AMD Radeon RX 480 Video Card Review @ [H]

Zion Halcyon said:
I am particularly interested in how Jim Keller was received as an engineer mercenary for hire with regards to Zen, given that after engineering was essentially complete he left AMD to go elsewhere. And given that, how AMD expect to compete once the Zen line is obsolete down the road.
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I can't remember the details from when that story broke, but I always kind of assumed that that was the plan all along from AMD's perspective.

The Jim Keller's of the world don't come cheap. When you are operating with an ever dwindling cash reserve that needs to last until you launch your hail mary pass product that you hope will save the company (Zen) you can't keep that burn rate going once the work is done. I doubt very much Jim Keller had a standard employment agreement with AMD. I think AMD hired him intentionally under a contract which ended when his work was done, probably with various incentives built in for completing early/on time and penalties for being late.

AMD is currently operating like a very large startup. They have a burn rate to balance against their existing cash, and they need to launch a viable profit generating product before that cash reserve runs out.

From AMD's Q1 2016 Financial statement:

Cash and cash equivalents were $716 million at the end of the quarter, down $69 million from the end of the prior quarter, due to lower sales and higher debt interest payments, partially offset by $52 million of cash received related to our newly announced IP licensing agreement.
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So, they have $716M in the bank, and their cash on hand is dwindling by about $121M per quarter (but shows up as $69M due to a $52M IP licensing deal).

At this rate - not accounting for their bonds about to mature or any sales of new product, they run out of money in a year and a half.

Now add to this that they have about $1.1B in bonds maturing in December 2017, another ~$600M in bonds maturing in March 2019, a further $1.95B of bonds maturing in August 2020, and a whole bunch more in 2024.

Their credit rating was recently downgraded to CCC, as well, meanign it will be more difficult for them to issue new bonds to replace the existing ones, and when they do, it will cost them more, increasing their debt (coupon) payments and making them even less profitable.

Make no mistake. EVERYTHING now hinges on Zen. If Zen is not immediately successful and profitable out of the gate, by the time those bonds come due, there will no longer be an AMD in its current form.

This is a sobering read when it comes to AMD. They are very much in final hail mary pass territory now.
 
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If crossfire/sli had no driver issues or compatibility issues then it would make more sense then not but until they solve multi gpu driver issue, a single card will always make more sense.
 
Tomshardware reviews have been the laughing joke of reviews for years. Don't believe those reviews. Stick with the good websites. [H], Guru3d, Techpowerup etc.

All the Nvidiots are now going to run with tomshardware showing how bad the card is. I guess they will grasp at anything to show this being shitty.

So they reference/link a Shitty website review.
 
I was a bit worried about how the new format would work, especially because of how much I really liked the old one, I did like the review. It does a really good job of directly comparing the cards. The only critique I'd make is that I miss the little paragraphs about each card being tested and how they felt to play for each game. Any review can tell you the differences in average frame rate but since most reviewers don't actually play the games they test [H] was one of the only ones that ever talked about how the games played.
 
Zion Halcyon said:
Really looking forward to that since it seems like the desktop and the video card sides are two separate entities of the company.

I am particularly interested in how Jim Keller was received as an engineer mercenary for hire with regards to Zen, given that after engineering was essentially complete he left AMD to go elsewhere. And given that, how AMD expect to compete once the Zen line is obsolete down the road.

Just like the original Athlon was a temporary bump with no follow-up after, I worry that Zen will be much the same even if it is a spectacular chip.

If they can't keep talented silicon engineers in house, how do they expect to have design wins in the long term?
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While Keller left. Just remember this Intel has scaled the i7 design with miner performance bumps. That is what they need to do here. If Zen comes out pretty decent which it seems it will be, they can build off that design in the future. Intel has been scaling their design for a while now with 5% here 10% there and then no improvement but lesser power. So at this point they need a product thats better than bulldozer crap. That is what sunk them.
 
Brackle said:
Tomshardware reviews have been the laughing joke of reviews for years. Don't believe those reviews. Stick with the good websites. [H], Guru3d, Techpowerup etc.

All the Nvidiots are now going to run with tomshardware showing how bad the card is. I guess they will grasp at anything to show this being shitty.

So they reference/link a Shitty website review.
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This is called denial. Power measurements at the rails don't lie, people lie, power measurements do not.
 
yawn: 1060 needs to be released (and be priced reasonably - hah fat chance what was i thinking?!?) to make this card drop to sub 200 usd for that's what it's worth. the 480 isn't faster than the generations old 970, uses a lot of power, and doesn't scale all that well, at least, according to the OC preview. fail, fail, fail.

Perhaps Vega will be 2x or 3x as good as one of these

also, no love for DOOM? Would be nice to see an OpenGL game but still a solid review.
 
tybert7 said:
The main downside of the stock rx 480 performance level is that it won't be enough to convert razor/ledra to amd and have them do spanish inquisition style penance with the self back lashing tassel. Oh well.
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What do you want the real of it?

Its a new card that is priced lower than a year and half old card with the same performance and power levels. Does that scream of anything but what is supposed to happen with a new generation card?

While those older cards (970) have dropped in price, making this new card not as attractive. And if rumors are true and the 1060 is launching in a week with availability in two weeks (still out on limb with supply issues of 16nm products), the rx480 will be a still birth.

You can be as much of an AMD Fan as you want, but reality is here. You get what you pay for a $200 or $230 card that performs like it should nothing spectacular about it. And if anything AMD should know reality for them is the 1060 is most likely going to kick them in their private parts, repeatedly.

Marketing screw ups by AMD again, the perf/watt numbers didn't show up for the rx 480 instead they are now saying its for the rx 470. They screw with peoples heads and now they are going to get screwed because of it.

How many times has AMD done this, its freakin crazy you guys still believe the crap they spout. I can't believe they keep doing the same mistake over and over again, its like they don't learn from mistakes.........

The mistakes of the this launch were, using the 8 gb cards for reviews, if they used 4gb instead the power consumption might have been a bit lower. Number two, they should never have gone down the road of perf/watt when they are matching last gen competitor's card in this category, big mistake, you have to show you can do it better than a card that is on an older node! That is the reason why smaller nodes are made so you can do more with less power!

I don't even see how AMD could have even played this out in their mind and think it would even be remotely a fair fight, they know what they had........ The only way I could even think they would think they would go into battle with a level field is if they thought nV was months out.

OEM's aren't stupid they also look for whats best for themselves too, their bottom line they don't care if its AMD or nV, its what's going to go into their pocket at the end of the day, they would have gotten word right around the launch of rx480 what the 1060 is and what it can do, nV WILL NOT leave an entire segment up for grabs unless they have no choice.
 
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Looks like a decent card, and those teraflops listed are pretty close to what MS has been saying Project Scorpio would be running at... makes me think it will be a modified RX 480 that will be powering that console (and maybe the new PS4.5 as well).

Not understanding the 'disappointment' people are having with this card. It's cheap, powerful and will force NVidia to make sure pricing and performance is absolutely spot-on for the 1060 - win/win for everybody!
 
SeymourGore said:
Looks like a decent card, and those teraflops listed are pretty close to what MS has been saying Project Scorpio would be running at... makes me think it will be a modified RX 480 that will be powering that console (and maybe the new PS4.5 as well).

Not understanding the 'disappointment' people are having with this card. It's cheap, powerful and will force NVidia to make sure pricing and performance is absolutely spot-on for the 1060 - win/win for everybody!
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For the money there is no equal...For now.

But 1060 is right around the corner and it will blow it out of the water IF the price is right. $300 for 6GB will not make sense for only a slightly faster performance against RX480 8GB version. You lose on memory and cost then. So I'm predicting $250 for 6GB 1060, which would be reasonable PROVIDED it is slightly faster.
 
Brackle said:
Tomshardware reviews have been the laughing joke of reviews for years. Don't believe those reviews. Stick with the good websites. [H], Guru3d, Techpowerup etc.

All the Nvidiots are now going to run with tomshardware showing how bad the card is. I guess they will grasp at anything to show this being shitty.

So they reference/link a Shitty website review.
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The card is bad @ $239 for 8gb model. Lets be honest here. More realistic pricing should be $199 @ 8gb and $179 @ 4gb. When you can get a GTX970 for the same price, it just is not competitive IMO (and most likely, the 970 will be dropping to ~$200 AR range very soon).

Price the card a bit better and its a great deal.
 
Did you look at the DX12 benchmarks? We all know Maxwell sucks at DX12. So I would take the RX 480 > a 970 with 3.5GB (I own one)

But it is a side grade if you own a 390/970 GTX right now. It is not worth getting one period. I would wait for the AIB Models.

If the damn 1070 GTX can even really be $379 that might be the card to get. To me the Verdict is still out there. Kyle said AIB partners can get 1400-1600mhz. If it can hit Fury/Fury X speeds with a good 1500mhz (and keep the price decent) Might be the card to get if you don't give a shit about power.

To me AMD hit a home run on the price/power. But to me it didn't win the game...And to me still aren't winning the game, they got a lot to come back from.

The RX 480 is a step in the right direction.
 
chenw said:
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.
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I'm also eager to see how well AMD keeps pace with supporting new titles. That's always been a weakness of theirs. New game drops and you, someday, maybe, get "Beta" drivers that properly supports it.

And, let be honest here: the bills are being paid by Sony and Microsoft. So much so that sales for consoles is called out in their earnings calls. Console guys have different priorities.

I really want to see AMD go to the mat with Nvidia across the board, not just at the low end.
 
Ieldra said:
This is called denial. Power measurements at the rails don't lie, people lie, power measurements do not.
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No, this is called healthy skepticism. Until it's independently verified, one set of measurements, unreplicated, indicates the need for further study. Not a final conclusion.
 
First off its at least two websites that have noted this..... so its not a one off thing.

Plus if you are measuring from the rails and you getting more than what the PCI-e slot deliverers, that is a problem that must be fixed and its very important to do so, OEM's will not put a card like that into their systems. So its good that it was caught, it might just be a small adjustment in the card bios.
 
Derangel said:
The only critique I'd make is that I miss the little paragraphs about each card being tested and how they felt to play for each game. Any review can tell you the differences in average frame rate but since most reviewers don't actually play the games they test [H] was one of the only ones that ever talked about how the games played.
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Well, we did not really need those in this particular review because we just wanted to focus on what realworld gameplay felt like on the RX 480. I can see however that some subjective input on the "slower" cards in the grouping would be good to add.

Dullard said:
Props for using "bated" instead of (what most people go with) "baited" - unless you've been eating fish, then nevermind :sick:
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I was going to put in a Master Baiter joke here, but decided not to.
 
So yeah the card isn't exactly where we wished performance wise (980 levels) but it does meet the 970/390 and quite handily wins in DX 12. At $199 the stock cooler is pathetic but what can you really expect at that price? I do think they should have gone with an 8 pin connector after what Tom's Hardware revealed since at that price point, many consumers will be upgrading their low tier Dell and other premade desktops that have motherboards of questionable quality. For enthusiasts that are building an HTPC, this card seems like a pretty solid winner to me for $200-$239. If NVIDIA's 1060 hits the $250-$260 mark w/a significantly better cooler and OC headroom, then AMD may be in big trouble but we'll see. For now, this card is the best price/performance card available at $200.

My disappointment however extends to the laptop market. I don't see them sticking this thing in a performance notebook given it's power draw and that's a real shame since the 1080 mobile is due out very soon and will blow the doors off AMD's offerings once again.
 
Nice review of the card. I have been on the fence what card for my new build for a few months now and am hoping to replace my 6850 soon with a new product and have been waiting for both Nvidia and AMD to release their new products. I like to buy a card in the 150-250 range usually that will last me 3 years at least.

After reading various reviews including [H] I have to say the card for the price right now would fit the bill fo rme but I am going to wait to see what the 1060gtx offers at it's price point. Some questions I have reading these reviews and forum posts
1) I see AMD cards improving with directx12 games and have read speculation it could be the drivers or possibly their hardware architecture. Has anyone heard from Nvidia if they feel driver updates will show similar directx12 performance gains?
2) I have read about VEGA cards coming in the future but it sounds like those will be late this year or next year, so does AMD have any other cards coming out in the next few months above RX 480 line?
 
doz said:
The card is bad @ $239 for 8gb model. Lets be honest here. More realistic pricing should be $199 @ 8gb and $179 @ 4gb. When you can get a GTX970 for the same price, it just is not competitive IMO (and most likely, the 970 will be dropping to ~$200 AR range very soon).

Price the card a bit better and its a great deal.
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Not if it isn't actually a PCI Express card.

I note that Dell, who isn't likely to sell you a PC with a non-PCI-Express-compliant video card in it, does sell Alienware desktops with GTX 1080s in them, but as of today doesn't sell anything with an RX 480 in it. HP also doesn't seem to have one. Amazon shows only iBuyPower and CyberPowerPC selling RX-480 equipped systems. Not the most sterling endorsement from the PC OEMs.
 
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Talking to AIBs some more today I think you will see custom "high end" air cooled cards with RX 480 come to market with low 1400MHz boost clocks. The binning process from AMD is not as clean as it is from NVIDIA, and that is just a fact. AMD's processes in the past have simply not allowed a lot of "golden GPUs" and tight binning was not needed, and I don't think there is a real reason for that process to change now. So as far a pushing those to and slightly above the 1500MHz level while overclocking is going to be very doable, but I do not expect a lot of 1600MHz overclocks to be seen in the wild on the custom air coolers. Water may change that a bit, but I am not sure that is going to be a savior at 1600MHz on a lot of chips.
 
thesmokingman said:
BD was a product of poor management at AMD at the time. They threw out the old model of hand work and tried to adopt the more automated process used in GPU design. If you read the history of that era, they let a lot of engineers go because the dopes thought they didn't need them anymore lol.
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I find this sort of thing fascinating-- was the inside story of Bulldozer written down in an article somewhere?
 
Brackle said:
Tomshardware reviews have been the laughing joke of reviews for years. Don't believe those reviews. Stick with the good websites. [H], Guru3d, Techpowerup etc.

All the Nvidiots are now going to run with tomshardware showing how bad the card is. I guess they will grasp at anything to show this being shitty.

So they reference/link a Shitty website review.
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Here are few facts which are true.

1. 480x is way more power efficient than 390/390x.
2. 480x is not as power efficient as Pascal.
3. Nvidia is more power effiecient than AMD.
4. AMD is close to twice as power efficient as their last cards.

It would have been a miracle if they matched power efficiency of pascal but that would be a large leap that is too good to be true lol.

now I am sure vega will be more power efficient than polaris as fury series was efficient compared to 390x/390.

Cheers! Lets admit whats true is true. For a 1080p card rx 480 is fine and priced great. and I am sure it will sell plenty.
 
NKD said:
Here are few facts which are true.

1. 480x is way more power efficient than 390/390x.
2. 480x is not as power efficient as Pascal.
3. Nvidia is more power effiecient than AMD.
4. AMD is close to twice as power efficient as their last cards.

It would have been a miracle if they matched power efficiency of pascal but that would be a large leap that is too good to be true lol.

now I am sure vega will be more power efficient than polaris as fury series was efficient compared to 390x/390.

Cheers! Lets admit whats true is true. For a 1080p card rx 480 is fine and priced great. and I am sure it will sell plenty.
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Polaris is closer to Tonga/Fiji than to Vega since it's still Graphics IP v8.0 architecture, though originally designed for 20nm and moved to 14nm. Vega is Graphics IP v9.0 architecture and is still largely a mystery.
 
SeymourGore said:
Looks like a decent card, and those teraflops listed are pretty close to what MS has been saying Project Scorpio would be running at... makes me think it will be a modified RX 480 that will be powering that console (and maybe the new PS4.5 as well).

Not understanding the 'disappointment' people are having with this card. It's cheap, powerful and will force NVidia to make sure pricing and performance is absolutely spot-on for the 1060 - win/win for everybody!
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It's not a bad card, it's just nothing special at all. It's slower than Nvidia's two year old mid-range card, which is much slower than people had anticipated. If we had got 980 level performance, it might have been a game changer, but as it is, it's a $200 card, and that's pretty much exactly what it's worth. There's just no wow factor here, it's just an incremental upgrade over their previous generation, and compared to the 1000 cards from nvidia, whose performance has been astounding thus far, there just really isn't anything to get excited about. It's like comparing the new Toyota Camry to the new Porsche 911. Sure, the Camry is a fine car, it's just not all that exciting. People were expecting some amazing bang for your buck card, but what we got is a low-midrange card at low-midrange price.
 
Overall it looks like a good launch for a mid tier card.

So many of us old school guys remember the days when each team came out hard hitting with huge performance gains. And the competition forced prices down.

We may be in a new Era with gpu's.
 
variant said:
Polaris is closer to Tonga/Fiji than to Vega since it's still Graphics IP v8.0 architecture, though originally designed for 20nm and moved to 14nm. Vega is Graphics IP v9.0 architecture and is still largely a mystery.
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I think this may as well be the reason we are not going to see any other card until vega. That will be a full replacement on the performance to enthusiast I believe.

I am starting to think more and more that AMD was like fuck it this is the best we are going to get from it, lets sell it for cheap and make as many we can make until we shift to vega.

Hence a part with 2306 shaders and no info on cards with 40 44 and more CUs.

I doubt we see anything other than this and super clocked binned chips from amd until vega.
 
It handly beats my gtx780 I paid $500 2 1/2 years ago. And it does it at a $200 price point. Given the GPU prices in recent years haven't really budged much.. I think it's a pretty exciting development for those getting into the PC gaming.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
They post bad data intentionally, they get sued for liable. And TPU had the same readings (more or less)
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Somehow that won't work you can claim you are incompetent and that is not so far fetched :)

Zarathustra[H] said:
Make no mistake. EVERYTHING now hinges on Zen. If Zen is not immediately successful and profitable out of the gate, by the time those bonds come due, there will no longer be an AMD in its current form.
This is a sobering read when it comes to AMD. They are very much in final hail mary pass territory now.
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What else is new ?
 
Considering it's about on par with a Radeon 390, which you could have gotten last week for a similar price, all you're getting now is lower power consumption. It's definitely not as exciting as the value difference Nvidia is offering with their new cards (Titan X performance for massively less). That's probably why people are upset.
 
Kyle

A suggestion on reviews. I find it really frustrating reading video card reviews because they are just not very applicable to the consumer purchashing the card. Especially for a video card it is extremely unreasonable to assume that the person reading the review is building a new PC, rather it us likely he is upgrading his PC. I understand the concept if removing the bottlenecks of CPU and memory and testing them on a high end PC, but for the most part this is a more real world synthetic benchmark. A review of this card should use a midrange PC of at least one generation old, and the last two generations of video cards should be included. Showing results on an i5-3xxx or i5-4xxx and including say a 670 and 460 (sweet spots of previous generati ons) would give a much more real world and valuable benchmark on whether the purchase is worth it. It answers the question if I upgrade my current video card in the same system to the RX480 what is a real world expectation of increase in video speed
 
When/If you guys do an overclocking article. Can you just overclock the GPU to see if you get more headroom if you leave the memory clocks alone?

Curious if the card would get closer to 1400mhz if you left the memory alone.
 
johnnysd said:
Kyle

A suggestion on reviews. I find it really frustrating reading video card reviews because they are just not very applicable to the consumer purchashing the card. Especially for a video card it is extremely unreasonable to assume that the person reading the review is building a new PC, rather it us likely he is upgrading his PC. I understand the concept if removing the bottlenecks of CPU and memory and testing them on a high end PC, but for the most part this is a more real world synthetic benchmark. A review of this card should use a midrange PC of at least one generation old, and the last two generations of video cards should be included. Showing results on an i5-3xxx or i5-4xxx and including say a 670 and 460 (sweet spots of previous generati ons) would give a much more real world and valuable benchmark on whether the purchase is worth it. It answers the question if I upgrade my current video card in the same system to the RX480 what is a real world expectation of increase in video speed
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To be fair to Kyle. He did include gtx 970 and 960. A card that is priced higher and card that is 20 cheaper from base RX 480 model.

Now people with 960s do have a big reason to upgrade. Cuz it blows past it. So that is a fair comparison. Anyone who has anything lower obviously it is going to be faster.

People should know the baseline for their own systems they are upgrading. Kyle doesn't have to show that.
 
Brackle said:
When/If you guys do an overclocking article. Can you just overclock the GPU to see if you get more headroom if you leave the memory clocks alone?

Curious if the card would get closer to 1400mhz if you left the memory alone.
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I am sure he tried that. Basics of overclocking. Mess with one thing at a time. Lol
 
NKD said:
I am sure he tried that. Basics of overclocking. Mess with one thing at a time. Lol
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I know that, but if you are limited by power draw of the overall board. Leaving the memory at stock should let you overclock the GPU more.
 
I'm sure they tried that but if the card is well balanced it will need both the memory and GPU overclocked, yeah you will get different results based on the app though.
 
My 2 cents
Cons :
Perf only slightly better in some dx11 titles than 970 .
Power / perf is bad compared to Pascall (but a good step from AMDs last gen)
Ref model almost no OC room.
32 ROPs , limits its 1440p powers technically (pcpers review shows no dropoff vs 970 @ 1440p however).

Good :
Perf in some dx12 titles vs 970 is much much better. (pcper review).
Power / perf gains in dx12 apps obviously.
8 GB option vs limit of 3.5gb (real) for 970 or 4gb for 980. A 1060 at 3gb is getting a bit light for high end 1080p titles so i think 4gb min is a better amount of mem. Realistically i think the 1060 6gb card will be the one to compare to.
Very good frame times according to the techreport review , better than 970 in the 99% frametime metric. This is first for amd in this metric.
AIB cards from Kyles comments should maintain its position vs 970 to 980 max oc to max oc . Unlike prev AMD gens where if you OCd the amd cards fell away sharply.

The other thing i am picking is from the pcer review it showed boost clocks been all over the place and the average been ~ 1240mhz - well below max boost, i'm hoping the AIB models even this out near the top boost. May see some good % gains if this panes out. Also whilst not ground breaking , better cooling will mean lower TDP draw. Could help it a little.

In a nutshell the AIB cards should be loads better , hopefully they don't add much to the pricing. AIB cards will be here by the time the 1060 lands too by all reports so will be interesting to see how $/perf sits then.
 
Latest AMD response on the PCIe power draw issue.

1) The RX 480 has passed PCIe compliance testing with PCI-SIG. This is not just our internal testing. I think that should be made very clear. Obviously there are a few GPUs exhibiting anomalous behavior, and we've been in touch with these reviewers for a few days to better understand their test configurations to see how this could be possible.

2) Update #2 made by the OP is confused. There is a difference between ASIC power, which is what ONLY THE GPU CONSUMES (110W), and total graphics power (TGP), which is what the entire graphics card uses (150W). There has been no change in the spec, so I would ask that incorrect information stop being disseminated as "fact."

We will have more on this topic soon as we investigate, but it's worth reminding people that only a very small number of hundreds of RX 480 reviews worldwide encountered this issue. Clearly that makes it aberrant, rather than the rule, and we're working to get that number down to zero.
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jmilcher said:
Every other major review site has theirs up now, and many of them fairly compare it to the 980.
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Well, many sites will publish comparison charts from GTX 560 all the way to Titan, and if that is your thing, dont worry just take a look at those sites. I sometimes do just for kicks.

But I rather see the real gameplay reviews, that tell the whole gaming story.

Besides, I never once had a problem where if a card is more or less like a 970, then wonder, uhmmm I wish I knew how it would compare to the 980, 980ti, Titan X, 1070, 1080 (hint: we already know how they compare to the 970).
 
One thing I worry about the new format is if the max settings for one card completely stumbles on another card say due to a single option. I like the move to common settings, though I think both cards need to be considered when choosing the settings?
 
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