AMD Radeon RX 480 Video Card Review @ [H]

razor1 said:
Anyone who is disappointed in the rx 480

Rules to recovery:

  • Stop listening to the hype
  • Stop going to youtube for information on upcoming graphics cards
  • Stop believing AMD marketing

Course over, rinse, wash repeat.

Its a good for where it is and at its price.
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Amen. Go to the people you trust (i.e. the ones who have been banging on keyboards for 20 years rather than some whiney scrub with a webcam), calm down and wait for the real reviews, and don't look at numbers marketing (from any company) gives you and try to draw inferences you shouldn't be. This should be basic.

But I don't think doing that means you can't be disappointed in what AMD released.
 
Guh so disappointed. At the same time it's a good performer at the price but hardly what I wanted. I'd be better off getting a 1070 at this point.

Not buying the RX480. Thanks for the review Kyle.
 
For people questioning why the performance jump is so big for the power draw compared to the R9 380x, you need to look no further than this chart:

Die shrink - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Never has there been a 2 half node jump in the history of GPUs. (Yes we know that 14nm doesn't technically mean 14nm anymore) If you look through the past 10 generations we either got a full node jump from half node to half node, or there were some mixes of from a half node to a full node, or vise versa. We've never seen an entire node process skipped before like happened between the 3xx and 4xx series. That alone is probably where the bulk of their power advantage comes from.


List of Nvidia graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of AMD graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Radeon 9800 Pro - 150nm

Radeon X800 XT - 130nm

Radeon X1800 XT - 90nm

Radeon HD 2900 XT - 80nm

Radeon HD 3870 - 55nm

Radeon HD 4870 - 55mm

Radeon HD 5870 - 40nm

Radeon HD 6870 - 40nm

Radeon HD 7970 - 28nm

Radeon R9 280X - 28nm

Radeon R9 380 - 28nm

Radeon RX 480 8GB - 14nm
 
Anyone else interested by the huge range of FPS values in the 480? Look at the 380 and the 960, and you see a certain range of FPS (30-85). The 480s was hitting some huge maximums (30-114); are there random scenes where the 480 is doing something really well with whatever is in that scene? Could perhaps driver maturity unlock some of that elsewhere?
 
heatlesssun said:
You may have been too kind in your editorial about "hot". There's reports that I'm sure you know about showing the 480 pulling power past its spec and over the PCIe limit.
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AMD have a serious problem as the 6 pin Rx 480 could be deemed as non PCI-E compliant which would rule it out of any OEM system.
 
raghu78 said:
AMD have a serious problem as the 6 pin Rx 480 could be deemed as non PCI-E compliant which would rule it out of any OEM system.
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I don't understand this. You should always want some extra headroom, so why didn't they go with an 8-pin? Was marketing it as a 110W card really that important to AMD's strategy to risk non-compliance with the PCI-E specification?
 
razor1 said:
Oh yeah in the [H] review, I was talking about overall reviews
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I put stock in [H] reviews because they provide enough detail to replicate the tests. Other sites showing "Game title - resolution - fps" Are next to worthless without the detail needed to make accurate comparisons.
 
Armenius said:
I don't understand this. You should always want some extra headroom, so why didn't they go with an 8-pin? Was marketing it as a 110W card really that important to AMD's strategy to risk non-compliance with the PCI-E specification?
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Its not the connector actually its the power draw from the bus, its going past 75 watts from the PCI-e slot.
 
Activate: AMD said:
Amen. Go to the people you trust (i.e. the ones who have been banging on keyboards for 20 years rather than some whiney scrub with a webcam), calm down and wait for the real reviews, and don't look at numbers marketing (from any company) gives you and try to draw inferences you shouldn't be. This should be basic.

But I don't think doing that means you can't be disappointed in what AMD released.
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Perfectly reasonable. I think the problem for enthusiasts and it's a theme that's common these days, lack of competition. With Intel on the CPU side, nVidia on the GPU side and AMD in the middle struggling, I think everyone wants to see a successful AMD with compelling products. And they just are doing it in the enthusiast space. And that certainly is at the core of why Intel raised the prices on Broadwell-E and introduced a $1730 i7-6950x and the 10xx Founder's Edition "tax".

But wishing and hoping isn't enough. AMD has to execute and the 480 is just another example of AMD having to go low because it can't sell high. Sure, mainstream. Important but it doesn't drive the market.
 
Great review, while it won't replace my 290x, I will likely look at the aftermarket options to replace a GTX 760 in my GF's rig, and then she can take advantage of FreeSync. (y)

edit: Also, really looking forward to crossfire results, anyone remember 4770 crossfire value at the time?
 
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cyclone3d said:
And seeing that a lot of reviews used the reportedly bugged drivers that were sent out, the performance, even with early drivers, is going to be a bit higher than what is being reported.
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Given's AMD's past, "IT will be an overclockers dream" And "Just wait till it's voltage unlocked" I'll take that with a SEVERE grain of salt. AMD seems to be promising a lot of what they can't deliver.
 
rx480 looks exactly as what I expected.. I picked one up and will be putting a custom cooler on it in a few day.
 
heatlesssun said:
Perfectly reasonable. I think the problem for enthusiasts and it's a theme that's common these days, lack of competition. With Intel on the CPU side, nVidia on the GPU side and AMD in the middle struggling, I think everyone wants to see a successful AMD with compelling products. And they just are doing it in the enthusiast space. And that certainly is at the core of why Intel raised the prices on Broadwell-E and introduced a $1730 i7-6950x and the 10xx Founder's Edition "tax".

But wishing and hoping isn't enough. AMD has to execute and the 480 is just another example of AMD having to go low because it can't sell high. Sure, mainstream. Important but it doesn't drive the market.
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I agree that people want to see competition, but I think theres an element of social media and the sort of "24 hour news cycle" at play. Theres only so much real news to go around, so the echo chamber and the leaks and the rumors just turn every major new release into a mess.

To your last point, I agree with that as well. Mainstream is very important, and believe it or not the 960 won handily last cycle. Not the benchmarks, or the value, but it sold the most units by far. AMD doesn't get any halo effect from anything they make while Nvidia gets plenty of it and it shows. The tastemakers buy high end cards and the little people want to have what they have.
 
Good review, and performance has landed right where I expected the reference card to land. I don't think the reference cooling system does it any favors, and is designed for the stock speed and nothing else!

Looking forward to the AIB "beast" mode cards that will have more power options and better cooling (for overclocking).

The review format is nice, but maybe have the 970 and 390 at 1080p as well just to see if there are any benefits there as the 480 blows the 380X & 960 away.
 
Activate: AMD said:
To your last point, I agree with that as well. Mainstream is very important, and believe it or not the 960 won handily last cycle. Not the benchmarks, or the value, but it sold the most units by far. AMD doesn't get any halo effect from anything they make while Nvidia gets plenty of it and it shows. The tastemakers buy high end cards and the little people want to have what they have.
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Yep this is the problem with AMD, and has been ever since the r600, they haven't had Halo products to drive sales of lower end products. Their only option was to drop price to compete, and it will work well at times when they can close the other metric gaps down but when they fail to do that, they get hurt big time.

Ya know what they say don't drop the soap, gotta add more to that, if ya drop the soap too many times, someone will take advantage at some point.
 
Stryke1983 said:
So after all that I've basically spent months waiting for this next gen only to find out I'd just be getting a 970/390 for a few bucks less. Well that was worth the wait.
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Agreed. I've said it before but I've paid $350 for my 970 well over a year ago. If a decent cooler version of this runs up to $260, we waited nearly two years for a $80-90 price drop with some extra VRAM. Not exactly great, and it really isn't worth upgrading if you are on a 970. Not exactly the knock out of the park I would have hoped for. With luck the 1060 will be a decent offering at $250-280, because the $400+ price of the 1070 is otherwise leaving this gen with no decent upgrade for upper mid range users who have previous gen cards.
 
DrLobotomy said:
And some crossfire benchies??!! TPU has an article up with some crossfire results and it looks promising for 2k and 4k against the 1070 on some titles. Although several title appear to have issues with crossfire as there is really no difference between single card and 2 cards. It also looks like AMD has some driver optimizations to work out. Looking forward to your article to compare and to see what issues you guys may or may not have with crossfire.
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Brent already has a second card on the way into him. He will be covering CrossFire assuredly.
 
DrLobotomy said:
And some crossfire benchies??!! TPU has an article up with some crossfire results and it looks promising for 2k and 4k against the 1070 on some titles. Although several title appear to have issues with crossfire as there is really no difference between single card and 2 cards. It also looks like AMD has some driver optimizations to work out. Looking forward to your article to compare and to see what issues you guys may or may not have with crossfire.
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I've done crossfire, and while I would do it again, if for the same price performance is within 5-10%, perhaps even a bit higher, I would always go with the single card as there is always going to be some type of issues with some game.
 
pcgeekesq said:
And the other shoe drops:

NVIDIA Pascal GeForce GTX 1060 To Be Announced on 7th July
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I predicted this would happen. NVIDIA is in a position where they can sell mass market at a loss to finish off the competition if they wanted to.

Edit: after reading the memory specs, and pricing it's not a 100% kill, but dang that still hurts. I think WCCF pricing is off though. $300 for 6GB wouldn't make sense. That's way too close to the 1070. The value wouldn't be there.
 
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Just got mine from a local shop. Working fine but I cant seem to find Wattman in the driver (Driver was upgraded from a recent Crimson one). Any idea how to get Wattman?
 
now, when can I expect the 390X price drops to happen? lol

Or sell my 390X and buy two 480's, at least then I wouldn't need a new PSU. Xfire 480 would do nicely for my single 1440 display.
 
DrLobotomy said:
And some crossfire benchies??!! TPU has an article up with some crossfire results and it looks promising for 2k and 4k against the 1070 on some titles. Although several title appear to have issues with crossfire as there is really no difference between single card and 2 cards. It also looks like AMD has some driver optimizations to work out. Looking forward to your article to compare and to see what issues you guys may or may not have with crossfire.
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Oh god crossfire. That's been total shit lately (along with SLI). Make sure you check out frametime reviews before you go down that road / suggest it to anyone.

Even when SLI and Crossfire were at their best nearly everyone at [H] that I respected would suggest a single higher card over two lower. It's a last resort if you're already pegged out on single cards.
 
Riccochet said:
now, when can I expect the 390X price drops to happen? lol

Or sell my 390X and buy two 480's, at least then I wouldn't need a new PSU. Xfire 480 would do nicely for my single 1440 display.
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I'm at 1440P and coming from a 7970. Have one card for now but that was my thinking that I could get a second if needed.
 
DrLobotomy said:
And some crossfire benchies??!! TPU has an article up with some crossfire results and it looks promising for 2k and 4k against the 1070 on some titles. Although several title appear to have issues with crossfire as there is really no difference between single card and 2 cards. It also looks like AMD has some driver optimizations to work out. Looking forward to your article to compare and to see what issues you guys may or may not have with crossfire.
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Which is the rub for me. I really can't fathom why someone would purchase two of these for crossfire. You can pick up a 1070 for $450 it looks like, so in order to get a comparable card you'd need 2 of the 8GB models which is going to cost a minimum of $500. But if it's only going to trade blows with the 1070 in some games, and not work properly in others, what's the point?
 
Dayaks said:
Even when SLI and Crossfire were at their best nearly everyone at [H] that I respected would suggest a single higher card over two lower. It's a last resort if you're already pegged out on single cards.
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I fully support this statement. On that note: I am glad that Koduri made the Rx 480 CF vs 1080 comparison at Computex, because this gives us the sign off to make that as a very valid comparison for an article even if there is a price disparity.
 
Zion Halcyon said:
While I challenged, I don't know that I ripped you to shreds - just was concerned overall for the site. But I will say your article proved true and your sources correct. Does NostraBennett have any other sources to shed further light on AMD, now post Polaris launch?
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Think he already hinted on the 1060 lol,

But in my view, the 1060 is the card AMD should be very worried about. And their response to that is going to be the make it or break it for the next 6 months.

AMD's shinning light to this is nV's inability to get enough stock for their performance cards, if that persists with the 1060 it will save their ass, if not well its going to be the same old thing, a few % point gains in marketshare and that is it.
 
This is all fine and good, but at the end of the day nvidia driver support is just hands down better.
 
Sheppard said:
A surprisingly optimistic view given the recent narrative. Quite refreshing.
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Reviews on HardOCP are reviews of specific products, not companies. Editorials are not reviews. That said, I fully stand 100% behind my editorial and I think the RX 480 reviews back that editorial up as well. Some folks however fail to understand how journalism actually works. :)
 
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