Best value GPU for hackintosh – Radeon RX 560 vs RX 570
The RX 560 and RX 570 are two of AMD’s cheapest GPU’s, and since they’re both based on the same Polaris architecture, they work out of the box in macOS Catalina, making them ideal for a budget hackintosh build, or for use in an eGPU enclosure on a real Mac.
At the time of writing, the price difference between the two cards is pretty small, with a 4GB RX 570 costing around 30% more, on average, than a 4GB RX 560.
In this article, we’ll be taking a look at some benchmarks to find out if the performance difference between the two cards is sufficient to justify paying the extra money, or if you can get by with an RX 560 for GPU-intensive tasks like gaming and video editing.
For these tests, we used the Radeon RX 560 STRIX 4GB and the Gigabyte Aorus RX 570 4GB.
System Specs
- CPU: Intel i5-8400
- Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix Z370i
- RAM: Kingston HyperX 16GB DDR4-26666Mhz
- PSU: XFX XT400 80Plus Bronze
- SSD: Samsung 970 EVO NVMe
Power Draw
The RX 560 has a TPD of 80 Watts, while the RX 570’s TPD is 120 Watts. You shouldn’t have any issues running either card off a 400-500W Bronze PSU or higher.
Video outputs
The Asus RX 560 gives you a single DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.0 and a DVI output, while on the Gigabyte RX 570 you get three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, along with one HDMI 2.0 and DVI. This makes the RX 570 a clear winner in terms of connecting multiple displays.
Benchmarks
Final Cut Pro X
For the first test, we tried stabilizing a 20 seconds long Cinema 4K clip, shot on the Fuji X-T30 at 200mbps in Final Cut Pro X.
The RX 560 took 12.4 seconds to stabilize the clip, with the RX 570 taking just 8.2 seconds. That’s a difference of about 34%.
For the second test, we exported a 3 minute 4K project with color correction and various transitions from FCPX to ProRes 422.
Next, we tried the ubiquitous BruceX 5K benchmark, which makes heavy use of the GPU for calculations.
Synthetic Benchmarks
Moving onto Geekbench for the next test, we first ran the Geekbench 5 OpenCL benchmark.
In this test, the RX 570 was way out in the lead, scoring 37,983 – almost double the RX 560 card’s score of 19.479.
Next, still in Geekbench, we ran the Geekbench 5 Metal benchmark.
Again, just as with the OpenCL test, the RX 570 was way out in front, scoring 40,427 while the RX 560 scored just 20,658. That makes the RX 570 almost 96% faster.
Next, we tried the venerable Unigine Valley 1.0 benchmark. While rather less relevant that the other benchmarks, due to OpenGL being deprecated on Mac now that Metal has taken over as the official Graphics API, it’s still a useful comparison of the speed of different graphics cards.
In the Unigine Valley test, the RX 560 managed 22.7 frames per second, while the RX 570 clocked up 41.3 frames per second. That’s about 82% faster.
Another OpenGL test, Cinebench R15, was next.
In this test, the RX 560 managed a score of 96.28 while the RX 570 was around 28% faster at 123.13.
Games
We next tried a selection of Metal-supporting games. First, Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, running in high detail at 2560 x 1440 (WQHD) resolution.
In Thrones of Britannia, the RX 570 was 90% faster than its cheaper sibling with 57.3 frames per second, compared to the RX 560’s 30.1 frames per second.
For the next game, we tried Rise of the Tomb Raider – again running in high detail at 2560 x 1440.
In Rise of the Tomb Raider, the RX 560 scored 28.4 frames per second, and the RX 570 was 85% faster at 52.6 frames per second.
Conclusion
On average, across all the tests, the RX 570 was about 70% faster than the RX 560 at the same tasks. Since the price difference at the time of writing is only around 30%, this makes the RX 570 a clear winner in terms of price-performance.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the RX 560 isn’t a good card for a budget system. Compared to the GPU in real Macs, for example, in the Geekbench 5 Metal benchmark, the RX 560 is 4.5 times faster than the UHD 630 in the 2018 Mac Mini, and it’s 50% faster than the Radeon Pro 555X in the mid-range 21.5″ iMac.
For the best bang for the buck, though, the RX 570 gives you around 70% more performance for only a little more money.