ASRock, a company known mostly for its motherboards that was formerly an Asus sub-brand but is now an independent company owned by Pegatron since 2010 is now getting into the graphics card market with a new Phantom Gaming series. At launch, the Phantom Gaming series is comprised of four AMD Polaris-based graphics cards including the Phantom Gaming RX 550 2G and RX 560 2G on the low end and the Phantom Gaming X RX 570 8G OC and RX 580 8G OC on the mid/high end range.
ASRock is using black shrouds with white accents and silver and red logos. The lower end Phantom Gaming cards utilize a single dual ball bearing fan while the Phantom Gaming X cards use a dual fan configuration. ASRock is using copper baseplates paired with aluminum heatsinks and composite heatpipes. The Phantom Gaming RX 550 and RX 560 cards use only PCI-E slot power while the Phantom Gaming X RX 570 and RX 580 cards get power from both the slot and a single 8-pin PCI-E power connector.
Video outputs include one HDMI 2.0, one DisplayPort 1.4, and one DL-DVI-D on the Phantom Gaming parts and one HDMI 2.0, three DisplayPort 1.4, and one DL-DVI-D on the higher-end Phantom Gaming X graphics cards. All of the graphics card models feature both silent and overclocked modes in addition to their out-of-the-box default clocks depending on whether you value performance or noise. Users can select which mode they want or perform a custom overclock or fan curve using ASRock's Phantom Gaming Tweak utility.
On the performance front, out of the box ASRock is slightly overclocking the Phantom Gaming X OC cards (the RX 570 and RX 580 based ones) and slightly underclocking the lower end Phantom Gaming cards (including the memory which is downclocked to 6 GHz) compared to their AMD reference specifications.
| ASRock RX 580 OC | RX 580 | ASRock RX 570 OC | RX 570 | ASRock RX 560 | RX 560 | ASRock RX 550 | RX 550 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cores | 2304 | 2304 | 2048 | 2048 | 896 | 896 | 512 | 512 |
| GPU Clock (MHz) | 1380 | 1340 | 1280 | 1244 | 1149 | 1275 | 1100 | 1183 |
| GPU Clock OC Mode (MHz) | 1435 | – | 1331 | – | 1194 | – | 1144 | – |
| Memory (GDDR5) | 8GB | 8GB | 8GB | 8GB | 2GB | 2GB/4GB | 2GB | 2GB/4GB |
| Memory Clock (GHz) | 8GHz | 8GHz | 7GHz | 7GHz | 6GHz | 7GHz | 6GHz | 7GHz |
| Memory Clock OC Mode (MHz) | 8320 | – | 7280 | – | 6240 | – | 6240 | – |
| Texture Units | 144 | 144 | 128 | 128 | 64 | 64 | 32 | 32 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
The table above shows the comparisons between the ASRock graphics cards and their AMD reference card counterparts. Note that the Phantom Gaming RX 560 2G is based on the cut-down 14 CU (compute unit) model rather than the launch 16 CU GPU. Also, even in OC Mode, ASRock does not bring the memory up to the 7 GT/s reference spec. On the positive side, turning on OC mode does give a decent factory overclock of the GPU over reference. Also nice to see is that on the higher end "OC Certified" Phantom Gaming X cards, ASRock overclocks both the GPU and memory speeds which is often not the case with factory overclocks.
ASRock did not detail pricing with any of the launch announcement cards, but they should be coming soon with 4GB models of the RX 560 an RX 550 to follow later this year.
It is always nice to have more competition in this space and hopefully a new AIB partner for AMD helps alleviate shortages and demand for gaming cards if only by a bit. I am curious how well the cards will perform as while they look good on paper the company is new to graphics cards and the build quality really needs to be there. I am just hoping that the Phantom Gaming moniker is not an allusion to how hard these cards are going to be to find for gaming! (heh) If the rumored Ethereum ASICs do not kill the demand for AMD GPUs I do expect that ASRock will also be releasing mining specific cards as well at some point.
What are your thoughts on the news of ASRock moving into graphics cards?
Also read:
What a grand
What a grand entrance…selling midrange 2016 parts.
A good start but remember
A good start but remember they also make iphones and laptops hopefully there buying power will mean they can get better supply of gddr5. and improve supply and so bring down prices.
It’s about time. Asrock been
It’s about time. Asrock been doing great stuff with their motherboards, I was wondering when they would get into VGA business. Good news.
Now, if only ASRock would
Now, if only ASRock would indicate where you can buy these.
Looks like will be mainly
Looks like will be mainly focused on Asian countries for now, like Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and Japan I think.
This is why I went nVidia.
This is why I went nVidia. The core clocks are better on the 1070. Also cheaper at the time also.
Shader cores on the 1070 are
Shader cores on the 1070 are 1920 while the RX580 has 2304.
If it’s for gamng only then the GTX 1070 has 64 ROPs and a Pixel Fill Rate of: 107.7 GPixel/s while the RX 580 8G OC has only 32 ROPs and a Pixel Fill Rate of: 44.16 GPixel/s.
Miners want the shader cores and not so much the ROPs and gamers want the ROPs and the pixel fill rates that give the most FPS(DX11 and 12/Vulkan also to a lesser degree).
If you are a gamer then go with the GPU that has over twice the pixel fill rate as the RX 580, if the cost of the 1070 is lower or even a bit higher.
Core clocks are somewhat not as mush of a factor compared to the numbers of ROPs as it’s ROPs that push out the pixels to the frame buffer. The more ROPs the higher the pixel fill rates with clocks helping some but not as much as actually having more ROPs helps that FPS metric.
TechPowerUp’s/Other’s GPU databases are your friend if you really have any brains and that Pixel Fill rate directly equates to that better FPS rate for gaming.
Now the GTX 1070 compared to the Vega 56 is a different matter as both the Vega 56 and the 1070 have 64 ROPs and DX12 and Vulkan can make use of shader cores for more gaming uses than DX11 can. Any New RayTracing acceleration using MS’s DXR(ray tracing API) or AMD’s Radeon Rays(GPU open/Pro Render Ray Tracing API used in Unity) is going to love Vega 56’s Extra shader cores and Vega 56 has 3584 Shader Cores compared to the GTX 1070’s 1920 Shader cores.
Ray Tracing for shadow/lighting effects done on the Shader Cores and not totally on a GPUs Raster Back End/ROPs(Render output unit/Raster Operations Pipline) is going to remove some stress off of that ROP for shadow mapping and make for better quality Lighting/Shadow effects so that’s where more shader cores can mean better image quality.
How Ray Tracing Affects FPS will have to be seen, depending on how much that Ray Tracing is mixed in with the ROP processing. Will that be done as a post process effect or be mixed in with some Raster Operations Processes before the frames are sent to the display. But obviously the GPUs with the most available shader cores to lend toward Ray Tracing API calls to the GPUs Compute Shader cores are going benefit more from Ray Tracing calculations accelerated on that GPUs shader cores.
Mining has really flipped the GPU market on it’s head with that Shader core/Hash Rate lust to make an RX 580 cost more than a GTX 1070.
Can you help me please, I
Can you help me please, I have CPU AMD Ryzen 5 1600x and I would like to buy RX 570 8G OC
https://www.asrock.com/Graphics-Card/AMD/Phantom%20Gaming%20X%20Radeon%20RX570%208G%20OC/index.asp
Because my old Radeon 7950 dies soon. Is this card will be suitable and efficace for Dell UltraSharp U3417W FR3PK 34-Inch monitor with 1440 pixels?
https://www.bestadvisor.com/best-curved-monitors
I want to buy this monitor, but I want the system to work without delays and overloads. Thanks.