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AMD Radeon RX 590 GME

AMD Radeon RX 590 GME: Review and Analysis for Gamers and Enthusiasts in 2025

April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon RX 590 GME graphics card, released as a budget solution for 1080p gaming, continues to capture the attention of users looking for an affordable upgrade. Despite its age, this model remains relevant due to optimizations and a reduced price. Let’s explore who this GPU is suitable for in 2025 and what tasks it can handle.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture and 12nm Process

The RX 590 GME is built on a modified Polaris architecture (Polaris 30), which first debuted in 2016. The 12nm process by GlobalFoundries allowed for increased clock speeds compared to its predecessors (RX 580), but did not eliminate the high power consumption.

Unique Features

- FidelityFX: Support for AMD's open FidelityFX package (Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, FSR 1.0) enhances detail in games, although FSR 2.0/3.0 is unavailable due to hardware limitations.

- Lack of Ray Tracing: Hardware blocks for ray tracing (as seen in RDNA 2/3) are not integrated.

Conclusion: The architecture is outdated, but the basic AMD features remain useful for optimizing FPS.

2. Memory: Type, Size, and Bandwidth

- Type: GDDR5 (not GDDR6/X or HBM).

- Size: 8GB — sufficient for most games in 2025 at medium settings.

- Bus and Bandwidth: 256-bit bus + effective frequency of 8000MHz = 256GB/s. This is adequate for 1080p gaming, but at 1440p, there may be "bottlenecks" due to slower memory.

Tip: For projects with high VRAM consumption (e.g., modded textures in Skyrim), 8GB is the minimum comfortable level.

3. Gaming Performance: FPS and Resolutions

Tests in Popular Games (2025):

- Cyberpunk 2077: Medium settings, 1080p — 45-50 FPS (with FSR 1.0 — up to 60 FPS).

- Fortnite (Chapter 6): High settings, 1080p — 75-90 FPS.

- Apex Legends: Medium settings, 1440p — 60-70 FPS.

- Starfield: Low settings, 1080p — 30-40 FPS (requires optimization via FSR).

Resolution Support:

- 1080p: Primary target area.

- 1440p: Only for less demanding or older games.

- 4K: Not recommended, except for indie projects.

Ray Tracing: Not supported. Even with software methods (like FSR), performance drops to unacceptable levels.

4. Professional Tasks: Non-Gaming Use

- Video Editing: In Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, it performs steadily but lags behind NVIDIA in rendering due to the lack of CUDA equivalents. OpenCL is recommended.

- 3D Modeling: Blender and Maya show acceptable speeds on simple scenes, but complex projects require more powerful GPUs.

- Scientific Calculations: Support for OpenCL allows the card to be used in entry-level machine learning, but efficiency is lower than NVIDIA’s RTX 3050/3060.

Tip: Professionals should consider cards with RDNA 3 or Ampere.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

- TDP: 185-200W (depends on the manufacturer model).

- Cooling: Reference coolers tend to be noisy. Models with 2-3 fans (e.g., Sapphire Nitro+) are recommended.

- Case: A minimum of 2 expansion slots + good airflow. Ideally, cases with front fans (NZXT H510 Flow, Fractal Design Meshify C).

Power Supply: At least 500W (80+ Bronze or higher). Avoid cheap noname brands!

6. Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super (6GB): Comparable price ($180-220), but lower power consumption (125W) and support for DLSS 1.0. However, 6GB VRAM is a limitation for 2025.

- AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (8GB): Lower performance but features a more modern RDNA 1 architecture and lower heat output.

- Intel Arc A580 (8GB): Better in DX12 and supports XeSS, but drivers still raise questions.

Conclusion: The RX 590 GME wins with its memory size but falls short in energy efficiency.

7. Practical Tips

- Power Supply: 500W + 8-pin PCIe cable.

- Compatibility: PCIe 3.0 x16 (suitable for older platforms). No issues with Ryzen 5000/Intel 10th Gen processors.

- Drivers: Use Adrenalin 2025 Edition with optimizations for older GPUs. Avoid beta versions.

Notes: Some games on Unreal Engine 5 may require manual graphics adjustments for stable FPS.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($150-180 for new models).

- 8GB VRAM for budget gaming and editing.

- Support for FSR 1.0 and FreeSync.

Cons:

- High power consumption.

- Noisy cooling system in base models.

- No hardware ray tracing or DLSS/FSR 3.0.

9. Final Verdict: Who Should Consider the RX 590 GME?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget Gamers playing 1080p at medium settings.

2. Owners of Older PCs looking for an upgrade without replacing the PSU and motherboard.

3. Enthusiasts experimenting with OpenCL and legacy hardware.

Alternative: If your budget allows spending $250-300, consider the Radeon RX 6600 or Intel Arc A750 — they offer better performance and modern features.

Conclusion

The RX 590 GME in 2025 strikes a compromise between price and capabilities. It won't amaze you in AAA games at ultra settings, but it serves as a reliable helper for everyday tasks and retro gaming. The key is to assess your needs accurately and not expect wonders from a GPU from the 2010s in an era of ray tracing and neural networks.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

March 2020

Model Name

Radeon RX 590 GME

Generation

Polaris

Base Clock

1257MHz

Boost Clock

1380MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

5,700 million

Compute Units

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.

44.16 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.

198.7 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.

6.359 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.

397.4 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.

6.232 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

175W

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.

Suggested PSU

450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

6.232 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

4346

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Tesla M40 24 GB

6.695 +7.4%

GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Mobile

6.526 +4.7%

Radeon RX 590 GME

6.232

Radeon RX 580 OEM

5.951 -4.5%

Radeon RX 5600M

5.712 -8.3%

3DMark Time Spy

Radeon RX 6600

7975 +83.5%

GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile

5822 +34%

Radeon RX 590 GME

4346

Arc A310

3087 -29%

GeForce MX450 30.5W 8Gbps

1976 -54.5%