Quick Navigation
In contrast to the normal RX 580 desktop GPU, AMD RX 580 Mobile is a laptop-size version of the same GPU. Powered by Polaris 20, the next-generation graphics card is built on a 14nm process, replacing a Polaris 10 chip that we had on the RX 480. By using Polaris 20, the mobile version of the RX 580 can achieve higher clock speeds while using less power.
Most gaming laptops from different brands use the RX 580 Mobile chipset. In terms of 1080p gaming, the desktop RX 580 was undoubtedly among the best GPUs. How much performance juice does the RX 580 Mobile get?
A few gaming tests and benchmarks were performed on the AMD RX 580 Mobile chipset in this review. Additionally, we’ll discuss who this chip is best suited for as well as what machines currently use it.
AMD Radeon RX 580 Mobile Review
About a year ago, laptops/notebooks began to use RX 580’s mobile version. Nvidia’s desktop cards were rolling down the RX 580 at the time. Thus, it was a great idea for Red Team to introduce RX 580 in a thinner format for gaming laptops.
This chip features 8GB of GDDR5 video memory. On the desktop version, this card has the same amount of VRAM.
AMD may have launched this chip in response to Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Max-Q that was released in the same year. Despite this, Nvidia still had a game as its GTX 1080 Max-Q offered higher clock speeds and CUDA cores for higher frame rates.
Power consumption has been reduced on the Mobile version of the RX 580. Red Team reduced its clock speed in order to reduce power consumption.
This GPU will perform up to 20% slower than its normal version due to its slower clock speed. Unless you are a hardcore gamer who monitors every little detail during gameplay, this performance gap isn’t noticeable.
Specifications of RTX 580 Mobile
| Architecture | GCN 4.0 |
| Video Memory (VRAM) | 8GB |
| Memory Type | GDDR5 |
| Cores | 2304 |
| Base Clock Speed | 1000 MHz |
| Boost Clock Speed | 1077 MHz |
| Memory Bus | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 256.0 Gbps |
| Bus Interface | MXB-B (3.0) |
| TDP | 100W |
| DirectX | 12 |
Despite its specifications, RX 580 Mobile isn’t overly powerful compared to other mobile chips found in gaming laptops/notebooks. As a result of reducing power consumption, AMD has reduced the clock speed, which ultimately has a negative impact on performance.
Design
In addition to hardware scheduling, shader efficiency, color, and memory compression, AMD RX 580 features GCN 4.0 architecture called Polaris.
Among all the improvements AMD made in GCN 4.0 architecture, power efficiency stands out the most. Compared to competing chips, this results in a 40% reduction in power consumption.
In contrast to the previous 28nm process, Polaris chips are mostly produced on the 14nm FinFET process.
In addition to DisplayPort 1.4 (ready) and HDMI 2.0b, Polaris also supports the display ports of Nvidia’s Pascal architecture.
RX 580 Mobile can handle higher resolutions and refresh rates if your laptop supports HDMI or DisplayPort connections.
Memory Dedicated to Video
You can easily run any type of 1080p workload on the RX 580 Mobile thanks to its 8GB of VRAM. To enjoy decent gaming and content creation, you need at least 6GB VRAM.
GDDR6 and even GDDR6X graphics chips are available on laptops at the time of writing this article. As compared to GDDR5, the advanced GDDR6 version is better.
In spite of this, the RX 580 Mobile chipset is a few years old now, so a direct competition between the RX 580 Mobile and GTX 1660 Super or RTX 2060 would be unfair.
With 8GB, any game can still be scaled up to 1080p or even 1440p (depending on the game title). The chip would add value to your project if you are creating video content, such as 1080p or 4K video.
Acceleration of the Clock
Compared to current generation entry-level graphics cards, the AMD RX 580 Mobile chipset has a base clock speed of 1000 MHz. According to AMD, the clock speed has not been much affected by AMD’s efforts to reduce power consumption.
Moreover, this chip has tight headroom to be boosted up to 1077 MHz. If the clock speed is increased from 1000 MHz to 1077 MHz, there will be no difference in performance under a heavy workload.
Additionally, the clock speed of the RX 580 laptop and regular RX 580 doesn’t differ much. There is only 185 MHz difference between the desktop and laptop versions of this chip.
Around 1200 MHz to 1400 MHz is the sweet spot for GPU clock speed. A processor clocked between these speeds would have been better for AMD. As long as your laptop has a powerful CPU, you won’t have any performance issues at 1000 MHz.
Efficient Use of Energy
The RX 580 Mobile chip consumes approximately 100W when fully loaded. Comparatively, gaming laptops use similar Nvidia and AMD chips.
In contrast to AMD’s Polaris series, Nvidia’s Pascal series chips consume much less power.
However, when comparing the mobile version of the RX 580 with the desktop version, the former consumes 60% less power. Performance is also similar between the two versions.
Some laptops/notebooks would benefit from a laptop version of the RX 580.
How long would this chip last on a battery? Although there is no definite answer to this question, you can expect around two to three hours of battery life thanks to its lower power consumption.
Performance
Testing a graphics card’s performance can be done in a number of ways. Gaming or benchmarking software like 3D Mark, FurMark, and PassMark are preferred methods of stress-testing GPUs.
Techpowerup suggests you take a look at the TFLOPS before throwing any intense games or benchmark software at the Radeon RX 580 Mobile.
Nvidia’s GTX 1660 and GTX 1080 Max-Q laptop GPUs yield much higher performance than the RX 580 laptop chip, according to Techpowerup.
TFLOPS do not provide any information about a GPU’s performance since they cannot be tested. Stress tests and complex workloads are the only way to discover a GPU’s real power.
To test the RX 580 laptop graphics chip, we threw some popular games at it.
On RX 580 Mobile GPU, we encountered the following average frame rates at different resolutions.
| At 1080p | At 1440p | At 4K | |
| Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey | 40 to 45fps | 20fps | Less than 15fps |
| GTA V | 95 to 105fps | 65fps | 20fps |
| Counter-Strike | 190 to 200fps | 120 to 130fps | 80 to 85fps |
| CyberPunk 2077 | 45 to 55fps | 20fps | Less than 10fps |
The Odyssey of Assassin’s Creed
It’s difficult to handle even the beefiest graphics card when it comes to Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. It delivered around 40-45fps at 1080p high settings, which is lower than the 60fps benchmark.
It is possible to hit around 60 frames per second at 1080p medium-high in-game settings (shadows/textures set to medium). A frame rate of 50 frames per second is possible in intense combat scenes.
Increasing the resolution to 1440p results in average frames dropping to 20fps.
The game is impossible to play at 4K settings and you’ll either crash or be stuck at a single scene for months.
The RX 580 chipset is not to blame for these lower frame rates. The GCN architecture graphics cards in Assassin Creed: Odyssey are not well optimized, we found in our research.
GTA 5
A card like the RX 580 should not have any problem running GTA V at 1440p settings since it is well optimized for the PC platform.
GTA V pumped 95 to 105 frames per second at high settings on the RX 580 laptop chip.
It is imperative for you to be aware that GTA V makes extensive use of the extra VRAM available on your graphics card. To power GTA V, the RX 580 comes with 8GB of GDDR5.
The average frame rate drops a little bit when the resolution is pushed up to 1440p, but they are usually above 65fps.
The average frame rate drops down to 20fps at 4K resolution.
Your laptop/notebook’s display size may not be compatible with the RX 580’s higher clock speed due to its lower clock speed.
Lower-end chips cannot scale games like GTA V to 4K resolution with playable frame rates, but they can scale up to 4K resolution with playable frame rates.
The Global Offensive in Counter Striker
The textures and shadows of CS: GO are not as heavy as they are in other games. It can even be played on laptops and notebooks with integrated chips.
To see how many frame rates it will throw over, we tested CS: GO on RX 580 Mobile.
The RX 580 scores around 190 to 200 frames per second at 1080 ultra-high settings, which is an impressive number. Increasing the resolution to 1440p reduces the frame rates to 120 to 130 frames per second.
With the RX 580 Mobile chipset, we recorded around 80 to 85fps at 4K/2160p resolution. At any resolution, you can get above 60 frames per second in this game.
CyberPunk 2077
With CyperPunk 2077 now on your computer, it’s the most GPU-intensive game you can play. With this game at higher resolutions, even current-generation graphics cards struggle to deliver better performance.
In 1440p and 4K, AMD Radeon RX 580 mobile struggles to deliver better frame rates, despite meeting the VRAM requirements.
CyberPunk 2077 runs at 45 to 55 frames per second on the RX 580 Mobile even at low-medium settings.
Frame rates rarely exceed 20fps at 1440p settings on the RX 580.
We encountered lags and stutters when switching to 4K resolution. The CPU and GPU are both at 100% when this happens.
RX 580 Mobile Benchmark Scores Compared to Competing Cards
PassMark benchmark scores are listed below:
| GPU | Score (Higher is better) |
| GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q | 15,210 |
| GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q | 10,024 |
| Radeon RX 580 Mobile | 8,912 |
| Radeon RX 480 Mobile | 7,910 |
| GeForce GTX 1650 | 7,830 |
Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Max-Q and GTX 1060 are Nvidia’s most popular laptop GPUs, according to PassMark benchmark results.
Other chips like AMD RX 580 Mobile
Below are the chipsets that deliver performance to that of the RX 580 Mobile chipset:
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile
Nvidia is the main competitor to Radeon RX 580 mobile, as you can see in the list above. In an effort to wrest the flag from the Red Team, the Green Team has thrown more chips on the table.
Nvidia cards are now integrated into laptops and notebooks instead of AMD cards. The gaming brand might prefer chips whose power consumption is low and whose performance is high.
The AMD RX 580 mobile chip is used in the following machines:
The RX 580 chipset is currently integrated into a few laptops and notebooks. Below are a few examples:
ASUS ROG STRIX AMD Gaming Laptop
HP Omen 17T Gaming Machine
HP OMEN 17-AN012DX
ASUS ROG STRIX GL702ZC-WB74
Since it is several years old, you are less likely to find the RX 580 Mobile in the latest gaming laptops. The laptop gaming market has already been taken over by Nvidia. As compared to RX 580 Mobile, laptops/notebooks with Nvidia chips tend to perform better.
What are the benefits of the RX 580 Mobile?
According to all our testing and gaming benchmarks, laptops/notebooks equipped with AMD Radeon RX 580 Mobile chipsets are suitable for playing 1080p titles from a few years ago.
Latest game titles struggle to hit the 1080p 60fps milestone on this chip. 4K gaming is also a no-go. At 1080p ultra settings, the RX 580 Mobile will struggle to keep up with the framerate, but at 1080p low-medium settings, it’ll perform well.
It is at this point where we will again be blaming AMD for not allocating the clock speed that this card requires. This will boost up the frame rates to where they should be. For 1080p gaming, we would choose an Nvidia-based laptop over an AMD RX 580.
Those tasks would be best accomplished with the RX 580 Mobile. It’s easy to edit videos or create content using GPUs on this chip.
The RX 580 Mobile does not lag or stutter when watching movies in 4K resolution. There’s no way you’re going to be able to play 4K games.
