AMD Radeon RX 500X Polaris Refresh Graphics Card Series Leaks Early

Later this month, AMD is expected to announce a refresh to its Polaris graphics card lineup, known as the Radeon RX 500X series. Ahead of the official launch, some details have been leaked to the web, including a set of specs for one of the upcoming cards on Futuremark's 3DMark benchmark database. AMD also updated its website with a few empty placeholders for a few of the unannounced cards.

A user on Reddit spotted the listings on AMD's website, which include spots for the Radeon RX 580X, Radeon RX 570X, two separate Radeon RX 560X spots (here and here), and a Radeon RX 550X. Why the two listings for the Radeon RX 560X? Our best guess is that there will be two different versions, perhaps one with 4GB of GDDR5 memory and another with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. The compute unit (CU) count could also differ between the two—after launching the first generation Radeon RX 560 with 16 CUs (1,024 stream processors), AMD later quietly introduced a version with 14 CUs (896 stream processors).

There is no mention on AMD's website of a Radeon RX 530X or Radeon RX 520X. Either AMD is not planning to launch those cards (at least not initially), or it is using a different URL syntax, making them difficult to find at the moment.

As to the leak on 3DMark, the database entry points to a mobile Radeon RX 560X found inside an Acer laptop running alongside an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U processor with Radeon Vega 8 mobile graphics. According to the entry, the mobile variant sports 4GB of onboard memory clocked at 1,200MHz, with the GPU running at 1,275MHz. Assuming those are correct, the Radeon RX 560X is a tad faster than the Radeon RX 560M.

From what we can gather, the Polaris refresh will bring to the table slightly faster clockspeeds and power efficiency improvements, while retaining the same specifications as the cards being replaced. One of the leaked slides also mentions "expanded options and robust partner designs," perhaps hinting at better overclocking performance to boot. Overall it's not terribly exciting with Vega already on the scene.