I'm not reviewing this. - Radeon RX 590
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,937 words · ~9 min read
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have you ever really noticed how sometimes a new product
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isn't really all that new this kind of thing has happened before and the funny
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thing is it's not like people don't notice just look at AMD with their
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pitcairn family of gpus back in 2012 through 2015. that was three whole
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generations of basically the same card under different names and it's not just
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AMD that pulls this rebranding and re-badging bs
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all the big players do it NVIDIA Intel
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you name it so why does it keep happening and why is AMD releasing a GPU
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for the third time again i think we have
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got the answer origin pc builds custom desktops and high performance laptops
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okay so it's not like every product you buy is a straight re-release
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sometimes we get a high-end product in one generation
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rebadged as a mid-tier one in the next like the GeForce gtx 680 being rebranded
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as the gtx 770 with a mild clock speed
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bump and we also usually see a token price reduction to go along with that
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honestly no problem with that it's a good way to get rid of old stock and
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it's good value for the consumer win-win on the other hand when a product gets
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positioned the same way that it was during the previous generation
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a lot of negative press almost always comes along with it one need only look
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at last week's core i9 9980xe
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which Intel billed as two generations
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higher than the 7980xe that it replaced even though all
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they did was tune their existing chip so then if that's the case
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why does anybody do this i mean it's not
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free to launch a product it's actually more expensive than you'd probably think
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you have to pay for advertising with partner websites you've got to seed
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units to oems for validation you've got to jump through all the regulatory hoops
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involved in getting fcc certification and the like you've got to get your new
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upc and ean codes and if you've pushed clock speeds higher you might even need
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to design and manufacture a new cooler furthermore if you set aside i don't
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know let's be conservative and say 50 cards to go out to just the popular
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reviewers at a cost of two hundred dollars a pop that works out to ten
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thousand dollars all on its own but believe it or not that last point is
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actually where the advantages of rebranding shine through
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now very few media outlets re-review the
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same product that they already reviewed so new software driver features and
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performance improvements can end up buried under the wave of initial launch
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reviews so by making that product new
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again well you create an incentive to cover it
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again i mean we're not the only ones who are eager to cover new releases because
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our followers want to know about them this drives traffic for the media
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outlets channel or site and for that new
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product so a hot product release can easily generate millions of views which
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if we compare to advertising with a more
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traditional campaign lasting for a review cycle yields a savings of several
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times the cost so you could have millions of engaged eyeballs that are
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hyper interested in the product at half the cost of just a million
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it's an ad eyeballs seems like a no-brainer
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of course developing a derivative product of something that you already
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know works is appealing to the bean counters and the investors as well
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because it involves less risk well the r d budget is uh approximately three
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billion and this is the first one so if anyone would like to
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buy this it's three billion dollars i'm pretty sure that that's no lie there's a
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lot of r d tooling and financial dice
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rolling that makes any brand new product a really risky and therefore potentially
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costly endeavor i mean just ask Intel how their 10 nanometer processors are
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coming along you might not even get a product out of it now as consumers we've
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kind of just taken for granted that new processes just keep happening because
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even without moore's law apple and qualcomm have continued to improve
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generationally and then more to the point tweaking an existing design can result
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in not only better clock speeds but also better yields which further lowers cost
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as long as the performance is still good enough so that's another reason that it
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might be ideal to release something even when it wouldn't be financially viable
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to r d and all new chip or if whatever's in the pipeline is way behind schedule
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so the rx 590 seems to fit that description
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since this is our third time seeing this
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GPU and the clocks are a little bit higher than before so this kind of
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generational tweaking actually worked out great with AMD's second generation
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ryzen cpus but while ryzen's refresh had AMD coming
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into it from a position of relative strength polaris refresh again
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appears to be simply AMD's hand being forced because they
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know that NVIDIA's incoming mid-range GPU demands some kind of answer on the
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subject of NVIDIA more reasons for this whole behavior NVIDIA has a method of
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dominating news cycles in a way that AMD
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mercifully generally doesn't so do you remember how it took a while after the
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launch of their rtx cards for anyone to have envy link sli numbers
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i've actually had experience with NVIDIA going out of their way to make it
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difficult for reviewers to get multiple cards in time for launch sli coverage
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that way they get a news cycle for the announcement a new cycle for the unveil
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a news cycle for the pre-order a new cycle for their ridiculous unboxing
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embargo another for the performance review another for sli and then finally
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another one when rtx games actually finally show up
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so here's the thing why are we so mad about this
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well there's the element of time wasting i mean we all i mean the press in
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general reviewed the 7980xe
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and then we did it again when they called it something new this makes our
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lives more boring we'd rather cover stuff that's actually new but
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the more offensive thing about this practice of not naming products properly
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is that it confuses the customer and it gets worse we haven't even really
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touched on the practice of introducing cut down products that reuse an existing
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product's name both NVIDIA and AMD have engaged in this utterly deplorable
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practice in the last couple of product generations with the gtx 1063 gig which
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does not have the same grade of GPU as the 6 gig variant but just with half the
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RAM and AMD's more recent rx 580 2048 sp
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which isn't an rx 580 it's more like a
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clock boosted rx 570 so you might think
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well just don't sweat it Linus recycle your old numbers and call it a day but the
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issue is that we can't do that because a it would be wrong and b it's not always
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that simple so on our reviewer's guide for the rx 590 for example it's said in
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big bold letters AMD moved to 12 nanometer finfet which sounds lower than
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14 nanometer efficiency improvements maybe no
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so just like Intel refusing to provide a proper spec sheet that clarifies that
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their top tier chip throttles below its base clock in avx 512 workloads in fact
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to the same level as the predecessor
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AMD has put it on reviewers to dig up that the 12 nanometer they're boasting
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about is just global foundry's variation of samsung's 14 nanometer there's no
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transistor shrink so it's just the same die area for the same compute course but
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with higher clock stability and that would be fine if they weren't trying to
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pass it off as a new graphics card its suggested retail price of 280 bucks is
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pretty far out there when eight gig rx 580s can be seen for 60 to 80 less many
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because they're oc models with core clocks within 150 megahertz or so so i
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guess here's what we're saying some advice free of charge
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if you got nothing and all you want is some fresh coverage of your product
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be honest call it an rx 580 plus or rx 480 plus
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plus since we're on the subject and spend that launch budget on something
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else like i get the appeal of using a relaunch to reset your msrp that was
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eroded by gradually lower sales and promotions but i would make the argument
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that the only people that you're fooling with this new product at a higher price
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are really being taken advantage of now one thing AMD is doing right here is
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expanding the value proposition with a game bundle for buying an rx 590
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but i'm not sure if resident evil 2 hd the division 2 and devil may cry 5 is
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exactly a blockbuster lineup
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so this is the bottom line after the core i9 9980xe fiasco
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we just want to ask that manufacturers
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be more transparent about how they position and especially how they price
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these derivative products not only can proper positioning lead to better sales
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and sentiment it also leads to a happier pc gaming community
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oh and by the way if anyone wanted to know uh how the rx 590 performs it's
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fine uh it's a bit faster than the rx 580 which is about what you'd expect
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video description go check them out
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so thanks for watching guys dislike if the video sucked but if it was awesome
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hit that like button get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured in the video
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description again be clear rx 590 not a bad card
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just not new also linked in the description is our merch store which has cool shirts
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nope no i'm not wearing a melty t-shirt well it has cool shirts and our
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community forum which you should totally join