Rumors are that AMD is about to present its new AMD Vega GPU architecture soon and, given the success of AMD’s release in the CPU segment with the Ryzen family, it’s easy to understand why AMD fans are getting hyped. NVIDIA has been dominating the GPU segment for quite a while now, and even though AMD managed to come close in some aspects and offer better price/performance ratios, the truth is that AMD never managed to rank up to NVIDIA’s high-end cards such as the GTX 1080, the GTX 1080 Ti, or the Titan XP. AMD Vega is expected to change the scenery a bit, and go after NVIDIA’s top dogs. Before Vega sees the light of the day, though, AMD opted to give its current Polaris architecture one more go, and thus the RX 500 series was born.

Known as Polaris Enhanced, AMD’s RX 500 series is basically a refresh of the Polaris-based RX 400 series, and it was primarily designed to tighten up the competition in the mid and low-end segments, and give users who were hesitant to update when the RX 400 series came out a reason to consider upgrading. Featuring roughly the same specs as the RX 400 series, the RX 500 series does have some higher clocks and other refinements that reflect in a modest performance increase, while the prices remain the same, in the $200-$300 range, depending on manufacturer and model.

The Radeon RX 580 is the highline of the RX 500 family, and the direct descendant of the RX 480, so they are very much similar cards. Specs-wise, the RX 580 and the RX 480 share the same number of stream processors (2304), texture units (144) and ROPs (32). They both come in 4GB and 8GB variants, and the only noticeable difference between the RX 580 and the RX 480 are the operating frequencies, which are higher for the 580 (1257MHz base and 1340MHz boost vs. the 480’s 1120MHz base and 1266MHz boost), and the higher TDP (180W vs. 150W for the 480). Keep in mind that these are the reference specifications, though – manufacturers can tweak and tune them to their will to squeeze out the very best of Polaris. If you’re wondering which manufacturer did it better, wonder no more – here are the best RX 580 implementations out there.