
The AMD Radeon RX 580 and RX 570 Review - nedsma
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11278/amd-radeon-rx-580-rx-570-review
======
2bluesc
They effectively KabyLake'd it. They released a slightly better (5% quoted
from Anandtech article) for the sake of a seasonal/yearly release cycle. Vega
is supposed to be the big fish.

The only upside from this from my point of view (a recent RX 470 owner on
Arch) is that Linux drivers are likely very close to "just working". Currently
somethings have just made their way in to the kernel (Audio bitstreaming, 4.11
I think, and I think I saw it first hand I was running the 4.11 release
candidate a few days ago) and soon FreeSync (FWIW) and HDCP are coming soon.

Upside: No proprietary kernel blobs. I applaud AMD on this front and it
completely motivated my purchasing decision of my RX 470 (vs nVidia 1060).

~~~
sliken
I have a gtx 1070 and a gtx 1060 system and things "just work". On linux I
have bluray playback, various older games on steam, random webGL games or
demos, various desktop effects (standard unity).

Do things like that work with the AMD? Do the AMD drivers still have issues
with playback? Or leaving yourself logged into for a week with 100 windows
that triggers a mem leak so that all new windows are a black rectangle? Pixel
corruption? Performance worse than a 3 generation old nvidia?

~~~
merkaloid
I have a 1070 and Chrome crashes all the time watching streams/youtube, got
flickering on windows when running a 144hz monitor

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old-gregg
Related: is there an AMD card which can smoothly run modern Linux desktops
(with all of the effects) using a built-in kernel OSS driver? Preferably
fanless. I want to try Ryzen but don't want to buy a loud power hungry monster
and deal with proprietary nVidia drivers.

Thanks!

~~~
2bluesc
I have a Gigabyte RX 470 on Arch Linux. The mainline kernel `amdgpu` driver
works fine with only minor issues on Xorg. My current setup is a RX 470 with
two LG27UD58s via DisplayPort and 4k@60Hz works fine. I do mostly desktop
productivity stuff, but have fired up games briefly(Dota2, Cities: Skylines).
There are RX 460 variants that are fanless and can be had for a good price
with the RX 500 series release.

Known issues:

* DisplayPort + HDMI audio bitstreaming is in the 4.11 kernel, I believe I saw the ALSA audio devices on a 4.11 release candidate I ran briefly for another issue.

* HDCP isn't implemented yet (can't confirm though)

* FreeSync isn't implemented yet (can't confirm either, not sure of the utility other then gaming and maybe video vsync improvements)

Follow the news @
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=AMDGPU](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=AMDGPU)
The "AMDGPU" driver is the OSS and the AMDGPU-PRO is the proprietary driver.

Side note, I moved from the Radeon 6870 I bought years ago (or Bitcoin mining,
I have two blocks in the chain to that card's credit... a different time). I
dropped it not for performance but for deprecated driver support because of
the the `radeon` driver. Review this table[1] and try to pick a card that
falls under the `amdgpu` driver to avoid support issues in years to come.

[1]
[https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/#index5h2](https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/#index5h2)

[2]
[https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/#index1h2](https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/#index1h2)

~~~
old-gregg
Hehe, small world. I think I saw your review of it on NewEgg earlier, thanks!
:)

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m0llusk
The purpose of this hardware is to render high resolution graphics at high
frame rates. Are there any comparative benchmarks available? There is a lot of
discussion of the hardware, but few if any metrics of the resulting
performance.

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fizixer
Where are 490, 490X? (if not 490X2)

I came across a blender OpenCL vs CUDA benchmark in which 480 was being
compared to GeForce GTX 1060 and a claim was made that OpenCL is finally on
par with CUDA. So 480 can't be a flagship model of 400 series. (1060 has 4
ahead of it in lineup: 1070, 1080, Titan X, Titan XP).

~~~
NotQuantum
I think I read that OpenCL on the 480 finally caught up to OpenCL on the 1060.
I believe CUDA still works better.

~~~
fizixer
\- Either 480 vs 1060 was a garbage comparison (480 is AMD's flagship while
1060 is nVidia's lightweight GPU) and OpenCL is way way behind CUDA in blender
render performance (to the point that I would call that news clip a bullshit
clickbait news item).

\- or AMD 480 is not AMD's flagship 400 series offering, in which case why
they haven't released one?

 __edit __: anyway I just read some of the details of 580 and it makes me sick
how pathetic AMD is. They went from 200 to 300 series by pure rebranding and
practically zero tech advancement. And now they 're doing the same thing going
from 400 to 500. (Which means a 580 is really a 380 or 390 in terms of
improvements over an 8GB 290X).

~~~
tgb
Here's the article:
[https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Source/Render/Cycles/...](https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Source/Render/Cycles/OpenCL)

Regarding your edit, hasn't Nvidia done that multiple times too? Didn't they
skip the 800 series (it was mobile only) and weren't the 100 series rebranded
9000 series and the 300 series rebranded 200 series?

~~~
fizixer
I wouldn't be surprised if they have. Their proprietary CUDA gimmicks are much
worse. But with AMD supporting the OpenCL open platform, there is some hope of
do-no-evil. But they keep disappointing.

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mamon
If I'm reading correctly then the only thing changed from previous models are
memory and core clocks. Why even bother with such "update"? Difference in
performance is negligible, but 30W more power consumption costs you real money

~~~
dom0
> Why even bother with such "update"?

This is a pretty usual practice for GPUs; one generation has a new
architecture and new chips in the mainstream/performance segment, the next
generation uses the same chips with some minor tweaks. The lower end often
stays on the same architecture for longer. All GPUs get the same marketing
number be it "GT 5XX" or "RX 4xx" to have a consistent line-up. It's just
marketing, really.

