Gavin took a look at the ASUS ROG RX 580 STRIX OC graphics card and gave it a thorough going over to bring you the facts and, of course, his opinions! Is the RX 580, more specifically the ASUS variant, a card that you should be looking at when purchasing a card in the sub £300/$300 market? You can find out from the video that is embedded below or you can read this concluded version. The choice is yours, folks.
Most notable on the RX 580 and this is absolutely in no way the fault of ASUS, is the increased power draw over the RX 480. Instead of bringing us a new core with tweaks, AMD has literally just bumped up the voltage and clock speeds, and then given us a “new” card. It isn’t a new trick in the books by any stretch of the imagination, but it isn’t one that any enthusiast appreciates! It has the same amount of VRAM, 8GB to be exact, but the GPU will unfortunately, run out of steam before that is utilised fully.
So the ASUS STRIX variant naturally features their STRIX cooler, DCU III in other words, and it does a phenomenal job at keeping the card cool. It touches all of the right areas such as the core, VRAM, and VRM. The triple fan design helps to keep things cool whilst giving out minimal noise. Other than that, the card is identical to the RX 480 version that it replaced with the exception of its clock speeds that have been increased as I previously mentioned.
Its direct competitor from NVIDIA would have to be the GTX 1060, and it does often lose out to the 1060 in most circumstances. It does well in 1080P but it still doesn’t quite cut the mustard when pushing towards the 1440P arena, or higher for that matter. If you are looking for a solid 1440P card, or even edging towards 4K, then you need to look elsewhere. The card just cannot cope with that massive amount of pixels that need to be pushed to the screen.
We do know that GPUs are currently extremely difficult to get hold of due to this insane mining craze that’s going on, but if you were to buy a card… it really is a toss up between this and the GTX 1060, be it a STRIX model or something else. As Gavin clearly stated, if you can grab yourself an RX 480 for cheaper, you may as well go ahead and do that. If you can’t, then this one will suit you just fine as well.
Thank you very much to ASUS for providing us with a sample of the RX 580 STRIX.
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Performance
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Design
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Value
Summary
Pros:
– Great card and great cooler overall
– Best example of RGB on a graphics card (AMD side)
– At ‘regular’ pricing levels, offers good value
Cons:
– Increased power draw over RX 480
– Literally an RX 480 with increased voltage and clock speeds
– Coin miners have left the GPU market in tatters!
Good luck finding one at that price!