AMD RX 500 series graphics card launch, April 2017. This is Polaris Refreshed.

These are updated versions of the 400 series cards that were launched in summer of 2016.

Higher performance, lower power consumption, lower price! That is a win/win/win!

Now let me say up front that if you currently own an RX400 series graphics card

it really doesn't make sense to move from 400 to 500.

This is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary jump.

What these cards are meant for are for people who own 300 and 200 series AMD graphics cards

or perhaps something older.

It's also for people who own something from the 900 series or 700 series from NVidia.

Those are also now worth considering replacing.

There are 4 different RX500 series cards launching this week. I will talk about them in turn.

First up, we have the top of the line RX 580.

This replaces the RX 480.

There is both a 4 gigabyte and an 8 gigabyte version of this card.

$199 for the 4GB - $229 for the 8GB.

Yes, you heard me correctly. There is only a $30 price difference between the 4 and the 8 gigabyte card.

I recommend the 8 gigabyte card.

That is different from the advice I gave last year if you watched my original 480 review

where I talked about the 4 versus the 8 gig, I recommended the 4.

Now, two reasons for that.

That was in 2016 when fewer games used more VRAM, and the price difference was larger.

With only a $30 price difference between the 4 and 8 gig card

If you're going to buy a card for the next 3 years of use,

go ahead and spend the $30 - get the 8 gigabytes.

You'll use it at some point, even if you don't need it today.

Now, if you already have a 4 gig card, or for whatever reason you find a deal

or a sale, you will still be able to use a 4 gigabyte card at 1080p for years to come.

You just won't be able to play at Ultra detail because you'll run out of texture memory,.

You'll have to turn textures from Ultra down to High,

and then, a couple of years from now, eventually to Medium

in order to fit the textures in 4 gigabytes of VRAM.

If you get the 8 gig card, that stops really being a limitation.

You can then keep the textures up at High, and keep the games becoming more and more beautiful each year.

To take that a step further, if you have any interest in playing at 1440p rather than 1080p,

you definitely want to have 8 gigabytes of VRAM

because the larger resolution will load in larger textures and require more memory.

Now, principally I consider the RX 580 a 1080p graphics card.

I am comfortable saying that the RX 580 will play all games on the market

in 2017 at High or Ultra detail at 60 plus frames per second in many cases,

minimum of 60 frames per second without any issues whatsoever,

but they will also play many games at 1440p resolution.

Now...Battlefield 1, Overwatch, Doom, Sniper Elite 4....

some of the games that tend to favor AMD cards,

those will all play at 1440p at 60 frames per second on an RX 580 8 gigabyte card.

Now....will every game do that?

No. Mass Effect:Andromeda will not play at maximum detail at 1440p at 60 frames per second.

You have to have more graphics card to do so,

but many games will, and if you are willing to be reasonable on the detail settings

if High is acceptable instead of Ultra details for example,

1440p is attainable in many games.

Now that is the RX 580,

What about the RX 570?

Now the RX 570 is the replacement for the RX 470.

Now it does come in both a 4 gigabyte and an 8 gigabyte version.

Seriously, don't both with an 8 gigabyte RX 470.

If you're gonna get 8 gigs of VRAM, you need to be on the 580.

If you're gonna get the 470, it's because you're trying to save some money,

you found a deal, and you strictly want to play at 1080p resolution.

For a starting price of $169, the 4 gigabyte RX570 will play all current games on the market

at an average of High detail at 60 plus frames per second

average performance, and will do so without any issues whatsoever.

Battlefield 1, Grand Theft Auto V, Fallout 4, Hitman, DOOM, Overwatch,

Call of Duty:Infinite Warfare, Assassin's Creed Syndicate

all will play at High detail or better at 1080p on a $169 RX 570.

Now the RX 570 is 15 percent slower than an RX 580....

...for 15 percent less money!

So it's a value for the money.

Now, if you're okay to spend another $30 to get another 15 percent performance,

then by all means, just get the RX 580,

but there are reasons to consider a 570 beyond just price and performance.

Now, these are both MSI Gaming X cards.

The only real difference besides performance between the 580 and the 570 Gaming X cards from MSI

is the presence of a backplate.

The 580 has one - the 570 does not.

However, when you come over to ASUS, they definitely separate the 580 from the 570.

The 580 has 3 fans, an 8-pin PCI Express power connector, a heavy-duty cooling solution

to let you overclock it further.

It's a great card, but this does not fit into all computers.

The RX 570 ASUS Republic of Gamers Strix card

has a benefit that the others don't.

6-pin PCI-Express power, shorter card, two fans.

This will fit into more computers than this will.

And so, if you have a pre-built machine - if you have something that doesn't have room

for a large, oversized card,

or if your power supply only has a 6-pin PCI-Express power connector,

get the RX 570.

It will fit in your machine, it'll use less power, you'll have fewer issues with installation,

and it will still provide excellent performance.

That leads us to the RX 560,

which comes in a 2 gigabyte and a 4 gigabyte card starting at $99.

Please note on the RX 560, there are versions of this card

that come with and without a 6-pin PCI-Express power connector.

Some of these cards will install in your machine without requiring any special power supply at all,

others, such as this factory-overclocked ASUS card will require a 6-pin connector

so do be sure to check which one you're buying before you click that checkout button.

Now what is the RX 560 designed for?

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Rocket League, DOTA 2, World of Warcraft, League of Legends,

Overwatch, DOOM, Civilization VI.

All of those games will play at 1080p resolution, High detail, or better,

60 frames per second or better.

Many of them will play at 120 frames per second or better.

It's primarily designed for eSports. That doesn't make it a bad card

but it's not designed for Battlefield 1 or Mass Effect: Andromeda...

that's what the 570 and the 580 are designed for,

but it's a much lower price at just $99 to start.

The fourth card in the RX 500 series is the all-new RX 550.

There is no RX 450, so this is the brand-new, low-end, entry-level Home Theatre PC card from AMD.

This has 8 compute units - half of the RX 560.

It's $79.to start, and it's primary focus is on very casual gaming and the home theatre PC.

It's power draw is even lower than the 560.

No power connectors required, small form-factor, low-profile designs will be available.

Most important, it has all the sorts of technology that you really need in a home theatre PC card.

HDMI 2.0 4K support, High Dynamic Range support,

Hardware high-efficiency video codec decoding all built into hardware.

Modern standards in a low power draw card that can basically be installed in any computer.

Now, I am going to do a full review of the RX 550 in a couple of days,

it's gonna get it's own video,

I will show you gaming benchmarks. It will play

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, DOTA 2, League of Legends,

and if those are all you care about, then the RX 550 will do just fine,

but that's not really what it's meant for.

It's the non-gaming applications. It's the modern technologies in an inexpensive,

low-profile, low-power card that really makes the RX 550 interesting.

Watch for that video coming in just a few days.

Finally, no discussion of AMD graphics cards would be complete without

talking about the software that AMD provides.

The software in the past year has improved tremendously.

Performance on the 400 series cards has risen by as much as 20% since launch

thanks to the improved software that comes with the RX series.

There are also some other features which recently launched.

The Radeon ReLive software is capture and streaming software.

This did not come with the 400 series cards at launch.

You can now do the same thing that NVidia provides with Shadowplay.

Low power consumption, low graphics card load, video capture and live-streaming of your gameplay.

I have recently used this software, and you'll see some upcoming benchmarks

recorded with the ReLive software.

It works very well for either recording your gameplay or live-streaming.

There's also a technology called Radeon Chill!

What is Chill? Chill basically reduces the power consumption

and reduces the framerate if it goes beyond the speed of your monitor.

This is not the same as V-Sync or FreeSync.

Instead, what this does is actually lowers the power consumption of your graphics card

if the framerate is not necessary.

Many games are supported in Chill, such as League of Legends and DOTA 2.

If the action on the screen does not require a higher framerate, it will dynamically lower

your framerate, lowering your power consumption, and saving you on electricity.

Finally, I want to bring you one more slide.

This shows all 4 cards and their relative performance to the older generation of graphics cards.

Now this is based on AMD's own testing, but let me just tell you that it's reasonable and accurate.

The RX 580 is about one and a half times the performance of an R9 380X,

The RX 570 is almost three times the performance of an R7 370,

The RX 560 is double the performance of an R7 360,

and the RX 550 is up to - that's an important term there -

five times the performance of the integrated graphics in Overwatch.

I will be showing you live Overwatch gameplay - integrated graphics versus the RX 550.

I will also show you how well the 550 compares to the GT 730 and the R7 240,

both cards which I have already reviewed in the past.

Finally, FreeSync is worth discussing.

FreeSync is an excellent technology that does not cost nearly as much as G-Sync,

which is the NVidia solution.

FreeSync monitors start at just $120. There are several options you can see here on the screen.

I will link to them all in the video description below.

This gives you more fluid gameplay, less screen tearing, and less input lag.

Yes, you can get rid of screen tearing by tuning on V-Sync,

but if you do so, you get input lag.

FreeSync gets rid of both screen tearing and keeps input lag to a minimum.

So there you have the AMD RX 500 series graphics card laumch for April 2017.

The 570 and the 580 are available immediately, links in the video description below to both Amazon and Newegg

for all of those cards. Please go check them out.

The RX 550 will be launching in two days, and the RX 560 will be launching in early May.

I will update the links in the video description below when those launch.

Like this video if you liked it, share it with your friends if you loved it.

Remember to subscribe to my channel with that big huge red button directly below the video.

Questions and comments in the comments section, and as always check out my video description.

Links to Amazon and Newegg for all the graphics cards mentioned in this video will be down there. Please check those out.

Furthermore, live gameplay performance videos on all these cards will be published over

the next few days and weeks.

So check out the video description below to those playlists and be sure to subscribe

to my channel to be notified as they come out.

The first one I'm publishing is Grand Theft Auto V.

It's a long, in-depth look at how well these cards work on multiple generations of processors.

I have 20 games in total already recorded and filmed, and those will be published over the next few weeks.

If you have any specific questions, that's what the comments section is for.

Thank you so much for watching. I will see you in the next video.