RX 480 post mortem - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

[Daniel_Chang]

Good - Price and performance. Performance is where it should be, roughly matching the next step up from the prior generation. Price is also exactly where it was last generation, an unexpected plus given the node change. Even Nvidia raised prices. There is no doubt that in terms of price/perf, this is now the best card.

Bad - The temps. Fan spinning while idle, and stock temps >80 under load without an overclock are unacceptable today. Thankfully, there is no reason that custom coolers from AIBs shouldn't be able to fix this.

Ugly - Power delivery is out of ATX spec. This forces the card to attempt to draw more from the motherboard than the motherboard may be rated for. This is fine in reviewers test systems which have high quality motherboards and PSUs that can safely exceed ATX spec. But your typical Best Buy customer won't have this. Best case, the card under performs due to less power. Worst case (and this will be as rare as being stuck by lightning), components get damaged.

A Word About VR - Dropping the price of an entry level VR card $50-$100 makes VR affordable in the same sense that dropping g the price of performance tires makes a Corvette affordable.

Conclusion - This is AMD Maxwell. Take a GTX 970, drop the price $130, give it a separate 8GB option, and paint it red. Once we have AIB models with custom cooling and power delivery to fix AMD's engineering faux pas, this card will be highly recommended. Until then, wait patiently.

 

[cageymaru]

I think the card is worth every penny.

 

[Zion Halcyon]

I am definitely waiting for the AIB solutions, but only because I think the stock Radeon fans and coverings are very dull.

 

[cageymaru]

I am definitely waiting for the AIB solutions, but only because I think the stock Radeon fans and coverings are very dull.

I want more ROPS personally. If I were to cave and get one I would spring for a binned one that could do 1400 - 1600 OC's like Kyle was saying that the AIB were excited about.

 

[FrgMstr]

I think the card is worth every penny.

How many have you purchased this morning?

 

[Araxie]

Nvidia raised prices but they were able to scale 2 tiers of performance from the last generation.. GTX 970 replacement jumped up to GTX 980TI/TitanX performance.. GTX 980TI replacement jumped to entirely alone performance its competing to no one else..

 

[limitedaccess]

Nvidia raised prices but they were able to scale 2 tiers of performance from the last generation.. GTX 970 replacement jumped up to GTX 980TI/TitanX performance.. GTX 980TI replacement jumped to entirely alone performance its competing to no one else..

Just going to address the pricing angle in a bit more detail. Using TPU avg here - AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB Review

GTX 1070 is 150% vs RX 480 at 100% at 1080p. So 50% faster.
GTX 1070 is $380 vs RX 480 at $240. I feel the basic $380 MSRP blowers variants for the GTX 1070 is product equivalent to what RX 480's reference is. So 58.3% more expensive.

Really the perf/price ratio is barely better. In general you typically see diminishing returns as you move up the product chain as well.

In terms of optics things like the $200 MSRP for the 4GB version (which will be slower memory), and trying to draw comparison focuses to the FE version of the GTX 1070 or the MSRP+ pricing at the moment will be pointed at to muddy this situation. However I don't feel those are sound comparisons.

 

[realworld]

I have a feeling Zen would do the same in the CPU market. Performance and power efficiency will be barely on par with years old Intel Sandy Bridge.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

I think the card is worth every penny.

Since I see you run a 290, yea you would see value in this card.

Equal or less than 970 performance, loud stock cooler, hot temps even before overclocking, and a slight performance increase over the 390(and 290). PLENTY of reasons for the higher end enthusiasts to not be excited.

One thing you can't take away from the 480 is the value. You can get 390 and almost 970 performance for less money. AMD better hope the 1060 does not mop the RX480 floor...

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

I have a feeling Zen would do the same in the CPU market. Performance and power efficiency will be barely on par with years old Intel Sandy Bridge.

This has actually been speculated multiple times. Somewhere between Sandy and Ivy.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

I can't get over the power usage. Just... wow.

 

[Algrim]

I think the reference RX 480 is worth the price point. What AIBs charge for their beast cards is what's going to determine how good of a value they are.

 

[N4CR]

Good write up. But I'd bet that the power delivery of a PCI-E socket has more overhead than is being used by the card. You don't engineer something to be at 100% capacity at rated load, in a vast majority of cases. Still though, engineering limits/specifications are there for a reason, if everyone does it then it defeats the purpose.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

There have already been many complaints about the heat and noise. Hopefully the AIB cards solve this

 

[Zion Halcyon]

I can't get over the power usage. Just... wow.

 

[illli]

I'm all for the underdog... but I was hoping on par with a gtx 980, and less power consumption than a 1070. It really makes me wonder what kind of magic fairy dust nvidia used to get a 1070 to use less power than a 480, but perform almost 50% better than a 480.
(I wonder if AMD is hamstrung by shitty GLOFO process - they did sign that awful contract years ago and apparently can't break out of it)

 

[jamesgalb]

-Performance jump from x80 to x90
-Power decrease from 250-300w to 150-200w
-Card size decrease
-Cooler temperatures

"Card fails"

If nVidia did this (ie GTX 780 to GTX 970), people would be shitting themselves.

I wonder more and more every day how much nVidia invests in social marketing...

 

[Dew]

This has actually been speculated multiple times. Somewhere between Sandy and Ivy.

If AMD can pull off Ivy IPC, with <150watts 8C16T @ 4.4GHz, that is a monster chip. A real force to be reckoned with. Then again, that is a BIG if for AMD at this point if the GF 14FF clock limitations for Polaris are any indication.

 

[Dew]

Good write up. But I'd bet that the power delivery of a PCI-E socket has more overhead than is being used by the card. You don't engineer something to be at 100% capacity at rated load, in a vast majority of cases. Still though, engineering limits/specifications are there for a reason, if everyone does it then it defeats the purpose.

With everyone talking about getting 2x480 CF, I would really start to worry.

 

[Dullard]

This has actually been speculated multiple times. Somewhere between Sandy and Ivy.

I've seen speculation that Zen would surpass HW-E and go head to head with BW-E.

Check that - now up to even with Skylake

I still hold out hope for Zen. Latest rumors were the clocks were better than expected, and it might actually go toe to toe with Skylake, instead of being relegated to compete with Maxwell like it previously was rumored.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

I've seen speculation that Zen would surpass HW-E and go head to head with BW-E.

It probably will as soon as the rx480 performs as well as a 980ti

 

[Deleted member 93354]

-Performance jump from x80 to x90
-Power decrease from 250-300w to 150-200w
-Card size decrease
-Cooler temperatures

"Card fails"

If nVidia did this (ie GTX 780 to GTX 970), people would be shitting themselves.

I wonder more and more every day how much nVidia invests in social marketing...

If FAILS because of the competitions offerings, NOT because of it's improvements. the new Civic update is still awesome, but it isn't any Ferrari.

 

[badb0y]

Just going to address the pricing angle in a bit more detail. Using TPU avg here - AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB Review

GTX 1070 is 150% vs RX 480 at 100% at 1080p. So 50% faster.
GTX 1070 is $380 vs RX 480 at $240. I feel the basic $380 MSRP blowers variants for the GTX 1070 is product equivalent to what RX 480's reference is. So 58.3% more expensive.

Really the perf/price ratio is barely better. In general you typically see diminishing returns as you move up the product chain as well.

In terms of optics things like the $200 MSRP for the 4GB version (which will be slower memory), and trying to draw comparison focuses to the FE version of the GTX 1070 or the MSRP+ pricing at the moment will be pointed at to muddy this situation. However I don't feel those are sound comparisons.

$380 1070? Where is this mythical beast you speak of?

 

[yourgrandma]

-Performance jump from x80 to x90
-Power decrease from 250-300w to 150-200w
-Card size decrease
-Cooler temperatures

"Card fails"

If nVidia did this (ie GTX 780 to GTX 970), people would be shitting themselves.

I wonder more and more every day how much nVidia invests in social marketing...

It would be impressive if we didn't live in a world where nvidia exists and made a card almost 2 years ago that is equal in power and performance.

 

[heatlesssun]

-Performance jump from x80 to x90
-Power decrease from 250-300w to 150-200w
-Card size decrease
-Cooler temperatures

"Card fails"

If nVidia did this (ie GTX 780 to GTX 970), people would be shitting themselves.

I wonder more and more every day how much nVidia invests in social marketing...

This card got WAY OVERHYPED. That's the problem. It's a $200 part that's nothing more or less than a $200 part for 2016.

 

[schizo]

Some people on these forums were saying-- contrary to EVERY leak and piece of data we had-- that it would compete with the 1070/980ti. Those people were either fools or had an agenda. The rest of us expected 390 to 390x levels of performance, and indeed it came in at the 390.

 

[Stereodude]

-Performance jump from x80 to x90
-Power decrease from 250-300w to 150-200w
-Card size decrease
-Cooler temperatures

"Card fails"

If nVidia did this (ie GTX 780 to GTX 970), people would be shitting themselves.

I wonder more and more every day how much nVidia invests in social marketing...

Because they didn't deliver the 980 performance (or greater) all the fanboys and fangirls thought they were going to get for $200 while it sipped power. AMD tried to temper expectations, but their fans weren't listening or didn't believe them thinking AMD was going to trick Nvidia with bogus information.

 

[ppi]

The ugly thing is ... 1060.

By my napkin math, when expecting 1060 to have 1280 shaders, RX480@1266 w/2306 SPs being on par with GTX970 in DX11, while these having 5.8 vs. 4.0 TFlops respectively (assuming Pascal has similar dx11_gaming_performance-to-flops ratio to Maxwell) ... what clock speed (consistent boost) would 1060 need to achieve to be equal on DX11, and I stress here DX11, performance with RX480? 1573 MHz.

Obviously, buying card that should last me two years on DX11 performance comparison might not be the best idea, but this is what most reviews would tell now ...

The bad thing is why all those leaks were pointing to 980-level performance in 3DMarks? Sure, there were many indices saying otherwise, begining especially with AMD claiming 480 being VR ready (=290/970) and 470 not, continuing with weak Steam VR scores, and finally [H] deciding to compare it to 390/970. But still ...

 

[DangerousDonald]

Just going to address the pricing angle in a bit more detail. Using TPU avg here - AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB Review

GTX 1070 is 150% vs RX 480 at 100% at 1080p. So 50% faster.
GTX 1070 is $380 vs RX 480 at $240. I feel the basic $380 MSRP blowers variants for the GTX 1070 is product equivalent to what RX 480's reference is. So 58.3% more expensive.

Really the perf/price ratio is barely better. In general you typically see diminishing returns as you move up the product chain as well.

In terms of optics things like the $200 MSRP for the 4GB version (which will be slower memory), and trying to draw comparison focuses to the FE version of the GTX 1070 or the MSRP+ pricing at the moment will be pointed at to muddy this situation. However I don't feel those are sound comparisons.

This is what I think as well. If you take historical diminishing return into account when moving to faster cards, NVIDIA's latest offerings are clearly more impressive. The reviews I am seeing put the GTX 1080 at twice as fast at 4k, and paying 3x as much for 2x the performance is a bargain historically speaking. Usually the ratio for the high end cards is much worse. This is not the second coming of the 8800GT, where a $200 card was very close to the $600+ flagship.

The absolute performance of the RX480 puts it clearly in the mid-range, but it's about $50 cheaper than what one would expect for an "average" entry with that performance. In return you get a hot, very loud card. I don't think it's bad, but it's not especially praiseworthy either.

 

[razor1]

The ugly thing is ... 1060.

By my napkin math, when expecting 1060 to have 1280 shaders, RX480@1266 w/2306 SPs being on par with GTX970 in DX11, while these having 5.8 vs. 4.0 TFlops respectively (assuming Pascal has similar dx11_gaming_performance-to-flops ratio to Maxwell) ... what clock speed (consistent boost) would 1060 need to achieve to be equal on DX11, and I stress here DX11, performance with RX480? 1573 MHz.

Obviously, buying card that should last me two years on DX11 performance comparison might not be the best idea, but this is what most reviews would tell now ...

The bad thing is why all those leaks were pointing to 980-level performance in 3DMarks? Sure, there were many indices saying otherwise, begining especially with AMD claiming 480 being VR ready (=290/970) and 470 not, continuing with weak Steam VR scores, and finally [H] deciding to compare it to 390/970. But still ...

3dmark is just a synthetic test and one app doesn't give you the whole picture.

 

[jhatfie]

I think the RX 480 came in about where I expected it to. I was hopeful it would be a smidgen faster, but alas it is not. I am not interested in the reference cards due to the poor cooling and noise, but I am very anxious to see what performance and overclocking gains are to be had once the non reference cards start to show up. I likely will pick one of those up to play with.

 

[Stereodude]

I don't see how factory OC'd AIB cards are going to save this. Lets ignore power for a minute and assume performance gains from overclocking are linear. Lets say you can get an extra 10% performance with a much better cooler. That card is going to cost near $300. IMO, that puts it too close to the 1070 (assuming they actually become available for $380) while still being drastically slower.

 

[ManofGod]

Some people on these forums were saying-- contrary to EVERY leak and piece of data we had-- that it would compete with the 1070/980ti. Those people were either fools or had an agenda. The rest of us expected 390 to 390x levels of performance, and indeed it came in at the 390.

No one on these forums said that even once. I think you are confusing what you think with what some did when they posted about other forums.

 

[gordon152]

Some people on these forums were saying-- contrary to EVERY leak and piece of data we had-- that it would compete with the 1070/980ti. Those people were either fools or had an agenda. The rest of us expected 390 to 390x levels of performance, and indeed it came in at the 390.

It really is funny, especially when I remember a post on here or overclock.net that highlighted a dialog of AMD telling people to temper your expectations, but them running wild with speculation. Only to be disappointed their delusions didn't come true.

 

[heatlesssun]

I don't see how factory OC'd AIB cards are going to save this. Lets ignore power for a minute and assume performance gains from overclocking are linear. Lets say you can get an extra 10% performance with a much better cooler. That card is going to cost near $300. IMO, that puts it too close to the 1070 (assuming they actually become available for $380) while still being drastically slower.

But that's just it, the power consumption. How much power are these kinds of cards going to draw? A lot more than an FE 1070 or even 1080 it would seem, and if they get into the $300 range it's starts to become more and more pointless.

 

[heatlesssun]

No one on these forums said that even once. I think you are confusing what you think with what some did when they posted about other forums.

I don't think anyone here did that. But some of the expectations of this card were through the stratosphere at this price point.

 

[jamesgalb]

If FAILS because of the competitions offerings, NOT because of it's improvements. the new Civic update is still awesome, but it isn't any Ferrari.

This is just a stupid comparison. I wont even bother explaining, as I am sure that you (and everyone) know exactly why it is a stupid comparison.

 

[Rizen]

-Performance jump from x80 to x90
-Power decrease from 250-300w to 150-200w
-Card size decrease
-Cooler temperatures

"Card fails"

If nVidia did this (ie GTX 780 to GTX 970), people would be shitting themselves.

I wonder more and more every day how much nVidia invests in social marketing...

You're ignoring that the GTX 780 to 970 was done with purely architectural changes. The RX480 was a die shrink from 28nm to 14nm.

Price/performance ratio aside, the power consumption is higher than what I would have expected for a $200 mainstream GPU on 14nm.

Edit:

To put this into perspective:

RX 480: 232mm2 die, 14nm FinFET, 150W
GTX 1080: 314mm2, 16nm FinFET, 180W

In other words, the RX480 uses 83% of the GTX 1080s power consumption, at 73% of it's size. I don't think we need to compare performance.

 

[Daniel_Chang]

Compared to the reference R9 290/290X which ran at ~94-95 degrees (celsius)? It uses less power, is a more compact design and has a bigger fan. Sure AIB's can add a phase change cooler but as I see it the reference design cooling is more than adequate even when overclocked.

The 290/290x isn't the proper comparison. Those are older cards. Sure, the 480 is better, but we've had other better options since as well. You're intentionally setting the bar lower to prop up the card.

I didn't see this mentioned or even an issue for reviewers. Besides the 6-pin connector should be able to handle the TDP for the video card even under worst case scenarios (Furmark). I also think AIB's may add in an additional connector for more overclocking performance.

AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB Power Consumption Results

AMD’s Radeon RX 480 draws an average of 164W, which exceeds the company's target TDP. And it gets worse. The load distribution works out in a way that has the card draw 86W through the motherboard’s PCIe slot. Not only does this exceed the 75W ceiling we typically associate with a 16-lane slot, but that 75W limit covers several rails combined and not just this one interface.

With peaks of up to 155W, we have to be thankful they're brief, and not putting the motherboard in any immediate danger. However, the audio subsystems on cheaper platforms will have a hard time dealing with them. This means that the "you can hear what you see" effect will be in full force during load changes; activities like scrolling may very well result in audible artifacts.

We’re also left to wonder what we'd see from a CrossFire configuration. Two graphics cards would draw 160W via the motherboard’s 24-pin connector; that's a tall order. Switching from the bars back to a more detailed curve makes this even more evident.

Since I see you run a 290, yea you would see value in this card.

Equal or less than 970 performance, loud stock cooler, hot temps even before overclocking, and a slight performance increase over the 390(and 290). PLENTY of reasons for the higher end enthusiasts to not be excited.

One thing you can't take away from the 480 is the value. You can get 390 and almost 970 performance for less money. AMD better hope the 1060 does not mop the RX480 floor...

You have it backwards. It's 390 > 480 > 970 (all by marginal amounts) according to most reviews. Given your posting history though, I believe that this was intentional.

-Performance jump from x80 to x90
-Power decrease from 250-300w to 150-200w
-Card size decrease
-Cooler temperatures

"Card fails"

If nVidia did this (ie GTX 780 to GTX 970), people would be shitting themselves.

I wonder more and more every day how much nVidia invests in social marketing...

First off, you replied without quoting anyone, so I can only assume that it's direct at the OP, me. Your analogy was wrong, Compared to the R9 380, the card this replaces, it offers a great performance jump, a power INCREASE, and WARMER temperatures. If the GTX 970 had done this, it would have run at 300W and 80+ degrees.

I said that I liked the 480 but with reservations. AIB custom cards should address those reservations.

 

[jamesgalb]

First off, you replied without quoting anyone, so I can only assume that it's direct at the OP, me. Your analogy was wrong, Compared to the R9 380, the card this replaces, it offers a great performance jump, a power INCREASE, and WARMER temperatures. If the GTX 970 had done this, it would have run at 300W and 80+ degrees.

So, sorta like the 970 > 1070 jump then? Slightly more power, slightly hotter, but significantly better performance.... Why is this bad when AMD does it?

Compare it to generation downgrades like 780>970 vs 390>480, and nVidia gets praise while AMD gets shat on

Compare it to a generation transition like 970>1070 vs 380>480, and nVidia gets praise while AMD gets shat on.

Hypocrisy runs strong here.