AMD Radeon RX 590 shows up on 3DMark, shows less than 10% improvement in scores over the RX 580

We've reported earlier of AMD's plans of introducing Polaris 30-based GPUs and now, we are seeing the first leaked 3DMark Time Spy score of a new 'Radeon RX 590' GPU making its way to the 3DMark database. A screencap of the result was posted by famed leakster TUM_APISAK on Reddit. The RX 590 seems to have scored 5,028 points in 3DMark Time Spy, which is about a 7% increase over the RX 580's OC score of 4,679 and about 10% increase over stock RX 580 speeds.

The RX 590 name is a bit surprising since we were expecting the RX 6xx nomenclature for the new refreshes. The database entry shows the RX 590 to have a 1,545 MHz base clock — 205 MHz higher than the RX 580's boost. The memory clock is indicated to be 2,000 MHz, which is a bit unfortunate as it means that the older GDDR5 memory will still be used. AMD could have actually done everyone a favor by including newer memory options such as GDDR5X at the very least.

A good thing is that Polaris 30 will be based on GloFo's 12nm architecture, which implies lesser power draws while still yielding higher clocks. From what we know so far, the top-end Polaris 30 variant should feature the same number of stream processors (2,304) as the RX 580. AMD could have upped the SP count to afford a bit more performance in the refresh but apparently, we don't see that happening. That said, the new RX 590 should be able to comfortably edge out an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB but it might not be able to reach GTX 1070 levels of performance.

That said, do note that AMD cards generally age well with ongoing driver updates and we might see slight improvements in the scores as we near official release and also, over time.

Do you think the RX 590 has the potential to be a good mid-range gaming option in late 2018? Let us know in the comments below.

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