Prices of AMD’s RX 570 and RX 580 cards have been falling recently, and that drop seems to be accelerating after Team Red released the Radeon RX 590. But the new card (effectively a die-shrunk retread of the same Polaris silicon found in the RX 580 and RX 480) doesn’t provide a massive boost in frame rates, while it does increase power consumption quite a bit.
Given that a reported glut of GTX 1060 cards makes it unlikely that Nvidia will release an RTX 2060 card anytime soon, that makes this a good time to buy one of AMD’s older Polaris cards. And two models in particular have plummeted to the lowest prices we’ve seen. Both ASRock and PowerColor are selling 4GB RX 570 cards for $140 on Newegg.
Either of cards should deliver good mainstream performance for those gaming at 1080p or 720p. But even at those resolutions, some games are starting to strongly prefer more video memory—especially when high-resolution texture packs are in play. If you can spend a little bit more and would like some extra future-proofing, you can pick up an 8GB PowerColor Red Dragon RX 570 for just $10 more.
After a rough start with the Mattel Aquarius as a child, Matt built his first PC in the late 1990s and ventured into mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent the last 15 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag and Digital Trends.
