Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Final Analysis
AMD’s Radeon RX 570 is a near-facsimile of the RX 470 it replaces, aside from slightly higher clock rates. The company knew its target, to be sure: a little extra performance is all it needed to close the gap with GeForce GTX 1060 3GB in games where Nvidia’s card was faster.
And in titles like Doom, Hitman, and to a lesser extent, Rise of the Tomb Raider, the 3GB GeForce takes care of itself by running out of memory, even at 1920x1080. If you aren’t careful to manage the 1060’s detail settings, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1050 Ti sometimes ends up faster thanks to its 4GB of GDDR5.
What we end up with, then, is a competition between Radeon RX 570 4GB (in our case, Asus’ $185 ROG Strix version) and a more expensive GeForce GTX 1060 3GB that ranges from $190 to $230. Given what we saw in our benchmarks, there’s just no way we’d recommend the 1060 for maxed-out quality at FHD. Much less so if you want to experiment with QHD. Regardless of whether Nvidia's card behaves well in the games you play today, there’s no guarantee it’ll continue serving you well tomorrow.
To be sure, AMD’s Radeon RX 570 wins this round.
Who, then, is going to buy it? The Radeon RX 570, like its predecessor, falls into a fairly dense mix of capable GPUs. Anyone with a QHD display determined to crank up the detail settings in their favorite games is going to go with a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/Radeon RX 580 or higher. Anyone playing at 1920x1080 and willing to compromise graphics quality to save some money can get away with a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. Enthusiasts who splurged on a GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon R9 390 last generation are still enjoying those cards and their ability to cut through 1080p with ease.
As a result, Radeon RX 570 appeals specifically to folks gunning for maxed-out details at 1920x1080 who, for some reason, didn't already jump on Radeon RX 470. AMD's data suggests that 500 million PC gamers still use graphics cards more than two years old, 80% of which are Radeon R9 380X-class or slower. So, in theory, this card's target market is enormous. Let's see if AMD can capitalize on its undisputed victory, then.
MORE: Best Graphics Cards
MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table
MORE: All Graphics Content