While Nvidia has been busy launching its newest and fastest graphics cards like the Titan Xp and GTX 1080ti, AMD has been focusing on the much larger budget oriented market. Today they launched the new RX 500 series of graphics cards. This family includes the RX 550, 560, 570, and 580. All of these new models, except the RX 550, are updated versions of the 400-series Polaris architecture.

The cards will range in price from $80 for the RX 550 up to $230 for the 8GB RX 580. Both the RX 570 and RX 580 are very similar to their 400 series cousins, but feature faster clocks and a higher TDP. The RX 560 is a more considerable upgrade over the RX 460 though. It features Polaris's full 16 compute units whereas the RX 460 only had 14. Finally, the RX 550 is a brand new model aimed at budget eSports or home theater builds. It doesn't require any additional power connectors and comes standard with 2GB of memory and 8 compute units. There will also be a limited number of 4GB models as well.

In terms of performance, the RX 580 and RX 570 will be very similar to the previous generation RX 400 cards. Compared to their green competitors, the top model RX 580 will be slightly faster than the GTX 1060 but still below the GTX 1070. Expect more benchmarks in the coming weeks as more cards are released.

For those that already own an RX 400 series card, don't bother upgrading to the RX 500 as they are very similar in terms of performance. For those looking to buy a new GPU all together, the RX 500 series offers great value. Current RX 400 series cards will likely see price drops soon which will also make them a great deal as well.