AMD Radeon RX 480 Video Card Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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AMD Radeon RX 480 Video Card Review - AMD's next generation GCN GPU is here! We review the AMD Radeon RX 480 and find out what kind of gaming experience it provides at 1080p and 1440p. We compare apples-to-apples with four other video cards to find out how it compares at both resolutions. We even find out how high it will overclock! You waited for the benchmarks, right?
 
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This is about what I expected performance wise so I am pretty happy. I am glad I sold 1 of my 280x 2 weeks ago for $150 seeing as this should be a big bump in performance for my current needs with Freesync support and lower wattage to boot.

Great review style by the way, I really liked the performance going by the card being reviewed highest capabilities.
 
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AMD is only interested in "fair" reviews. LOL. Anyways, I hope this card help AMD financially as we need viable competition to keep prices in check. I need to go to bed, been up all night working. Will definitely be reading this review in 10 hours.
 
An overall optimistic review. The part on the fan noise was hilarious haha.

This is not the maximum fan speed, but this fan is extremely loud and annoying at full RPM. It is one of the loudest fans we've heard in a good long while at maximum RPM. It pushes a lot of air out, but damn, this thing will wake up the dead at maximum RPM. We cannot stress enough how loud it actually is. Therefore, we kept the RPM down just a bit from the maximum, and that kept the temp around 76c while overclocked.
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Well, remember i said it's disappointing there's nothing new?

Scratch that, new methodology is awesome.
 
Not bad, but I wish they had a higher end Polaris ready :/

Looks like my link was right. No 390X or GTX 980 performance to be seen here.
 
Seems pretty meh overall, how is this a (according to Raja) "disruptive product" exactly? The only thing disruptive about it seems to be trying to stop your case hovering off the desk when you crank the fan up to overclock some, presumably trying to stop your ears bleeding in the process is another disruption. I'll be very interested in seeing what spin Raja try's to put on this in the pc per podcast later today. All the pre-release hype seemed to point this at 980 levels and its far below that, to be expected for the price but i think the hype train swept a lot of people away.
 
Approx 970 performance at around 100W TDP and more VRAM either way (3.5+0.5GB vs 4GB or 8GB)...and for a very competitive price, given today's going rates for the 970. Quite impressive, AMD. It'll be further impressing when AIBs release them with decent cooling solutions to curtail those >80C load temps.

Curious to see how a 480X, 490, and 490X will stack up against last-gen's upper tier and flagship offerings from both camps, as well as nVidia's new Pascal 1070 and 1080.
 
It does absolutely pounce 960 (nVidia's currently available GPU at $200 price range), and trades blows with 970, and wins in DX12, so the value is definitely there.

How much that value holds would depend on 1060.
 
We want to see AMD succeed, the competition benefits all gamers and enthusiasts. It drives innovation, as well as drives competitive pricing. AMD succeeding with a new line of GPUs is good for everyone. Whatever the past history of development that this GPU or the Polaris line has experienced or was intended for the facts are the AMD Radeon RX 480 is a $199-$239 video card that offers the same performance as the Radeon R9 390 and GeForce GTX 970.
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Nice job Brent :)

it was weird to see it struggle at higher resolution. I liked you explaining why it does that. Als the part in the conclusion I did not quote ;) . Enjoy the chicken wings ;)
 
So it's a great 1080p card but if you need 1440 performance you're about even with a card released almost two years ago (970) or one year ago (390) except for power draw (maybe, as some people don't care).
 
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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Meh, it's not a bad value and it probably has a lot of room to grow. Will probably pick one up next time I travel to the US.

I will admit that it was a lot of hype for very little payoff.
 
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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Actually the reviews says that in DX12 this is a beast :) You are also getting hardware .265 support and so on :)
 
Great review! Guess I can sit on my R9 290 for a bit, even though I want 8GB of VRAM. Thanks for the hard work guys!
 
So looks like a really good card in 1080p, AMD really choked it with those ROPs though.

Now I am starting to think if they ever were planning it for anything higher than 1080p in games. If you want to 1080p I guess this card is the best bang for buck.

Glad to see its not running too hot under stock clocks and the fan is quiet.

But read techpowerup that says fan is loud wtf? If anyone bitches about fan noise I would expect it to be H.
 
950 is H.265 capable. Considering that H.264 has distribution royalties forgiven and H.265 does not, H.265 en/de code makes it a non-starter for me.
 
This quote drives home a good point.

"the AMD Radeon RX 480 improves immensely from the previous generation AMD Radeon R9 380X. We saw some impressive performance increases, 30% at the worse up to 40-50% in some cases over the R9 380X. " I have 2 Powercolor 380x (not crossfired, separate machines) I've been pretty impressed with the 380x for 1080p gaming...
 
I think I will wait to see what custom cards can do at this point. I really would like to replace the power hungry and hot monster that is my R9 290X but my ultrawide is really wanting a 1070 at this point. Stupid nvidia not supporting freesync.
 
Algrim said:
So it's a great 1080p card but if you need 1440 performance you're about even with a card released almost two years ago (970) or one year ago (390) except for power draw (maybe, as some people don't care).
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But at $100 less. Some people don't have the funds for a 970 and have had to settle for the 960, this thing stomps all over the 960.
 
Much better card and resolution comparisons in this review.
As for the card itself, I think pricing will keep it from reaching it's true value. AMD needs the $200 480s on selves now, just like Nvidia needs $380 1070s on the shelves.

There are used 980s going for $250-300. I would go that route if power consumption isn't a concern.
 
So is Tahiti XT gonna be the last overclockable amd card on a reference cooler. Lol
 
walwalka said:
But at $100 less. Some people don't have the funds for a 970 and have had to settle for the 960, this thing stomps all over the 960.
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I've seen deals for around 240 for the 970 and 390 around here. Maybe compared to list price two and one years ago but not now. Hell, NewEgg was selling 290x cards for 270 about three weeks ago. I almost consider those a better deal now.
 
Looks like a great card for 1080p in single configuration. Looking forward to the Crossfire review, but I'd also like to see AMD's claims of it being a great mainstream card for VR put to the test. They might have a winner for their target market segment, but that may change depending on what price NVIDIA releases the GTX 1060 for.

Also, I am actually a big fan of the new review format. I'm happy to see you guys using PresentMon ;).
 
walwalka said:
But at $100 less. Some people don't have the funds for a 970 and have had to settle for the 960, this thing stomps all over the 960.
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Let's be honest here. It curbstomps the 960, really, really badly. (And I own a 960).

Now, let's see what happens with 970 prices or the 1060.
 
Algrim said:
I've seen deals for around 240 for the 970 and 390 around here. Maybe compared to list price two and one years ago but not now. Hell, NewEgg was selling 290x cards for 270 about three weeks ago. I almost consider those a better deal now.
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At this point though its pointless to get a 970. I mean most upcoming games will be dx 12 and it is significantly faster in dx 12 games it seems. I won't really get a gtx 970 for the same price, it doesn't give you any headroom for future titles.
 
The only criticism I have of the review [first read thru] is that you've dropped BF4.

Yes it's an 'old' game but that's the point. It's the one game most review sites have used for the past 3yrs? with most cards at most resolutions and therefore across 28/14nm nodes.... which makes for a good comparison.
 
Thanks for the review. Are you guys working on a crossfire review as well? Interested in the scaling of these cards.

Also can't wait for 480X and 490 to come out.
 
voklskier4452 said:
I think I will wait to see what custom cards can do at this point. I really would like to replace the power hungry and hot monster that is my R9 290X but my ultrawide is really wanting a 1070 at this point. Stupid nvidia not supporting freesync.
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AIBs are telling me this morning that with high end custom cooling they are seeing 1490MHz to 1600MHz overclocks, but it is a "lottery draw" with which GPUs will do even that.
 
NKD said:
Glad to see its not running too hot under stock clocks and the fan is quiet.

But read techpowerup that says fan is loud wtf? If anyone bitches about fan noise I would expect it to be H.
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Manually increasing the fan speed is another story, at maximum RPM the fan sounds like a screaming banshee.
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Quiet during normal gaming, but can scream when very hot or at maximum RPM. :)

Seems like a good budget DX12 card. Not bad.
 
Great review and love the new format, excellent way to compare multiple cards in one review.

Would love to see a few more recent games if possible in an update, Doom would be wonderful too. Cheers.
 
There is no 480X (AMD is dropping the X nomenclature from their GPU names). However, the 490 is a possibility.
 
Nice, curious about future reviews. With this being a good 1080p card... i'm curious about the 480x, 490 and 490x - since for myself I'm just going for 1080p 144hz... so higher the frames the better :)
 
NKD said:
I mean most upcoming games will be dx 12 and it is significantly faster in dx 12 games it seems.
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I would suggest it is faster in ONE DX12 game that is GPU intensive. We just do not have enough games that run stable or have actual DX12 gaming benefits to make a call that broad.

fingerbob69 said:
The only criticism I have of the review [first read thru] is that you've dropped BF4.
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We are likely keeping BF4 on. We trimmed down due to time constraints. Will move to BF1 soon enough though.
 
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