Radeon RX 580 Recall Scam in China: AMD Warns Customers of GPU Fraud

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Radeon RX 580
Radeon RX 580 (Image credit: AMD)

Graphics card merchants (via Expreview) are getting ever more creative in China to profit from less informed consumers. The new modus operandi consists of posing as AMD and XFX to issue a fake Radeon RX 580 recall to deceive customers to trade in their recent Radeon RX 580 purchases for a GeForce equivalent that has no cryptocurrency mining value.

Chinese dealers were spreading a phony letter that AMD and XFX were recalling Radeon RX 580 graphics cards due to instability issues that were product of a manufacturing defect. It's common knowledge that the Radeon RX 580 has been discontinued for a while, and scammers were taking advantage of its retirement. The swindlers convinced legitimate customers to accept a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or GTX 1060 3GB as a replacement, arguing that the GeForce models offered better performance. The merchants even went as far as offering compensation in exchange for the Radeon RX 580.

Both AMD China and XFX China have released official statements stating that the so-called Radeon RX 580 recall is completely bogus. The four-year-old Polaris-powered graphics card doesn't present any factory defects with the PCB design as the sketchy document suggested. AMD will pursue legal action against the perpetrators for spreading misinformation and making illicit use of the AMD branding.

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Radeon RX 580 Recall
AMD Statement(Image credit: AMD China/Weibo)

The elaborate scam offered Radeon RX 580 owners two different schemes. The trade-in option consisted in a one-to-own swap with the dealers replacing the Radeon RX 580 4GB and Radeon RX 580 8GB with a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, respectively. The recall option offered owners with a sum of money was a little over two times that of the Radeon RX 580's street price. According to the document, the 4GB and 8GB variants are priced at 400 yuan (~$61) and 800 yuan (~$122), respectively. Therefore, owners would be receiving up to 900 yuan (~$138) and 1,700 yuan (~$260), respectively.

Getting a GeForce GTX 1060 3GB in return for a Radeon RX 580 isn't a horrible deal if you're an average gamer. The Pascal graphics card's performance is relatively close to the Radeon RX 580 — our GPU benchmarks peg it at 72% of the performance. However, the Pascal graphics card does boast a substantial lower power consumption. For comparison, the GeForce RTX 1060 3GB is rated for 120W, while the Radeon RX 580 has a 185W TDP. It comes down to a 35.1% power reduction.

The real reason behind the scam is Ethereum mining. With the cryptocurrency mining business booming again, merchants want to flip the Radeon RX 580 for a considerable profit. The graphics card's real value lies in its cryptocurrency mining abilities. Where the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB can earn around $1.20 per day via NiceHash, the Radeon RX 580 8GB can net can more than double that. The Radeon RX 580 is ranked as one of the best mining GPUs thanks to its price to performance ratio.

The Radeon RX 580 has aged like fine wine, which is not something that happens a lot in the graphics card world. Originally debuted in 2017 at $229, custom Radeon RX 580 models are currently selling for over $500 in the used market, an incredible price hike of 118%. The GTX 1060 3GB by comparison goes for around $225, basically matching its launch price, meanwhile GeForce GTX 1060 6GB graphics cards go for between $300 and $400, as they're far better for mining.

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Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Phaaze88
    /facepalm to LOL
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    Getting a GeForce GTX 1060 3GB in return for a Radeon RX 580 isn't a horrible deal if you're an average gamer. The Pascal graphics card's performance is relatively close to the Radeon RX 580 — our GPU benchmarks peg it at 72% of the performance...
    In terms of real-world usage scenarios, the performance would generally be closer than that, likely only around 15% or so behind the RX 580 8GB in most existing games running at 1080p. The GPU hierarchy chart combines results for 1080p, 1440p and 4K, and the higher-resolution results undoubtedly cripple performance a lot worse on a 3GB card. Even the RX 580 doesn't really have the processing power to properly handle 1440p and 4K in most modern titles, so including those resolutions in the comparison is not really representative of the typical performance difference one would encounter. The 1060 3GB was more of an RX 570 4GB competitor though, having 10% of it's cores disabled from the 6GB version, in addition to less VRAM.

    Getting a 1050 Ti in place of an RX 580 4GB would be a lot worse though. Even for 1080p gaming, a 1050 Ti performs around 40% below an RX 580 in most games. The two cards are in entirely different performance tiers. The RX 580 4GB tends to perform rather similar to the 8GB version in most titles.

    It is kind of amusing that anyone would think AMD would have a recall and trade Nvidia cards for AMD ones though.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    cryoburner said:
    In terms of real-world usage scenarios, the performance would generally be closer than that, likely only around 15% or so behind the RX 580 8GB in most existing games running at 1080p. The GPU hierarchy chart combines results for 1080p, 1440p and 4K, and the higher-resolution results undoubtedly cripple performance a lot worse on a 3GB card. Even the RX 580 doesn't really have the processing power to properly handle 1440p and 4K in most modern titles, so including those resolutions in the comparison is not really representative of the typical performance difference one would encounter. The 1060 3GB was more of an RX 570 4GB competitor though, having 10% of it's cores disabled from the 6GB version, in addition to less VRAM.

    Getting a 1050 Ti in place of an RX 580 4GB would be a lot worse though. Even for 1080p gaming, a 1050 Ti performs around 40% below an RX 580 in most games. The two cards are in entirely different performance tiers. The RX 580 4GB tends to perform rather similar to the 8GB version in most titles.

    It is kind of amusing that anyone would think AMD would have a recall and trade Nvidia cards for AMD ones though.
    The RX480 is almost identical to the RX580 (slightly lower clock speeds and lower power draw) and it still beats a 6Gb 1060 in many modern games; the 3Gb 1060 is slower than the 6Gb version (less compute units). The geforce is faster than the Radeon on DX11 and older games, true - but switch on DX12 or Vulkan, and it gets its backend handed to it.
    So, Fortnite players might get slightly better top FPS with the Geforce, while you can play Doom Eternal on 1440p low details except textures at max (dynamic resolution deactivated) on a reference design RX480 8Gb. On the Geforce, you can forget about it.
    Reply
  • excalibur1814
    There is such a thing as using <snip> to shorten the quote section. Gets difficult to read when you're not within the forum.
    Reply