Aorus Radeon RX 570 Review

Aorus Radeon RX 570 Review

Manufacturer: Aorus
UK price (as reviewed): £179.99 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): Currently unavailable

We've seen a couple of admirable efforts in the high-end GPU space from Gigabyte's Aorus brand, which is designed specifically as the vehicle the company's more premium components. As such, we were intrigued by this card, as the RX 570 is a distinctly mainstream, mid-range GPU. We've seen Asus' Strix cards, for example, come undone in this part of the market due to excessive price tags – can Aorus retain its premium edge while keeping its RX 570 priced keenly enough?


Given that it comes in at £180, where the cheapest RX 570 SKUs are £165, it certainly appears that Aorus is off to a good start. £15, or nine percent, is a reasonable amount to plump out assuming the card has some nice features to offer.

After seeing so many bulky, high-end cards of late, it's refreshing to see such a compact card. Sticking neatly to the dual-slot form factor, the Aorus RX 570 is also short, and while it does extend a little past the PCI bracket edge, it's only by a small amount, and it'll be a comfortable fit in nearly any chassis.


A trio of DisplayPorts are joined by a single HDMI connection and one dual-link DVI-D port on the rear I/O. The RX 570 is just about capable of powering a VR setup, so Aorus could have gone with a more VR-friendly arrangement (i.e. two HDMI ports) as it has done on higher-end parts and as MSI did with its RX 570 Gaming X 4G, but we won't begrudge it for not doing so as we doubt many will be buying the RX 570 to power a VR headset.


Like the MSI card, one 8-pin PCI-E connector is used for supplementary power, and this gives a 150W part 225W of potential power – more than enough for any conceivable overclock. The connection is indented a little relative to the cooler shroud to help prevent protruding PCI-E cables being a problem. A small LED next to the connection is used to indicate when PCI-E power is missing or unstable.

Aorus has clocked this card to 1,280MHz boost out of the box, which is in line with what we saw from MSI. The Aorus Engine utility can be used to trigger the card's inbuilt OC Mode, which raises this speed to 1,295MHz. These speeds are what the card should run at assuming no power or thermal limitations and are roughly three and four percent faster than the reference speed of 1,244MHz. This reference speed can also be set using the card's Silent Mode. In all three modes, the memory runs at the default frequency of 7Gbps; it's a shame not to see a small overclock here given that this is Gigabyte's highest ranked model for this GPU, although performance gains would be minimal to be fair.. Aorus mentions that GPUs used for this card go through its GPU Gauntlet binning process, but as usual the exact characteristics that these GPUs have over others are not revealed, so all we can assume is it's their ability to maintain the mentioned clock speeds without issue.


Love it or hate it, RGB lighting is here to stay, and it's nice to see its inclusion on a relatively inexpensive part. It's not as crazy as it is on pricier cards, but the Aorus and Fan Stop logos along the top edge are backlit by the LEDs, which can be controlled again through the Aorus Engine software and set to a small number of effects and any RGB colour. RGB Fusion support means you can also synchronise the LEDs with those on supported Gigabyte and Aorus motherboards. Aorus uses a mostly black design with a few orange highlights, and you even get a solid metal backplate for an added aesthetic touch – this isn't really a necessity for a card of this size and weight, but we certainly prefer cards that have them, so kudos to Aorus there.


Aorus frequently demonstrates competency in cooling, and this card appears to be no different, as it appears to take care of all critical components. Four of Gigabyte's 6mm composite heat pipes are flattened out and make direct contact with the GPU. The copper isn't nickel-plated, but the black shroud hides the copper colour well. The pipes form the middle of a larger baseplate that, with padding, cools all eight VRAM chips. Aorus has even integrated copper into the backplate to draw heat away from the rear of the GPU, with little grooves cut into it to help heat dissipate with airflow passing over the back of the card. The chokes and MOSFETs are also targetted with padding, and not just by the main heatsink, as Aorus also has additional padding on the backplate – it's good to see this part being properly integrated into the cooling setup. The heat pipes and contact plates all feed a single heatsink, and the direction of the fins means that some air at least will be directed out of the rear I/O panel.


A pair of 11-blade 90mm fans cool the heatsink – a WindForce 2X solution in Gigabyte/Aorus parlance. The blades of the fans have use a triangular tip and grooves to split and direct airflow evenly, and the fans spin in opposite directions, supposedly reducing turbulence. Semi-passive support means you can be sure of silence when not gaming too.


The PCB shows a 6+1 phase power design, which is plenty for this card. Aorus uses Gigabyte's Ultra Durable components here, including premium chokes and capacitors, to give the card extra overclocking potential.

Specifications

• Graphics processor AMD Radeon RX 570, 1,280MHz (1,295MHz in OC Mode)
  
• Pipeline 2,048 stream processors, 128 texture units, 32 ROPs
  
• Memory 4GB GDDR5, 7Gbps effective
  
• Bandwidth 224GB/sec, 256-bit interface
  
• Compatibility DirectX 12, Vulcan, OpenGL 4.5
  
• Outputs/Inputs 3 x DisplayPort 1.4, 1 x Dual Link DVI-D, 1 x HDMI 2.0b
  
• Power connections 1 x 8-pin PCI-E, top-mounted
  
• Size Dual-slot
  
• Warranty Three years