AMD Radeon RX 580X

AMD Radeon RX 580X

AMD Radeon RX 580X: Budget Champion for Gaming and Work in 2025

April 2025


Introduction

In the world of graphics cards, AMD continues to hold its ground in the budget and mid-range market. The Radeon RX 580X, released at the end of 2024, represents a logical progression of the popular RX 500 series. This model is aimed at gamers and enthusiasts who seek a balance between price, performance, and support for modern technologies. In this article, we will explore what sets the RX 580X apart and who it is suitable for.


1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The RX 580X is built on the updated RDNA 3 Lite architecture—a simplified version of the flagship RDNA 3. This has allowed for cost reduction while maintaining support for key features.

Manufacturing Process: The card is manufactured using 6nm TSMC technology, providing an optimal balance of energy efficiency and performance.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0 — an upscaling algorithm that increases FPS in games with minimal quality loss.

- Radeon Anti-Lag+ — reduces input lag in competitive games.

- Hybrid Ray Tracing — a software-hardware implementation of ray tracing. Unlike NVIDIA's RTX, this uses a hybrid approach, which reduces the load on the GPU.

Support for DirectX 12 Ultimate and Vulkan makes the card compatible with current gaming projects.


2. Memory: Fast, but Not Revolutionary

- Memory Type: GDDR6.

- Capacity: 8 GB.

- Bus: 256-bit.

- Bandwidth: 448 GB/s.

These specifications provide comfortable performance in games at resolutions up to 1440p. For 4K, the memory may be insufficient in demanding projects (such as Starfield 2 or Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty), but FSR 3.0 partially mitigates this issue.

Tip: If you work with heavy textures in 3D editors, it’s better to opt for a model with 16 GB, but the RX 580X is primarily aimed at gamers.


3. Gaming Performance: 1080p is the Ideal Choice

The card shows stable results in popular games of 2024–2025 (settings set to "High"):

- Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty: 65 FPS (1080p), 48 FPS (1440p), 32 FPS (4K + FSR 3.0).

- Call of Duty: Future Warfare: 90 FPS (1080p), 67 FPS (1440p).

- Fortnite (with Hybrid RT): 60 FPS (1080p), 45 FPS (1440p).

Ray Tracing: Enabling Hybrid Ray Tracing reduces FPS by 25–35%, but thanks to FSR 3.0, the losses are mitigated. For comfortable gameplay with RT, it’s better to choose the 1080p resolution.

Conclusion: The RX 580X is an excellent option for 1080p/1440p, but do not expect ultra settings in 4K without compromises.


4. Professional Tasks: Not Just Gaming

- Video Editing: In Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, the card handles rendering Full HD/4K projects thanks to support for OpenCL and AMD ROCm.

- 3D Modeling: In Blender and Maya, performance lags behind NVIDIA cards with CUDA, but for beginner designers, the RX 580X is suitable.

- Scientific Calculations: Due to ROCm’s limitations compared to CUDA, the card is not optimal for serious tasks (e.g., neural network models).

Tip: If you are a freelancer who combines gaming and work, the RX 580X is a worthy choice. For professionals, it makes sense to consider the Radeon Pro series.


5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 180 W.

- Recommended PSU: 500 W (with a margin for overclocking — 550 W).

- Cooling: Reference models use a dual-fan system. During gaming, temperatures hover around 70–75°C.

Build Tips:

- Choose a case with good ventilation (at least 2 intake fans).

- For overclocking, consider models with liquid cooling (e.g., Sapphire Nitro+ Liquid Edition).

Noise: The noise level is 32 dB under load, which is acceptable for most users.


6. Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060: Better ray tracing performance (+40% with DLSS 3.5), but more expensive ($349 vs. $269 for RX 580X).

- Intel Arc A770: Comparable in price ($279), but lags in driver optimization for older games.

- AMD Radeon RX 7700: 20% more powerful, but priced at $399.

Summary: The RX 580X offers a better price-to-performance ratio for 1080p gaming.


7. Practical Tips

- Power Supply: Don’t skimp! Models like Corsair CX550 or Be Quiet! System Power 10 will suffice.

- Compatibility: The card requires a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. Ensure your motherboard supports it.

- Drivers: Regularly update to the latest Adrenalin Edition — AMD actively optimizes support for new games.

- Overclocking: Using the AMD Wattman tool, you can increase the frequency by 8–10%, but keep an eye on temperatures.


8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Price of $269 — one of the best in the segment.

- Support for FSR 3.0 and Hybrid RT.

- Energy efficiency at the 2025 level.

Cons:

- 8 GB of memory — not enough for 4K in AAA games.

- Weak ray tracing compared to NVIDIA.

- No hardware AV1 encoder.


9. Final Verdict: Who is the RX 580X For?

This graphics card is designed for:

- Gamers playing at 1080p/1440p.

- Budget builds up to $800.

- Enthusiasts for whom ultra-realism in ray tracing isn't critical.

The RX 580X is a successful compromise between price and capability. If you want to play the latest games without upgrading every two years, this is your choice. However, for streaming, 4K editing, or AI tasks, more advanced models should be considered.

Prices are current as of April 2025.

Basic

Label Name
AMD
Platform
Desktop
Launch Date
April 2018
Model Name
Radeon RX 580X
Generation
Polaris
Base Clock
1257MHz
Boost Clock
1340MHz
Bus Interface
PCIe 3.0 x16
Transistors
5,700 million
Compute Units
36
TMUs
?
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.
144
Foundry
GlobalFoundries
Process Size
14 nm
Architecture
GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size
8GB
Memory Type
GDDR5
Memory Bus
?
The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.
256bit
Memory Clock
2000MHz
Bandwidth
?
Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.
256.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate
?
Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.
42.88 GPixel/s
Texture Rate
?
Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.
193.0 GTexel/s
FP16 (half)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.
6.175 TFLOPS
FP64 (double)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
385.9 GFLOPS
FP32 (float)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
6.051 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units
?
The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.
2304
L1 Cache
16 KB (per CU)
L2 Cache
2MB
TDP
185W
Vulkan Version
?
Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.
1.2
OpenCL Version
2.1
OpenGL
4.6
DirectX
12 (12_0)
Power Connectors
1x 8-pin
Shader Model
6.4
ROPs
?
The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.
32
Suggested PSU
450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)
Score
6.051 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
6.322 +4.5%