VisionTek Radeon RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition

Today we have the VisionTek Radeon RX 580 8GB and Radeon RX 570 4GB Overclocked Edition video cards on the test bench for a little review action.

Those of you unfamiliar with VisionTek should know that the company has been delivering high quality graphics cards for over fifteen years and has since expanded into custom SSD designs, DRAM offerings, and an extensive line of innovative accessories.

From the company's "About Us" page:

Founded in 1988, VisionTek remains true to its suburban Chicago roots with offices in East Dundee and Schaumburg, IL, USA. VisionTek's rich history shaped the company into what it is today. Currently, VisionTek is focused on expansion of new products to diversify, compliment, and balance our core AMD product lines. VisionTek continues to offer state-of-the-art graphics cards, memory, and solid state drives, but has expanded the product offering to better serve the computing industry. The VisionTek product line now includes cables and adapters, power supplies, mini keyboards, gaming network cards, mobile accessories, audio products and more.  

AMD's Radeon RX 500 series is a refresh of the original Polaris architecture used in the RX 400 series. The cards we have here today utilize the second-generation Polaris architecture (not to be confused with the upcoming Vega) featuring 4th Gen GCN graphics cores, a brand new display engine, and new multimedia cores. These improvements along with the refinements made to the 14nm FinFET process, allows for higher clock speeds and a better performance-to-price ratio than its predecessor.

The VisionTek Radeon RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition, as its name suggests, sports a 1,366MHz clock speed right out of the box. The Radeon RX 570 4GB Overclocked Edition is overclocked to 1,264Mhz. While those OC speeds may seem modest, it is in-line with boosted speeds you will find on many factory overclocked cards. The added benefit is that it also leaves headroom for those of you who want to push your card even further using Radeon Wattman.

VisionTek’s website states that the Radeon RX 500 series cards are designed for gamers wanting performance at a fair price and who want flexibility without having to compromise. The VisionTek Radeon RX 500 series is built with a focus on immersive gaming, eSports, Alternate Reality, and Virtual Reality. The goal is to deliver the best possible gaming experience without breaking the bank.

Performance wise we are pitting both the VisionTek Radeon RX 580 8GB / RX 570 4GB Overclocked Edition video cards against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060 6GB FE as we feel that it is direct competition in this price category.

GALLERY:


First things first, let’s take a good look at both these cards from VisionTek shall we?






The VisionTek Radeon RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition comes with a custom designed dual fan cooler with a black-nickel aluminum exoskeleton and two 8mm and two 6mm heatpipes for increased cooling capacity.






The VisionTek Radeon RX 570 4GB Overclocked Edition sports a rear exhaust fan design utilizing a rear-blower fan mated to a black Radeon-branded fan shroud. Not only does this cooler design keep the card cool but it helps vent hot air from your system as well.

OUR TEST SYSTEM:




NVIDIA's GeForce Driver v381.89 and AMD's Radeon Crimson Edition ReLive 17.4.4 drivers were used for this evaluation.

Our test platform consists of an i7-7700K running at stock settings (4.2GHz) paired with a MSI Z270 Gaming M5 motherboard. We use the stock memory settings and timings, a fresh Windows 10 Pro installation with the latest drivers available at the time of testing.  


BENCHMARKS:

For all of our graphics card evaluations, we use 3D Mark Fire Strike Extreme, Fallout 4, DOOM, GTA 5, Rise of the Tomb Raider (DX12), The Witcher 3, Battlefield 1 VRMark and Ashes of the Singularity (DX12). Settings for each game are clearly noted on each benchmark graph and all scores are average frame rates.

Let's see just what you can expect performance-wise from the VisionTek Radeon RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition and the VisionTek Radeon RX 570 4GB Overclocked Edition.

Fire Strike Extreme:

From the 3DMark website: Fire Strike Extreme is an enhanced version of Fire Strike designed for high-end multi-GPU systems (SLI / Crossfire) and future hardware generations. In addition to raising the rendering resolution, additional visual quality improvements increase the rendering load to ensure accurate performance measurements for truly extreme hardware setups.


The performance difference between the VisionTek RX 580 8GB and the GTX 1060 6GB are negligible at best. The VisionTek RX 570 4GB put in a very solid performance, coming within a few hundred points of both the RX 580 8GB and the GTX 1060 6GB. 

Rise of the Tomb Raider:

Rise of the Tomb Raider, developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix, is the second installment in the reboot of the Tomb Raider series. The PC port was handled by Nixxes, the same studio that ported the previous Tomb Raider title to the PC as well as Sleeping Dogs and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.


On very high settings all three of the cards were able to provide a great gaming experience at well over 60fps.


Once we cranked things up to 2560 x 1440, performance dipped, but not as much as we had anticipated. The VisionTek RX 580 8GB is the clear winner in both tests. Mind you, a little fiddling with the graphics options could easily net you an extra 10fps or more without sacrificing much in the way of image quality.


GTA V: 

In order to use the in-game benchmark tool, make sure you have the resolution and graphics options you want to use set before you navigate your way to graphics menu and press the tab key to start the benchmark. Your results can be found in the "My Documents\Rockstar Games\GTA V\benchmarks" folder.


At 1920 x 1080 the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB card turned in a solid performance but it would be hard to argue that running GTA V on very high settings at 90 and 100fps isn't flat out impressive any way you look at it.


Once again, all three cards are capable of providing a smooth gaming experience at well over 60fps.

The Witcher 3: 

The Witcher 3 is a great benchmark tool, not only because it is a GPU intensive title but because it is a popular game that many of you own, making it easy for you to compare our results with your own. FPS measurements for The Witcher 3 were taken using FRAPS.


Although there is a ten frames per second difference between the lowest and highest scores, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference with the naked eye. 


At 2560 x 1440 on Ultra settings, performance dropped roughly 20fps across the board on all three card. Again, just as with RotTR, adjusting a few of the the graphics options down to High could easily boost you over the 60fps mark without sacrificing much in the way of image quality.


Battlefield 1:

Starting at the beginning of chapter three (Through Mud & Blood), our benchmark pass lasted 60 seconds using the Ultra settings on both 1920 x 1080 and 2560 x 1440.



Once again the VisionTek RX 580 8GB is head and shoulders above the other two graphics cards but the real story here is the near identical performance of the VisionTek RX 570 4GB and the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB.


Ashes of the Singularity:

The Ashes of the Singularity benchmark is accessible from the main menu with a number of different display options available. We chose to run the benchmark at 1920 x 180 and 2560 x 1440 on Extreme settings.



We wanted to see how well these cards would run Ashes of the Singularity on the Extreme setting but, were this a real-world game play situation and not a benchmark, we would run the game on the high settings to achieve higher frame rates.

    

Fallout 4:

Fallout 4 was tested using the ultra quality preset. Which means that TAA anti-aliasing was employed and anisotropic filtering was set to x16 and "Bokeh" depth of field was used. Once again we used Fraps to record two minutes of gameplay while battling raiders nearby the Corvega assembly plant.



As you can see, Fallout 4 is an extremely demanding game. 1080P gamers will have no problem getting the most out of the game on Ultra settings using any one of the cards we tested today. Those of you planning on running the game at 2560 x 1440, I would recommend turning some of the game settings down to High. 


 DOOM:
We ran our DOOM benchmark test early in the game in the large room full of arch-vile demons.



Simply put, both Radeon based video cards cranked out amazing frame rate performance in DOOM. Even at 2560 x 1440, the VisionTek RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition was still able to churn out almost 100fps while the Radeon RX 570 4GB stayed neck and neck with the GTX 1060 6GB at just under 80fps.

VRMark:
VRMark is a new test from Futuremark designed to see if your system meets the requirements for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. We used the Orange Room benchmark because it makes sure your system meets the recommended hardware requirements for VR gaming.


As with the Fire Strike Extreme test results, the VisionTek RX 580 8GB comes out on top with the GTX 1060 6GB nipping at its heels. With a score of 6743, the VisionTek RX 570 4GB turned in a very respectable showing as well.  

AUDIO TESTING:

For audio tests, we take sound level readings from three feet from the open air test bench with two off-the-shelf dB meters from two different angles.


While all cards are extremely quiet at idle, once the blower fans spin up under load on the Radeon RX 570 and the GTX 1060 6GB both became noticeably loader. VisionTek's RX 580 8GB and its dual fan design was much quieter than the other two cards in this round-up.

TEMPERATURE TESTING:

We monitor temperatures two ways; manually with a custom built unit capable of reading up to eight temperatures simultaneously as well as with CPUID's Hardware Monitor. This ensures that our readings are accurate and reliable. Leads from our temperature probe are physically attached to various points on the card allowing us to double check all of our temperature readings. To get the system up to temperature, we run Furmark for 60 minutes before we start taking any readings. This allows the system to level off after reaching max temperature.


Even though we expected the dual-fan design of VisionTek's RX 580 to produce the lowest temperatures, we were a bit surprised at the temperature difference between the GeForce GTX 1060 and the VisionTek RX 570 given that they both have similar single fan blower-style heatsinks. 


RADEON CHILL: 

Radeon Chill works by dynamically regulating frame rates based on what's happening in-game. The purpose of lowering frame rates is to reduce power consumption when the game you are playing doesn't necessarily from higher rates. Don't worry, the minimum frame rate is set to 40, so you won't end up with a sub-par gaming experience by using Chill. The feature is disabled by default and can be activated in your video cards settings. This is a great feature for power-consumption conscious gamers.

According to AMD: Radeon™ Chill is an intelligent power-saving feature for Radeon™ graphics that dynamically regulates framerate based on your movements in-game. During peak gameplay, Radeon Chill works to deliver the full framerate potential of Radeon graphics. As movement decreases, Radeon Chill reduces your gameplay framerate. Designed to save power, lower temperature, and increase GPU life, Radeon Chill enables high performance graphics when you battle and saves power when you explore.


CONCLUSION:

At a price of $299.99 directly from the NVIDIA website ($249 from various manufacturers), the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB FE is the most expensive GPU we tested today.  While the card did an admirable job keeping up with, and sometimes besting the other cards in this evaluation, there is no doubt that its price / performance ratio is the bottom of the pack. This, in addition to limited upgrade options (SLI is not supported on the GTX 1060-based video cards), makes it extremely difficult to recommend it over the two offerings from VisionTek.

The VisionTek RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition, at $249.99 from the manufacturers website, not only beat the other two cards almost across the board, it is perfectly priced for anyone looking to buy a video card for 1440P gaming or use with a VR headset like the HTC Vive. The best part is that there is always the option of adding additional Radeon RX 580 8GB cards in Crossfire for significantly improved performance.

The VisionTek RX 570 4GB Overclocked Edition really impressed us today. Coming in at $100 / $50 cheaper than both the aforementioned cards, the Radeon RX 570 4GB held its own in almost every game we used in this evaluation. If you are in the market today for a video card for 1080P gaming, this mildly overclocked Radeon RX 570 4GB is the clear choice.

Something that is rarely mentioned in reviews today is the importance of customer service for products you spend your hard earned money on.  Most product support ends when your warranty expires. We were extremely impressed by not only the two year warranty on its graphics cards, but VisionTek's  free US based support for the life of the product as well. Yes, you read that right, VisionTek provides free US based support for the life of your graphics card.

Summing things up, if you want the most video card you can get in the sub-$250 range without limiting your upgrade path, the VisionTek RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition is the clear choice. If you are on a budget and you want a great 1080p gaming experience, we highly recommend the VisionTek RX 570 4GB Overclocked Edition. The warranty and free US based support is simply the icing on the cake.


The VisionTek RX 580 8GB Overclocked Edition and the VisionTek RX 570 4GB Overclocked Edition graphics cards are both available from the company website for $249.99 and $199.99 respectively.



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