AMD Officially Announces the Radeon RX 500 Series

Well we’ve been talking about it for the past few weeks and now it is finally here! AMD today announced the Radeon RX 500 Series graphics cards. These new cards are based on “refined” variants of the “Polaris” family of GPUs, which powered the RX 400 series cards. These refinements include manufacturing-level enhancements that enabled high clock speeds, lower power draw, and new software features.

rx 500 series

The entire lineup is made up of 4 SKUs total. Starting at the top you have the RX 580, then the RX 570, RX 560, and then finally the RX 550.

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Both the RX 580 and 570 are based off the 14 nm “Lexa” Polaris 20 silicon, which is almost identical to the “Ellesmere” Polaris 10, except for the manufacturing-level enhancements. The RX 580 will have 2,304 stream processors across 36 compute units, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and 8 GB or 4 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface. The core is clocked at 1257 MHz with a boost up to 1340 MHz and the memory is at 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective). The 4GB variant will start at $199 and the 8GB variant will be $229.

The RX 570 will have 2,048 stream processors across 32 compute units, 128 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. It has clock speeds of 1168 MHz core and boosts up to 1244 MHz with memory at 7.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective). The RX 570 will start at $169.

The RX 560 is based off the “Baffin” silicon and features all 1.024 stream processors physically present across 16 compute units. It runs at 1175 MHz core, 1275 MHz boost, and 7.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. It has 4GB of GDDR5 across a 128-bit wide memory interface. The RX 560 will be $99.

Finally we have the RX 550, which is setup to be an entry-level IGP replacement. It is based on the smaller Polaris 12 silicon and has 512 stream processors across 8 CUs, and 2 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide memory interface. It has speeds of up to 1183 MHz. This card will go for $79.

So there you have it, the RX 500 series, what do you think?

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