AMD’s venerable RX 580 lives on – form of – in a brand new spin on the graphics card over in China through which the VRAM has been upgraded to 16GB, no much less.
Tom’s {Hardware} noticed that the Radeon RX 580 2048SP, which was launched 5 years in the past, and is unique to the Chinese language market – although it may be imported to the US through well-liked retailers – simply received a giant RAM improve.
Or at the least one mannequin did, the RX 580 from Chinese language card maker Kinology, which now has 16GB of VRAM as talked about, moderately than the unique configuration of 8GB (or 4GB for some fashions).
To see an aged RX 580 swanning across the market with a lot video reminiscence will likely be one thing of a kick within the tooth for Nvidia followers who’ve been complaining concerning the comparatively meager allocations of VRAM on some current-gen Lovelace graphics playing cards.
But it surely begs the query: what’s the purpose of giving an RX 580 a lot VRAM?
Evaluation: A curious new Radeon
Okay, let’s rewind for a second right here. Is the RX 580 even a factor anymore? Whereas it doesn’t bother the best-selling GPU charts within the US any longer, it may possibly nonetheless be a super-cheap second-hand purchase for some of us on strict budgets, and the graphics card nonetheless has gross sales momentum in China. Clearly, in any other case Kinology wouldn’t be manufacturing a brand new mannequin.
Kinology isn’t a reputation you’ll have heard of, likely, as a result of as Tom’s explains, it’s a neighborhood agency that relabels and resells OEM graphics playing cards in China (these equipped to PC makers).
As to the purpose of an RX 580 with 16GB of video RAM, effectively, it maybe has sure area of interest usages attributable to having that giant pool of reminiscence. (Though notice the RAM is GDDR5, too, so it’s not quick – actually, it makes use of slower 6Gbps modules on this case, in comparison with the conventional RX 580 2048SP which has 7Gbps VRAM, so it’s even slower).
Ultimately, it’s extra of a curiosity than anything, and Kinology definitely received’t be troubling any of one of the best graphics playing cards on the market, not by a protracted shot. But it surely’s nonetheless fascinating to see how previous GPUs do nonetheless have some life in them – and even get late-stage upgrades. The Kinology RX 580 2048SP can be decently low cost, coming in at $83 (US) on JD.com (about £65, AU$125)
You possibly can nonetheless purchase an imported Maxsun Radeon RX 580 2048SP (unique 8GB taste) from China through Newegg, for instance, although it’ll run you a piece extra at $117 within the US (about £90, AU$180) on the time of writing. It’s definitely a better-known model than Kinology, after all.
