NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 SLI (Laptop) vs AMD Radeon RX 590 (Desktop) vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 SLI (Laptop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 SLI for laptops is a combination of two GTX 1080 graphics cards in SLI mode. Each card renders one frame at a time (AFR mode) but depends for most games on a good profile in the driver. Therefore, the performance can range from no gains over a single GTX 1080 to up to 90% faster performance. Sometimes, the combination may also suffer from micro-stuttering. The technical details of the card are identical to a single GTX 1080 (see for more information) and the power consumption is doubled. Therefore, the 1080 SLI combination is only found in huge clunky laptops.

AMD Radeon RX 590 (Desktop)

The AMD Radeon RX 590 is a desktop graphics card positioned in the mid-range of 2018. It is manufactured in 12nm and offers 2,304 shader cores and 8 GB GDDR5 VRAM using a 256 Bit memory interface (8 GHz, 256 GB/s).

The RX590 uses the new Polaris 30 chip, which is a 12nm version of the Polaris 20 chip of the RX 580. Thanks to the improved process, the clock rates of the RX 590 can be higher at a similar power consumption. 

This leads to a 10 percent higher performance compared against the older Radeon RX 580 and therefore the RX 590 is faster than the GeForce GTX 1060. This means that the card is best suited for 1080p gaming in max. details (of 2018 games).

The power consumption is rated at 175 Watt and therefore 10 Watts below the Radeon RX 580 (185 Watt).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 is an entry level graphics card for desktops based on the Pascal architecture. It uses the same GP107 chip as the GTX 1050 Ti, but with only 640 instead of 768 shaders. The chip is manufactured at Samsung in 14 nm (opposed to the 16 nm TSCM based Pascal chips of the 1060 and up). The performance and specs should be similar to the GTX 1050 laptop version, that will be released later (early 2017). Compared to the faster GTX 1050 Ti, the 1050 offers less shaders (640 instead of 768) and only 2 GB of GDDR5 (instead of the 4 GB of the 1050 Ti).

Gaming benchmarks by Nvidia state that the GTX 1050 is about 30% faster on average than the Radeon RX 460 with 2 GB VRAM. The 4 GB version of the RX 460 should be about 10% slower and the older GTX 950 should reach a similar performance level as the new GTX 1050. Therefore, the GTX 1050 should be ideal for 1080p gaming with high detail settings (but not max settings).