those compare to the latest leak which gives us a lot of details into the exact specifications of the reference cards. I would quickly like to apologise for the quality of some of the images as they seem to have been taken on a mobile and aren’t the best.
First thing to notice is that it looks like we finally have a new reference cooler design to replace the standard blower cooler that we are used to seeing. I for one think that this has taken far too long to happen, AMD blower coolers have never been great and anyone who remembers the 290X will agree with me on this.
As you can see above, the RX560, 70 and 80 are all using a dual fan cooler design with the smaller 550 using a single fan cooler. It’s nice to see AMD breaking the mold a little bit with their latest GPUs and hopefully, we will see much better temperatures than we’ve come to be accustomed to with team red.
In terms of performance, the 500 series offers both higher base and boost clock speeds than their predecessors. I’m more impressed with the base clocks than I am with their boost speeds. At base clock The 570 and 580 enjoy a 26% and 12% increase over the 470 and 480 but offer quite a poor 3% and 5% boost. One thing to point out is that the reference speeds that AMD have given us is much higher than that of most aftermarket 480 variants, hopefully this means we’ll see some much higher overclocks in the future.
The 560 does offer a 14% increase in total GPU cores with only a slight increase in both base and boost clock speeds so it will come with a moderate increase in performance over the 460. As the RX550 is only coming with 512 GPU cores it is definitely aimed at the entry market and will make a great replacement to integrated graphics should it fall into the right price bracket.
I won’t pass any judgement until I actually get to test these cards myself however I’m not instilled with the greatest confidence that AMD have heavily advertised the performance of the 500 series with the 300 series. The performance increase over the 300 series is pretty great so for someone looking to upgrade from the like of an R7 370 then it’s ideal. If however, you’re the owner of a 400 series card then it might be worth hanging onto it unless AMD price their new line very competitively.
What do you think of the specs of AMDs new line? Tell us in the comments section below.
