Rx 560 2gb benchmark: UserBenchmark: AMD RX 560

AMD Radeon RX 560 benchmarks: the Red Team’s budget GPU simply isn’t powerful enough

At this point, we have to wonder — just how many Radeon RX 560s are on the market? When the graphics card first launched, there were both 2GB and 4GB versions. Some models had additional PCI Express power, some didn’t. Some had factory overclocks, while others remained at stock speeds. That’s confusing enough, but then a new version of the RX 560 with only 14 of the 16 available compute units enabled appeared — effectively a rebrand of the last generation RX 460. And then, multiple versions of that lower end configuration were unleashed upon the market as well.

So let’s help explain the situation by offering some initial recommendations if you are considering an RX 560. First of all, only consider the 4GB models of this card — the 2GB variants simply don’t have enough VRAM to be used in modern games at 1080p, and this will continue to be an issue going forward. Secondly, while the boost clocks for the RX 560 are in the region of 1220MHz to 1275MHz depending on the model, only cards with a PCI Express power input will actually be able to reach these speeds on a consistent basis. We tested a Gigabyte board without PCIe power and found that clocks could drop to 1190MHz and then fluctuate — though increasing the power slider using overclocking tool MSI Afterburner did counteract this behaviour.

All of these variations make things unduly confusing for the uninitiated and even make it difficult for us to decide which cards we should actually test. In the end, we decided to test both the 14 and 16 compute unit models of the RX 560, going with 4GB of RAM and equalised clock speeds. This should give you an idea of performance from the very best RX 560 models on the market, with only the compute unit count differing them.

Which GPUs are worth buying? We’ve made our picks for the best graphics cards available, updated with the latest graphics cards as they’re released. As well as an overall performance champ, we name the best value graphics card and best cheap graphics card to guide your next upgrade.

The chief competitors to the RX 560 come from the other major player in the graphics card space, Nvidia, who have also saw fit to offer a range of cards with slightly different specifications and abilities. There are three cards to consider from Team Green: the GTX 1050 2GB, the GTX 1050 3GB and the GTX 1050 Ti. All of the models we tested don’t require a PCIe power input, making them a little easier to run with budget power supplies. The more expensive Ti card is the fastest budget GPU on the market, while the cut-down 1050 2GB holds its own remarkably well as the cheapest GPU in our line-up, but occasionally tanks hard with games that with heavier VRAM requirements (Battlefield 1, we’re looking at you). The recently released 1050 3GB seemingly offers the best of both worlds, with anywhere from slightly worse to far better performance than the 2GB model at the same RRP — although retail availability in some regions remains distinctly subpar.

Numerous models of RX 560 are available — we chose to test the best possible models that feature both 14 and 16 compute units, with equalised, locked clocks.

Buy the AMD Radeon RX 560 from Amazon.

So here’s our data for the nine titles in our current test line-up. Our benchmark system is pretty advanced, but at the most basic level, the bar charts represent performance data expressed as an average and with bottom-end and top-end frame-rates too. Click on the bar chart to swap between frame-rate and percentage differentials with full mouse-over support. It’s pretty cool, but if you’re viewing this page on a desktop PC and you want to go even deeper, play the relevant video embed and watch frame-rate and frame-time telemetry play out for each card. You can even use the controls on the right side of the video to add or remove different cards from the real-time comparison.

Assassin’s Creed Unity

We begin with Assassin’s Creed Unity, the 2014 release of the near-annual series set in Revolution-era France. The game can be a stiff challenge for graphics cards with low amounts of VRAM, but the 4GB on both of our RX 560 cards should be enough to see off the challenge. However, the cards still fall down in comparison to their Nvidia rivals, coming in shy of the playable standard of 30 frames per second. The VRAM-starved GTX 1050 2GB sits just a couple of frames per second than the better RX 560, the GTX 1050 3GB is a few frames faster still, while the GTX 1050 Ti turns in the best result overall at a comfortable 37fps.