Detailed Power Consumption and Overclocking

For power consumption measurements, we are still using the methodology that helped us discover the power draw issues of the RX 480 back in 2016.

Our testing involves the use of a National Instruments data acquisition device, which is intercepting the power being sent through the PCI Express bus (12V and 3.3V) as well as the ATX power connectors (12V) before they go to the graphics card and are directly measuring power draw.

On the game side, we are continuing to use Metro: Last Light for power measurement, given its history of being particularly taxing on GPUs in 4K.

Comparing the total power consumption numbers between the RX 580 and RX 590, we see very similar power draw numbers, despite the 40W increase in rated TDP. While the RX 580 stays at a consistent 200W, the RX 590 hovers more around 225W.

Taking a look at the power breakdown by the connectors, we see a near even power draw from the 6-pin and PCI Express slot of 50-60W, while the 8-pin connector is drawing just over 100W. 

Overclocking

The stock clock speed of the XFX RX 590 Fatboy remains quite consistent, at just under 1600MHz. At the same time, the GPU core maintains a temperature just above 75C.

Comparing the stock clock speeds of our MSI RX 580 Gaming X, and the XFX 590, we see a substantial increase in clock speed of just under 200MHz for the new GPU. 

Overclocked, we were able to achieve a stable 1620MHz on the XFX RX 590 Fatboy, or around a 2% increase. In this overclocked state, the temperatures remained the same as when in the stock configuration.

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