XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8GB OC+

The XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8GB OC+ is a factory-overclocked card based on the AMD Polaris 30 XT chip. This GPU is an improvement of the Polaris 20 XTX (RX 580), but similar and based on the GCN 4.0 (Graphics Card Next) architecture. The Polaris 30 XT supports the same DirectX 12.0 and Vulcan feature sets as its predecessor and comes with 2,304 shaders, 144 TMUs (texture mapping units) and 32 ROPs (render output units).

So it’s essentially the same chip, but the Polaris 30 XT/RX 590 GPU is manufactured using a smaller, 12 nm production process at GlobalFoundries, instead of the predecessor’s 14 nm. The result? Improved power-efficiency, with as much as 15% better theoretical performance at the same power consumption. 

XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8GB OC+ Features

Like many other non-reference boards, the OC+ variant of the XFX RX 590 Fatboy comes with a slightly (1580 MHz from 1545 MHz, or 2%) higher boost clock out of the box. Unlike Sapphire’s Nitro+ RX 590, however, the card’s 8 GB of GDDR5 VRAM runs at the standard clock speed. 

RX 590 Reference Design VS Custom Boards

The Fatboy RX 590 has a custom circuit board (PCB) and a cooling solution that takes up three PCI slots worth of internal space. There’s also an aluminum backplate and what XFX calls a Unibody VRM Heatsink, which allegedly increases the heatsink surface area by 50% compared to previous Polaris cards.

Performance

Compared to the preceding Polaris-based cards, the average (reference) RX 590 is about 10% faster than the 8 GB RX 580. This is mainly due to the higher clocks and improved efficiency with the newer production process. Since the XFX Fatboy RX 590 is factory overclocked, it will be about 2% faster still. Although the RX 590 is more efficient than its predecessor, power consumption is still high compared to comparable Nvidia cards (performance-wise). The GPU’s chief competitor is now Nvidia’s Turing-based GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, which is far more efficient, but not necessarily faster in actual games.

System and PSU requirements

The reference RX 590 has a 175W TDP and the power supply (PSU) requirement is 500 Watts. Due to the slightly increased boost clock, the RX 590 Fatboy OC+ will require a bit more power than average, as well as an additional power cable from the PSU. 

Reviews

This card is part of our RX 590 roundup from 2019. Check it out here.

Notebookcheck: Overall, the power consumption has dropped by around 10 watts compared to the AMD Radeon RX 580. While this is a step in the right direction, the Pascal GPUs from AMD’s biggest rival Nvidia are a lot more efficient.

TechPowerUp: XFX has installed a large triple-slot cooler on their RX 590 Fatboy, which does a good job of keeping the card at reasonable temperature levels without too much noise.

PCWorld New Zealand: … a killer option for no-compromises 1080p gaming, especially if you have a monitor faster than 60Hz. It’s also a very viable 1440p gaming option, especially if you don’t mind dropping graphics settings down from Ultra to High, or have a FreeSync-compatible monitor.

Bit-tech: … across all tests this RX 590 is on average 14 percent faster than a GTX 1060 6GB (with 8Gbps memory) and 10 percent ahead of the Sapphire RX 580 8GB. Meanwhile, reference RX Vega 56 and overclocked GTX 1070 figures are both about 30 percent above what we see here.