AMD has revealed both the official specs plus the first benchmarks for its upcoming AMD Radeon RX 590 graphics card and the results are pleasantly surprising.

Specs-wise, the Radeon RX 590 is along the lines of what had been rumoured all along – extremely similar to the Radeon RX 580 that’s already been on the market for over a year. The Radeon RX 590 features the same 2304 Stream Processor core count and the exact same 8GB GDDR5 memory clocked at 8Gb/s.

However, the big changed is a marked increase to the clock speeds, made possible thanks to the adoption of the 12nm FinFET fabrication process for the Polaris 30 GPU. The AMD Radeon RX 590 sports a 1469 MHz base clock speed right out of the box, along with a 1545 MHz boost clock. This compares to 1257 MHz and 1340 MHz base and boost clock respectively on the RX 580.

The end result is a graphics card with similar specs to the two generations that have come before it, but with an actual tangible jump in performance. In terms of raw numbers, it translates to a 15% gain in terms of TFLOPs, shifting from 6.2 TFLOPs on the RX 580 to 7.1 TFLOPs on the RX 590.

  Radeon RX 480 Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 590 GPU Polaris 10 (14nm) Polaris 20 (14nm) Polaris 30 (12nm) Cores 2304 2304 2304 TMUs 144 144 144 ROPs 32 32 32 Compute Performance 5.83 TFLOPS 6.17 TFLOPS 7.1 TFLOPS Base Clock 1120 MHz 1257 MHz 1469 MHz Boost Clock 1266 MHz 1340 MHZ 1545 MHz Memory Up to 8GB GDDR5 Up to 8GB GDDR5 8GB GDDR5 Memory Clock 8 GHz 8 GHz 8 GHz Memory Interface 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit Bandwidth 256 GB/s 256 GB/s 256 GB/s

But what does this all mean for the Radeon RX 590’s gaming performance? AMD published its own gaming benchmarks so all the usual caveats apply here. Intel has only recently shone a spotlight on inaccurate benchmarks so we’d fairly optimistic AMD won’t risk the ire of its fans.

The test system slots in the RX 590 alongside an Intel Core i7-7700K CPU, 16GB DDR4 memory clocked at 3000 MHz and AMD Radeon driver 18.40.

As for the results, the AMD Radeon RX 590 scores consistently higher frame rates than the Radeon RX 580, with each gaming benchmarking showing 18-26% FPS gains. It’s a decent improvement, both more than we were expecting and also topping Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 6GB in all-but-one benchmark test.

  Radeon RX 480 Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 590 Shadow of the Tomb Raider 49 58 69 Monster Hunter World 44 51 63 Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 69 103 125 PUBG 61 63 77 Fortnite 69 66 83 Overwatch 114 110 136

  Radeon RX 590 GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Shadow of the Tomb Raider 69 59 F1 2018 83 65 Monster Hunter World 63 50 Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 124 100 Far Cry 4 82 74 Strange Brigade 95 77 PUBG 77 71 Fortnite 83 79 Overwatch 136 138

The one catch with the Radeon RX 590 is it’s going to retail for $279, which is a little more than the $240 the RX 580 typically retails for these days. However, Videocardz claims the Radeon RX 590 will be launching with a truly formidable bundle. This “blockbuster” bundle includes the AMD Radeon RX 590 plus copies of Devil May Cry 5, The Division 2 and the Resident Evil 2 remake. They’re all AAA titles, all new, and all due out during the first months of 2019 so this would be a fantastic deal for AMD. At full price, we’re talking about $180 worth of games here.

AMD’s Radeon RX 590 will be available to buy from tomorrow, priced at $279.