AMD's counterpart to Nvidia's GTX 1050 delivers solid gaming performance at 1080p.
Radeon RX 560 at a glance
How powerful is the RX 560? The RX 560 is capable of 60fps gaming at 1080p and Medium settings in most modern games.When did the RX 560 come out? AMD launched the RX 560 on 18 April 2017.
How much does the RX 560 cost? You can find the RX 560 selling for as little as $170 or as high as $300 depending on the specific model.
What is the RX 560?
The RX 560 is AMD's second budget-priced graphics card in the Radeon RX 500 series. Following on from the RX 550, it is geared towards gamers who want to play the latest titles at 1080p resolutions and don't mind sacrificing a few graphical flourishes here and there.
At this price and performance, the RX 560 occupies the same space as Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1050. This also puts it roughly on par with the capabilities of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, though the fixed nature of those systems means that some games may look and run better on them despite the power parity. Nevertheless, those looking for console-like performance on PC will find it in the RX 560.
As with the RX 550, the RX 560 is available with either 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 RAM. Both versions include a 128-bit memory bus and support memory speeds up to 7Gbps. They also operate at the same GPU speeds, sporting a base clock speed of 1175MHz and a boost clock speed of 1275MHz.
System requirements for the RX 560 are fairly low, although the card does chew through more power than the competing GTX 1050. Typical power consumption sits at 80W, and AMD recommends you have a power supply of at least 450W. You'll also need a PCIe 3.0 slot with enough free space to accommodate a dual-width card, as most variants of the RX 560 are 35mm or wider.
One issue to be mindful of when considering the RX 560 is that there are two distinct variants of the card selling under the same name. The original version features 16 compute units and 1024 stream processors while a second, pared-down version consists of 14 compute units and 896 stream processors. This difference can result in a significant performance decrease for the latter version of the RX 560, so be sure to verify which variant you're getting before you hand over your cash.
What features does the RX 560 support?
To complement its raw performance, the RX 560 boasts a number of additional features for improving your gaming experience. These include:
- Radeon Chill adaptive power-saving technology
- Eyefinity multi-display technology
- Virtual Super Resolution super-sampling
- Vulkan API support
- Radeon ReLive recording software
- FreeSync
- LiquidVR
- DirectX 12
- HDCP 2.2
- HDMI 2.0b
- DisplayPort 1.4 HDR
- TressFX hair physics
How powerful is the RX 560?
The budget price tag and modest specs of the RX 560 place it firmly at the entry level to modern PC gaming. 1080p is where it is most comfortable, delivering framerates around 60fps in most current games with the graphics settings tuned to Medium quality. Alternatively, ratcheting up the settings to High sees the RX 560 maintain a fairly stable 30fps more often than not, which is in keeping with the experience offered by current-generation consoles.
In the PC market, the RX 560 finds itself up against Nvidia's GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti graphics cards. Relative performance across the three tends to vary from game to game, with certain titles performing better on AMD's hardware and others excelling on Nvidia's technology. However, on average, the GTX 1050 Ti tends to fare the best, with the 4GB version of the RX 560 pipping the 2GB GTX 1050 slightly more often than not. The catch there is that the GTX 1050 is typically quite a bit cheaper than the 4GB RX 560, so the small performance hit might be worth it if you're looking to save money.
Those wanting to enter the world of virtual reality will unfortunately find the RX 560 lacking. It does not meet the minimum requirements for either the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift VR headsets.
RX 560 availability and price
AMD released the RX 560 into the world on 18 April 2017. If you're looking to pick one up, you can find the 2GB model typically selling for around $170 while the 4GB model ranges from around $220 to $300.
RX 560 specs
- Base clock speed
- 1175MHz
- Boost clock speed
- 1275MHz
- Memory
- 2GB/4GB GDDR5
- Memory speed
- 7Gbps
- Memory bus
- 128-bit
- Card length
- ~170mm
- Card width
- Dual slot
- Card height
- ~115mm
- Power draw
- 60-80W
- Recommended system power
- 450W
- Power connectors
- No external power required
- No. HDMI ports
- 1
- No. display ports
- 1
- No. DVI ports
- 1
- DirectX support
- 12