Quote:At first sight, the Radeon RX 580 2048SP appears to be a cut-down version of the original Radeon RX 580, which comes equipped with 2304 Stream Processors. However, if you compare the specifications of the Radeon RX 580 2048SP and the Radeon RX 570 8GB, the similarities are clear. And no, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. They are the same graphics card. The only true difference resides in the Radeon RX 580 2048SP's boost clock, which is 40MHz higher than the Radeon RX 570 8GB. But is that sufficient to pass it as another SKU? At least, we don't think so.

In AMD's defense, the company has every right to name its products however it sees fit. Technically, AMD isn't wrong. A Radeon RX 570 8GB is essentially a Radeon RX 580 with 256 less Stream Processors so calling it a Radeon RX 580 2038SP is valid in a way. We have to applaud AMD for its creativity. But some will think it's a shady move on AMD's part for pulling a fast one on less tech-savvy consumers.

Quote:What people tend to take issue with is the branding, which AMD is presumably trying to head off with its 2048SP. In this case, however, it feels a bit disingenuous. Back when Nvidia built the Core 216, it was upgrading the GPU it had previously offered and introducing price cuts at the same time. The RX 580 2048SP is an RX 570 for all intents and purposes. A 3 percent boost clock improvement isn’t enough to justify a new brand or model number, but if AMD did want to introduce one, a part number like RX 575 would distinguish this card from the RX 580. Best of all, from an accuracy perspective, would be to call this an RX 570+ or something equivalent.

Quote:The fact that AMD only launched the RX 580 2048SP in China would suggest that the SKU would probably not be available outside that country. However, history reminds us that that isn't always the case. Remember the Radeon RX 560 fiasco last year? The AMD Radeon RX 560 896SP was initially only sold in China, but it somehow migrated to the West anyway.

Quote:A user on Chinese video sharing website Bilibili has pitched an aftermarket AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP by XFX against a reference Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 3GB in various synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks. The video shows AMD's offering coming out on top in most, but not all, tests.
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The results shown in the video should be taken with a pinch of salt since the Bilibili user didn't provide information about the system or test environment. From what we can tell, they used a reference model of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 3GB for comparison. Judging by the results, the gaming tests were probably conducted at a 1920x1080 resolution.

Quote:Taking an existing product with a relatively good reputation and rebuilding it as a worse product isn’t new. Don’t get us wrong: The RX 570, which is what the RX 580 2048 is, is a reasonably good card, especially with its new prices of roughly $150 (Newegg) to $180 elsewhere. That said, an RX 580 2048 is, by definition, not an RX 580. That’s lying. It is an RX 570, or maybe an RX 575, if AMD thinks that a 40MHz clock difference deserves a new SKU. AMD is pulling the same deceitful trick that NVIDIA pulled with its GT 1030 DDR4 card. It’s disgraceful, misleading, and predatory of consumers who may otherwise not understand the significance of the suffix “2048.” If they’re looking for an RX 580, they’re still finding one – except it isn’t one, and to brand the RX 580 2048 as an RX 580 is disgraceful.

Quote:We watch a lot of GamersNexus content. Our GPU Database curator noticed something interesting in their recent teardown of a Dataland Radeon RX 580 (2,048 SP) graphics card directly imported from China. The unique ASIC sub-variant code etched on the GPU's aluminium reinforcement brace matches that of the RX 570. AMD internally refers to the RX 570 as "Polaris 20 XL," and its ASIC code etched is supposed to be "215-0910052." For the RX 580, the real one, aka "Polaris 20 XTX," the code etched is "215-0910038." Thanks to GamersNexus' high-resolution filming, our curator was able to spot the ASIC code for "Polaris 20 XL" on the Dataland card's GPU. This confirms that AMD merely took an RX 570 and gave it a different device ID to create the RX 580 2,048 SP, leaving consumers to wade through the confusion.

Quote:Back in the glory days of ATI Radeon, the XT brand extension denoted the better-endowed variant among two or more graphics card models based on the same silicon, such as the Radeon HD 2900 XT. After AMD's takeover, the XT, Pro, XL, and other lesser used extensions such as XTX and All-in-Wonder were retired in favor of numerical variant numbers, beginning with the HD 3870. The company continued to use "XT" and "Pro" internally to differentiate ASIC variants, although those monikers were seldom if not never used in marketing materials. That's about to change. AMD launched its first overtly XT brand-extended product in close to 15 years, with the China-specific Radeon RX 560 XT, but alas, it's a lousy re-brand.

The RX 560 XT is positioned between the RX 560 4 GB and RX 570 4 GB, and is based on the "Polaris 20" or "Polaris 30" silicon (we don't know which). AMD enabled 28 out of 36 NGCUs on this silicon, resulting in 1,792 stream processors, 112 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The memory is 4 GB across a 256-bit wide memory interface, although the memory clock-speed is dialed down to 6.6 Gbps (211.2 GB/s). What makes the RX 560 XT a re-brand is that AMD launched an SKU with the same exact specifications, called Radeon Pro 570, and there are several odd-ball RX 570-branded cards in the wild with this core-config. There's no reference-design board of the RX 560 XT, and the SKU is entirely in the hands of board partners to come up with custom-designs of their own.