AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB

[rtwjunkie]

Nothing in this performance range needs more than 4 GB, probably not even 3 GB.

Actually I've played three games today already at 1080p....all use 3.4GB or more of VRAM.

 

[GC_PaNzerFIN]

Actually I've played three games today already at 1080p....all use 3.4GB or more of VRAM.

Memory that is not used, is useless memory. If you have a lot of VRAM, games tend to use it more even if it really wouldn't make a difference in terms of performance. 2 gig GTX 960 did surprisingly well, although if available games would have used much more.

Works the same with Windows and RAM too. I have 32 gigs and I don't think it really would need 10 gigs in use doing pretty much nothing. But it is proactively using it, because it can. Good thing.

 

[Ungari]

Does it? Tell me which games (which are not AMD-biased). Nothing in this performance range needs more than 4 GB, probably not even 3 GB.

Solitaire doesn't count.

 

[rruff]

Notebooks will use Polaris 11 chip.

FPS/W should be similar to Polaris 10. Not good compared to what Nvidia will be offering.

It'll be just like the last generation. AMD won't be competitive in laptops.

 

[N3M3515]

The only reason you are seeing cheap 970s is because of this launch.

This.

 

[N3M3515]

And which chips are those based on?
I'm going to give you a very simple math challenge. Given the efficiency of RX 480, how much power will a "GTX 1070 competitor"(50% over RX 480) and "GTX 1080 competitor"(+85%) draw?

When the news of vega came, it clearly said is was going to have better performance x watt than polaris.
And also, there are two vegas, 10 & 11. V10 is supposed to be in the 1080 territory and V11 in 1080Ti or whatever is it called.

 

[deu]

The performance isn't bad, the price is good, but the power efficiency is abysmal. There's only a small (~30%) improvement compared to Pitcairn (270X), while Pascal has shown a huge efficiency leap over Maxwell. Nvidia's 28 nm GPUs are as efficient as AMD's 14nm GPUs. GTX 1070 is over 70% more efficient. When it comes to power efficiency it's like Bulldozer against Sandy Bridge if not worse.

I wonder whether it's AMD or GloFo's process that's to blame. But this horrible power efficiency means that AMD will get slaughtered in high-end unless Vega doubles Polaris' power efficiency, which isn't going to happen.

Polaris is not in competition with pascal..; VEGA is... it is pretty basic if you read up on it. You should be able to google alot of this. Also 232mm2 die size vs 398mm2 die size; what do you think is cheapest to put out to the mainstreammasses? What do you think is cheapest to put into a console?

VEGA is the pascal competitor; I really dont get why so many people make this mistake.

 

[jabbadap]

Polaris is not in competition with pascal..; VEGA is... it is pretty basic if you read up on it. You should be able to google alot of this. Also 232mm2 die size vs 398mm2 die size; what do you think is cheapest to put out to the mainstreammasses? What do you think is cheapest to put into a console?

VEGA is the pascal competitor; I really dont get why so many people make this mistake.

Yes it will compete with unreleased gp106 pascal gpu, maybe you meant to say polaris is not the gp104 competitor.

They probably got trapped. They needed a card that was at least as fast as a GTX 970 and also limited to 150W to make third party cards worth considering over the reference. Both AMD and Nvidia here are dishonest to the customer. Nvidia came out talking about $379 and $599 cards, then throw out the Founders Edition cards. Add to that the limited supply and those $379 and $599 where pure lies. AMD on the other hand says $199 and $239, but offers a reference design that is trying to balance on a rope, forcing people to wait for third party cards that will be more expensive.

As for power delivery, I was thinking that this could be a problem, then in a videocardz article was this in the end of the article about this problem



I don't say that I understand completely the part in Anandtech's article about HD 6990. But if this is something similar, I also don't remember articles about HD 6990 cards having any problems, so probably we wouldn't see any problems with RX480 cards either. Not to mention that we overclock cards and probably many overclocked cards go over those limits. We just don't know that because we don't have the knowledge or the equipment to check it.

Well tomshw had the comparison with amd dual gpus in their r9-295x2 review. hd6990 peaks over 79W but avarage is still 56W in their review(vs RX 480 peaks 162W and avarages 86W). And dual gpus are niche, this is more mainstream card, which will sell a lot more. I would imagine that customer who buys dual gpu beasts does not put them to lower end motherboards too.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

I just finished every review I could find out there and I have to say; my mind has been changed. This card does extremely well at it's price/performance point. I would suggest waiting for the partner cards with custom cooler designs to help rid yourself of the average stock cooler from AMD. The GTX1080 & GTX1070 suffered from throttling thanks to it's stock cooler and people had to wait for the board partners to come up with better solutions too. I still play on 1080p myself, that is, until 4k Gaming can be done at 120+ FPS, Good job AMD.

 

[foetopsy]

I ask the author to explain how the test had 4 GB card bypassed 8GB card 390х !? at Call of Duty Black Ops III

here is my 390x in Call of Duty Black Ops III FHD

 

[$ReaPeR$]

Polaris is not in competition with pascal..; VEGA is... it is pretty basic if you read up on it. You should be able to google alot of this. Also 232mm2 die size vs 398mm2 die size; what do you think is cheapest to put out to the mainstreammasses? What do you think is cheapest to put into a console?

VEGA is the pascal competitor; I really dont get why so many people make this mistake.

because they are either ignorant or biased. the stupidity in this comment section is hilarious. i get that people are never satisfied but come on... this is ridiculous, they expect a 200-250$ card to beat a 400$ ,which in reality is close to 500$, card?! what the literal f@ck. cmon people even the 1080 fe thermal throttled and that is a "600"$ in reality a 700$ card ffs. also are you seriously complaining about the 150watt tdp?!?!?!?!?! in this forum!!!! where i bet that most people have at least a 650watt psu, and you whine about a 150watt card?! literally every review i have seen praises this card, jay, teksyndicate, linus, everyone.. but no.. its not what we expected.. ffs people are so stupid sometimes.. -_-

 

[deu]

because they are either ignorant or biased. the stupidity in this comment section is hilarious. i get that people are never satisfied but come on... this is ridiculous, they expect a 200-250$ card to beat a 400$ ,which in reality is close to 500$, card?! what the literal f@ck. cmon people even the 1080 fe thermal throttled and that is a "600"$ in reality a 700$ card ffs. also are you seriously complaining about the 150watt tdp?!?!?!?!?! in this forum!!!! where i bet that most people have at least a 650watt psu, and you whine about a 150watt card?! literally every review i have seen praises this card, jay, teksyndicate, linus, everyone.. but no.. its not what we expected.. ffs people are so stupid sometimes.. -_-

haha, 100% agree: I like a good discussion which the forum here usually have but this time it just went full batsh*t crazy in no time

 

[Yellow&Nerdy?]

The performance is about what could realistically be expected, and it does offer very good value. What I am worried about is the fact that AMD has been touting Polaris' power efficiency, when it turns out AMD is in reality an entire generation behind in performance/watt compared to Nvidia. Even though Vega will have moderate improvements in power efficiency, what will most likely end up happening is the same as it has been the past few generations: AMD can offer decent price/performance ratios at the high-end, but with a much higher power consumption.

That being said, I think once the custom coolers and PCB cards drop from the AIB partners, the RX 480 is a great card for people that can't afford to drop 400+ bucks on a GPU. Although with the GTX 1060 coming out, I don't know how long AMD can reap the benefits of this market by themselves.

 

[mastrdrver]

FPS/W should be similar to Polaris 10. Not good compared to what Nvidia will be offering.

It'll be just like the last generation. AMD won't be competitive in laptops.

It should be noted that in the power wattage graph that is GTX 1070 and 1080 at factory clocks of which very few cards are going to be at. All the cards that have higher clocks are pulling in another 30-50W over what is shown in the graph. Suddenly the RX 480 doesn't look that bad in the power draw comparision.

 

[Naito]

The performance is about what could realistically be expected, and it does offer very good value.

As I said over here, it's a risky game to be playing with these reference boards. Power limits are not to be joked around with. In a very extreme case with someone owning cheaper hardware, it may lead to fire. Best wait and see what AIB partners do in this area.

 

[KainXS]

Save some reviewers that achieved over 1350Mhz.

Sorry I missed this but I say there is no OC headroom on this reference board because at stock the card is already at or near it max TDP it seems. Not only is it at its max TDP but multiple reviewers had reported(If they had the equipment to test it) that their review cards and some of them have retail cards also, all of which go way above PCI-E specification which is 5.5A from the motherboards to about 6.5A of draw and in some games that gets as high as about 8A which is worrying for a cheap motherboard.(many people buying budget cards buy budget boards) An expensive board might handle that but a cheaper one could be ruined or have interference from that over time. You can slap whatever heatsink you want on it and overclock but its going to be out of spec and the more you OC this thing the farther it will be out of spec it seems. This could just mean a little interference in your speakers though(and thats probably all you will get) but I'm not taking that chance because I know I will OC if I get one.

With AIB's though this would not be the case more than likely as this seems like a PCB issue and I will probably buy an AIB card with a better heatsink and 8pin though to OC it.

 

[ShurikN]

Those who ditched their 970s & 980s for this disappointing card will cry. I knew this card isn't going to perform as per what AMD claims after posting all that hype materials at Computex.

What were those, who ditched their 970/980s, expecting from this card exactly? 1070 perf for half the price? Seems to me they're just plain and simple stupid. Or they knew but wanted a new card anyway, in that case kudos to them.

 

[rruff]

It should be noted that in the power wattage graph that is GTX 1070 and 1080 at factory clocks of which very few cards are going to be at. All the cards that have higher clocks are pulling in another 30-50W over what is shown in the graph. Suddenly the RX 480 doesn't look that bad in the power draw comparision.

Apples to apples would be reference on both. If power consumption is important (like on laptops particularly) the chips won't be OCd.

This is just like the prior generation vs Maxwell, including the poor idle, multi-monitor, and BR performance from AMD. I don't know if any of that is fixable. I'm guessing not easily, else they would have.

I'm fully satisfied with the 480's performance since I guessed it would barely beat 970/390 when the $200 price was announced. But I expected lower power consumption. AMD disclosed the TDP a long time ago but also said that most cards "would be a lot lower", which I thought meant that only heavily OC'd 480s would be hitting 150W.

 

[mastrdrver]

No, apples to apples would be what you can get. Reference isn't important.

 

[HumanSmoke]

I told you it was another Glofo failure. It's garbage. Power consumption is off the charts for 14nm and it can't clock at all (as expected).
Dump Glofo and sue and them to break contract.

Good luck with that AMD's WSA with Glofo runs until 2024. AMD just loves getting cornholed by GF...process goes tits up and AMD are ready and waiting to sign up for more. It's like watching a slot machine addict in action.

hey folks too much talking about , and recently I'm finding that the RX 480 is the same size die chip than 960 and with similar prices when released to go seeming in that range play the 480x truly,

So you are going full damage control comparing a 14nm product with a 28nm one? Plenty of people including yourself I seem to remember were saying the the old vs new process comparison was invalid when he GTX 1080 was being compared to the Fury X

Anyone see our friend Medi01?

His guerrilla marketing work here is done. Expect a return when the next fake 1600MHz RX 480 rumours surface on wtftech.

Cards like this should NOT get a PCI Express SIG logo. Just no. Even typical gaming power breaks spec. And for what? Need to keep impression of efficiency and put inadequate 6-pin.

Plenty being said at the AMD subreddit. Hallock says only a small sample of review cards were exibiting the out-of-spec PCI-E power draw. The problem is that all the review sites that are reporting the issue are the only ones who do detailed power draw analysis based on a per-rail testing. The vast majority of reviews test power draw at the wall.

Nice enough card that will look better after the AIB's get through reworking it. The biggest problem is that AIB custom OC'd R9 390's are still plentiful and priced much the same.

 

[Reuben Mitchell]

Signed up to the Forums just to post this! I saw myself as a target customer for this card (still rocking a HD7870 ) as I am hoping to move up to a 4K screen soon but now I see the first listings for RX480 8Gb here in rip off New Zealand are for $500 (NZD) !! For exactly the same money I can get a custom 390X 8Gb or a 970 4Gb both overclocked AIB versions. The Cheapest 980 and Fury Nano in NZ are $700 and the 380X 4Gb is now $340. So the price/performance equation in New Zealand is completely different and the RX 480 doesn't look attractive at all.
Very disappointed. Waiting for 470 to see if it is a better option price wise (I am not willing to spend more that $400 NZ - which is what I thought the 480 would come to)

 

[rruff]

I am hoping to move up to a 4K screen soon

Then 480 and definitely 470 are not for you. Neither is enough for gaming on that level.

Prices will soften if you wait awhile, and I'd pick the 480 over the 390x or 970.

 

[Melvis]

I cant read the review the site seems to be down?

 

[laszlo]

card deliver good fps and for sure i'll buy one but not the reference.

due low price cooling suffer and i don't like that pcie power draw exceed limits... i see low-end mobos issues soon...

hopefully the non-ref. cards will have 8 pin connector + better cooling + DVI ; this config. will cost more (up to 300$?) but fur sure card will behave better and won't age so fast

 

[R-T-B]

That cooler kinda sucks. Will be very interesting to see what third parties do with it, though!

Pascal is nearly twice as power efficient, which is a huge problem for AMD when GP106 and GP107 arrives, they simply don't stand a chance.

It also features neutered FP32, similar to Maxwell. This is where nvidia gets it's "power efficiency" and while games won't care, it does make AMD cards more flexible in compute situations.