Radeon 500 series

Radeon 500 Series

AMD Radeon RX 590, the flagship card of the RX 500 series
Release date	April 18, 2017 (7 years ago) (2017-04-18)
Codename	Polaris
Architecture	GCN 1st gen GCN 3rd gen GCN 4th gen
Transistors	690M (Banks) 28 nm 1.550M (Weston) 28 nm 2.200M (Lexa) 14 nm 3.000M (Baffin) 14 nm 3.000M (Polaris 21) 14 nm 5.700M (Polaris 20) 14 nm 5.700M (Polaris 30) 12 nm
Fabrication process	TSMC 28 nm (CMOS) Samsung/GloFo 14 nm (FinFET) Samsung/GloFo 12 nm (FinFET)
Cards
Entry-level	Radeon 520 Radeon 530 Radeon 535 Radeon 540 Radeon 540X Radeon 550X Radeon RX 540 Radeon RX 540X
Mid-range	Radeon RX 550 Radeon RX 550X Radeon RX 560 Radeon RX 560X
High-end	Radeon RX 570 Radeon RX 570X Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 580X
Enthusiast	Radeon RX 590
API support
DirectX	Direct3D 12.0 (feature level 12_0)[1] Shader Model 6.7 (GCN 4th gen) or Shader Model 6.5
OpenCL	OpenCL 2.1[1]
OpenGL	OpenGL 4.5 (4.6 Windows 7+ and Adrenalin 18.4.1+)[2][3][4][5][6]
Vulkan	Vulkan 1.3 (GCN 4th gen) or Vulkan 1.2[7] SPIR-V
History
Predecessor	Radeon 400 series
Successor	Radeon RX Vega series Radeon 600 series (OEM)
Support status
GCN 4 cards supported

The Radeon 500 series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. These cards are based on the fourth iteration of the Graphics Core Next architecture, featuring GPUs based on Polaris 30, Polaris 20, Polaris 11, and Polaris 12 chips.^[8] Thus the RX 500 series uses the same microarchitecture and instruction set as its predecessor, while making use of improvements in the manufacturing process to enable higher clock rates.^[9][10]

Third-generation GCN chips are produced on a 28 nm CMOS process. Polaris (fourth-generation GCN) chips (except for Polaris 30) are produced on a 14 nm FinFET process, developed by Samsung Electronics and licensed to GlobalFoundries.^[11] Polaris 30 chips are produced on a 12 nm FinFET process, developed by Samsung and GlobalFoundries.