AMD Radeon RX 580 OEM

AMD Radeon RX 580 OEM

AMD Radeon RX 580 OEM in 2025: Budget Warrior or Relic of the Past?

The AMD Radeon RX 580 OEM graphics card, released in 2017, still stands out as a notable player in the budget GPU market. Despite its venerable age, it continues to attract users with its affordable price and proven reliability. But how relevant is this model in 2025? Let's delve into the details.


1. Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture: Time-Tested Foundation

The RX 580 OEM is built on the Polaris architecture (Polaris 20 XTX), manufactured using GlobalFoundries' 14nm process technology. This is the same foundation as the original RX 580, but the OEM version often comes with slight variations in clock speeds or cooling systems optimized for mass production.

Unique Features

The card supports AMD's FidelityFX technologies, including:

- FidelityFX CAS (Contrast Adaptive Sharpening) – enhances image clarity without significant performance costs.

- Radeon Image Sharpening – an alternative to NVIDIA's DLSS, but without the use of neural networks.

Ray Tracing is not supported at the hardware level. Software emulation via DirectX 12 Ultimate is possible, but it results in a drop in FPS by 40-60%, making it impractical for gaming.


2. Memory: Classic in the Age of GDDR6X

Type and Volume

The RX 580 OEM is equipped with 8GB of GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth is 256 GB/s. In 2025, this is sufficient for 1080p gaming, but modern AAA titles at high settings may experience stuttering due to limited memory speed.

Comparison with New Standards

GDDR5 significantly lags behind GDDR6 (up to 768 GB/s in the RTX 4060) and HBM2 (1 TB/s in the Radeon VII). For instance, in games with high-resolution textures, such as _Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora_, the difference in 1% and 0.1% FPS reaches 20-30% in favor of cards with GDDR6.


3. Gaming Performance: Modest Ambitions

1080p: Comfortable Level

- _Cyberpunk 2077_ (2023): Medium settings – 45-50 FPS, Ultra – 25-30 FPS.

- _Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III_ (2024): Medium settings – 60-65 FPS.

- _Fortnite_ (Epic settings, without RT): 70-80 FPS.

1440p and 4K: Not Recommended

At 1440p in _Assassin’s Creed Mirage_ (2024), FPS drops to 30-35 even at low settings. Ignore 4K – it's not a target resolution for RX 580 OEM.

Ray Tracing: Weak Point

Attempts to launch _Minecraft_ with RTX modes lead to FPS of 10-15. For RTX games (like _Alan Wake 2_), the card is unsuitable.


4. Professional Tasks: Only Basic Scenarios

Video Editing

In _DaVinci Resolve_ and _Premiere Pro_, the card handles 1080p project rendering, but 4K timelines will stutter. Acceleration through OpenCL works but lags behind NVIDIA CUDA by 2-3 times.

3D Modeling

Blender Cycles on Radeon ProRender shows modest results: rendering a medium-complexity scene takes 15-20 minutes compared to 5-7 minutes on the RTX 3060.

Scientific Calculations

Support for OpenCL 2.0 allows for GPU use in simple simulations, but for machine learning or complex computations, it's better to choose cards that support ROCm 5.0+.


5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP and PSU Requirements

The card's TDP is 185W. A recommended power supply is 500W with an 8-pin connector. In compact cases, overheating may occur – choose models with 2-3 fans.

Temperature Regime

Under load, the GPU heats up to 75-80°C. Regular cleaning of the cooler and replacing thermal paste every 1-2 years is mandatory. Avoid cases without front fans.


6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT (2022)

- Pros: GDDR6, PCIe 4.0 support, lower power consumption (107W).

- Cons: 4GB of memory.

- Conclusion: RX 6500 XT is 15-20% faster in DX12 games but falls short in VRAM-intensive projects.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super (2019)

- Pros: DLSS 1.0, better optimization for streaming.

- Cons: 6GB of GDDR6.

- Conclusion: GTX 1660 Super outperforms by 10-15% in FPS but costs $50 more (new models starting at $220).


7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

Minimum – 500W from reputable brands (Corsair CX550, Be Quiet! System Power 10). Avoid Chinese noname PSUs – risk of overload on the 12V line.

Compatibility

- Motherboards: Any PCIe 3.0 x16 slot will work.

- Processors: Avoid pairing with Ryzen 9 7950X – potential bottlenecking.

Drivers

AMD officially ceased support for RX 500 series in 2024. The last stable drivers are Adrenalin 23.12.1. For Windows 12, use compatibility mode.


8. Pros and Cons

Pros

- Price: new models from $150 (half the price of RTX 3050).

- 8GB of memory – sufficient for upgrading older PCs.

- Reliability: proven design with a low failure rate.

Cons

- High power consumption.

- No support for ray tracing and DLSS/FSR 3.0.

- Limited performance in new games.


9. Final Conclusion: Who is the RX 580 OEM For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

- Budget gamers playing at 1080p on medium settings.

- Owners of old PCs wanting to revive their systems without replacing the PSU.

- Students working in graphic editing software and studying.

However, if you plan to play 2025-2026’s new releases or work with 4K content, consider the Radeon RX 7600 or NVIDIA RTX 3060. The RX 580 OEM is not an investment in the future; it is a cost-effective solution "here and now."

Basic

Label Name
AMD
Platform
Desktop
Launch Date
June 2016
Model Name
Radeon RX 580 OEM
Generation
Polaris
Base Clock
1120MHz
Boost Clock
1266MHz
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.
40.51 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.
182.3 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.
5.834 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.
364.6 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.
5.951 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
150W
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 6-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
5.951 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
6.232 +4.7%
5.712 -4%
5.586 -6.1%