ASRock Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX580 8G OC Review: A Solid Rookie Effort

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Conclusion

First of all, congratulations to ASRock on its first graphics card. The company took advantage of a long product cycle, started with a decidedly mainstream GPU, and went conservative on its design. A Radeon RX Vega-based board would have been a completely different animal. We have to respect the desire to start small and build from there.

ASRock's Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX580 8G OC is a solid entry in a mainstream market that remains under pressure from cryptocurrency miners. With no availability yet in the U.S., it's hard to judge the card one way or another against its competition. As a result, we can only really say where the Phantom Gaming X should land with regard to other Radeon RX 580s: it needs to be at the lowest end of the pricing scale.

Clearly, manufacturing cost was a primary factor in this card's implementation. The heat sink could have been a bit beefier, which would have taken some pressure off of the fans to spin so quickly, reducing noise. Still, the thermal solution does its job well enough to not impede AMD's Ellesmere graphics processor, even in artificially taxing workloads. Moreover, the 6mm heat pipe between the GPU base plate and VRM heat sink was ill-conceived. We do, however, like that ASRock avoided highly-integrated voltage regulation circuitry, instead spreading discrete components around to avoid creating hot-spots.

In the end, ASRock's Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX580 8G OC delivers all of the performance you'd expect from a capable Radeon RX 580. That means smooth performance in the latest games at 1920x1080, and acceptable frame rates at 2560x1440, even with detail settings cranked all the way up.

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Igor Wallossek
19 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Ulikedat
    At least it's a looker and the competition just got a bit more heated (no pun intended).
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    I have to wonder, since aiming for a cut-down budget design, why not an RX570? An entry level RX580 with halfway decent cooling can be had new for $270. The cheapest 570 I've seen is a reference model for $250. Push a budget aftermarket RX570 closer to $200 and undercut everyone else. Clocks and TDP would be lower (especially if they stuck close to reference), which would have further reduced board and cooler costs.

    Or perhaps yields are so good at this point, that there just aren't many cut-down Ellesmere chips getting pushed out the door?
    Reply
  • BulkZerker
    @alextheblue they are pushing the bang for buck at every point it seems. It begs to wonder if some "cheap" (like as5) thermal paste would help or not. Certainly an aftermarket heatsink would help the temps.
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    If this card is like most 580s, it will respond quite well to lowering the core voltage. With some undervolting (and maybe a slight underclock), you could likely improve power, thermals and noise noticeably with no (or little) impact on performance.
    Reply
  • AnimeMania
    What's going on with the numbers for GTX 1060 3GB with certain games like Hitman and DOOM, they can't really be that bad, can they?
    Reply
  • gca.roberts
    The 1R0 marking on the GDDR5 VRM inductor means 1.0uH, not 1.0mH.
    Reply
  • Sleepy_Hollowed
    This is quite a nice card, especially for those looking to switch to FreeSync and the open drivers that AMD provides (For accelerating stuff like data compression or video encoding).

    Like all cards, I just wish it was available, this crypto craziness is on the downslope for now, but you never know when cards are just going to be missing from the shelves for months.
    Reply
  • Olle P
    21064926 said:
    I have to wonder, since aiming for a cut-down budget design, why not an RX570? ...
    Around here there's almost no price difference between a 570 (4GB) and 580 (8GB). The latter is significantly better at the all important 1080p so that's where to make profit.

    21065443 said:
    If this card is like most 580s, it will respond quite well to lowering the core voltage. ...
    One can only hope. The 180W drawn is a bit steep IMO.

    21065545 said:
    What's going on with the numbers for GTX 1060 3GB with certain games like Hitman and DOOM, they can't really be that bad, can they?
    Seems off topic...
    The 3GB is a cut down version of the 6GB, with fewer ROPs and less memory bandwidth. 3GB VRAM is also insufficient to run newer games efficiently.
    Reply
  • AnimeMania
    21066401 said:
    21065545 said:
    What's going on with the numbers for GTX 1060 3GB with certain games like Hitman and DOOM, they can't really be that bad, can they?
    Seems off topic...
    The 3GB is a cut down version of the 6GB, with fewer ROPs and less memory bandwidth. 3GB VRAM is also insufficient to run newer games efficiently.
    According to another review on Tom's Hardware, the GTX 1060 3GB had 68.1 FPS on Hitman at Ultra Levels.

    https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-graphics-card-roundup,4724-2.html

    The GTX 1060 3GB in this article had 21.2 FPS on Hitman at Very High Levels. I don't think it is off topic if I am questioning the reliability of the benchmarking process used here. I was just wondering why the results seem to fluctuate so wildly. One value is 3 times higher than the other.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    21066401 said:
    Around here there's almost no price difference between a 570 (4GB) and 580 (8GB). The latter is significantly better at the all important 1080p so that's where to make profit.
    That was my point. There's less competition for cheap RX 570s. Their 580 design cuts down on costs across the board (pun intended). They could cut down even further with the lower-TDP (and presumably cheaper) RX 570 and undercut the entire field substantially. An RX 570 at ~$200 would be enticing for budget builds.

    When they first came out there was often a substantial price difference between full Ellesmere and cut-down Ellesmere. That's why I'm speculating that there just isn't enough supply of 570 chips to make this possible.
    Reply