This month saw the release of AMD’s new RX 590 graphics card. Based on the same Polaris architecture as its predecessor, the RX 580, but with 15% higher clock speeds than the reference design, AMD claims a performance increase of around 10%.
Thanks to the new card being based on the same Polaris architecture as the RX 570 and RX 580, it works out of the box in a Hackintosh or Mac Pro running MacOS Mojave 10.4. So how does it compare to the older cards in terms of performance under MacOS?
For these tests, we used the Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX 590 Special Edition, but cards from other manufacturers, including PowerColor and Asus ROG are already available with a small variation in specifications, and should perform similarly.
| Name | Core Clock | Memory Clock |
|---|---|---|
| Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX 590 SE | 1469 MHz/ 1560 MHz (Boost) | 2100 MHz |
| ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 590 8G Gaming | 1469 Mhz / 1545 Mhz (Boost) | 2000 MHz |
| PowerColor Red Devil RX 590 8G | 1469 MHz / 1576Mhz (Boost) | 2000 MHz |
Once installed, the card is recognised under Mojave as “Radeon Polaris” with 8192 MB (8GB) of VRAM. If you’re already using a Radeon card, the RX 590 is a drop-in replacement.
Benchmarks
Rise of the Tomb Raider (High detail, 2560×1080)
AMD RX 560 4GB: 37.9 fps
AMD RX 570 4GB: 78.2 fps
AMD RX 570 8GB: 78.8 fps
AMD RX 580 8GB: 79.2 fps
AMD RX 590 8GB: 79.8 fps
AMD RX Vega 56: 85.8 fps
AMD RX Vega 64: 97.4 fps
Unigine Valley 1.0 (Extreme HD Preset)
AMD RX 560 4GB: 22.9 fps
AMD RX 570 8GB: 44.1 fps
AMD RX 580 8GB: 48.3 fps
AMD RX 590 8GB: 51.4 fps
AMD RX Vega 56: 52.8 fps
AMD RX Vega 64: 69.4 fps
Geekbench OpenCL
AMD RX 560 4GB: 73,197
AMD RX 570 4GB: 117,802
AMD RX 570 8GB: 122,414
AMD RX 580 8GB: 141,102
AMD RX 590 8GB: 147,812
AMD RX Vega 56: 167,255
AMD RX Vega 64: 189,342
BruceX 5K Benchmark FCPX (Lower is better)
AMD RX 560 4GB: 29 seconds
AMD RX 570 8GB: 17.1 seconds
AMD RX 580 8GB: 15.3 seconds
AMD RX 590 8GB: 14.7 seconds
AMD RX Vega 56: 12.9 seconds
AMD RX Vega 64: 11.4 seconds
The benchmarks put the performance of the RX 590 slap bang between the RX 580 and the RX Vega 56, but closer to the RX 580 in most cases, giving a performance increase oif around 5-10% over its older sibling. The price is significantly less than the Vega 56, which makes the RX 590 a good option if you’re looking for more performance than the RX 580 can offer but would prefer not to splash out on a Vega card.