Just because Nvidia’s RTX chips cards are more or less stealing the show at the moment does not mean that AMD doesn’t have some terrific products. Ray tracing is still to make it to most games and you don’t necessarily need the fastest single-card solution either.

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XFX’s Radeon RX 590 Fatboy

Radeon recently moved to a 12nm manufacturing process, which is where the RX 590 differs from the RX 580. You’ll find plenty of RX 590 cards coming to market, and the XFX Radon RX 590 Fatboy is just one. One benefit of this 12nm process is that RX 590 chips are more overclocking friendly because they produce less heat.

That’s why the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy comes with a factory overclock: the card is already safely overclocked when it leaves the factory. This card replicates all the expected RX 590 specs and is fitted with 8GB of GDDR5 RAM. It’s not an entry-level card so you need to ensure you have enough power to supply it, the board requires 225W.

RX 590 FATBOY Side View

What is the card like physically?

The RX 590 Fatboy is not an entry-level card, but neither is it a high-end card. This becomes clear when you look at the build quality: you will see a lot of boring plastic on the card with some big gaps between panels. It’s not a card that will attract a lot of positive comments but in the end, it does not matter that much – it will be stuck in your PC most of the time.

Like any serious GPU the RX 590 Fatboy is quite bulky so ensure you have enough space to accommodate it. It comes with two large fans for cooling and plenty of outputs on the back, including HDMI, DVI, and Display Port. Overall it is solidly built but don’t expect visual pizazz.

Radeon RX 590 Radeon RX 580
GCN Architecture 4th Generation 4th Generation
Manufacturing Process 12nm FinFET 14nm FinFET
Die Size 232 mm2 232 mm2
Compute Units 36 36
Stream Processors 2304 2304
Clock Speed (Boost/Base) 1545 MHz/1469 MHz 1340 MHz/1257 MHz
Compute Performance 7.1 TFLOPS 7.1 TFLOPS
Texture Units 144 144
Texture Fill Rate 222.4 GT/s 190 GT/s
ROPs 32 32
Pixel Fill Rate 49.5 GP/s 42.9 GP/s
Memory Size 8 GB 8 GB
Memory Bandwidth 256 GB/s 256 GB/s
Memory Interface 256 bit 256 bit
Memory Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Board Power 225W 185W
Freesync Support Yes Yes
DirectX 12 Support Yes Yes
Vulkan Support Yes Yes
Display Port Version 1.3 HBR/1.4 HDR 1.3 HBR/1.4 HDR

How does the Fatboy perform?

The card leaves the factor in an overclocked state so it does a bit better than the average RX 590 that is not overclocked. Overall the card competes well with other factory-overclocked cards such as the PowerColor Red Devil, but one potential issue is the fact that the XFX RX 590 Fatboy runs hotter than its competitors. Nonetheless, you’ll get solid results with 1080p gaming, with plenty of titles running high frame rates at 1440p too.

Should I buy it?

If you want a card with good looks, give this one a skip. However, if you are buying on a price we think the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy offers a good deal. Nonetheless, compare its price against other RX 590 cards, and also check out some good mid-range Nvidia GTX 1060 cards.

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