AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB

[W1zzard]

Today, AMD is introducing their new 14 nanometer Polaris architecture. The first card we are reviewing is the Radeon RX 480, a highly affordable 8 GB card that sets out to shatter current price-to-performance ratios. In terms of performance, you can expect speeds between the GTX 980 and GTX 970.

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[Chaitanya]

I will keep my 970 for a little longer. I need a good 1440p card.

 

[The Quim Reaper]

Oh dear AMD.

 

[birdie]

Let's console those who yielded to the hype and sold their perfectly capable GTX 970 and 980.

The RX 480 is almost nice, but apparently not in the league it was rumored to be (aside from DX12 games tailored for AMD).

And my second thought is, how on Earth it consumes so much??

 

[proxuser]

Not even worth in cf. which uses double watt and offers less performance. amd lost me again.

 

[DarkOCean]

Guess what i'm not getting? I guess the more overhyped a product it is the crappier it is in reality.
When is rx 470 launch date?

 

[Dammeron]

Sooo disappointing... Eats as much as GTX 970, even though it's 14nm vs 28nm. But still scored 8.9 in the end, which is an awesome note. I'll never get used to that.

 

[Air]

I thought the smaller cooler compared to Nvidia was indication of lower power consumption, but looks like its just a cheaper design...

 

[bug]

Basically a hair faster than a 970 (that evil card that "only has 3.5GB VRAM"), with slightly higher power consumption, despite being manufactured on a (much) smaller node. Not much cheaper either, since the 970 is listed for as low as $265 on newegg.

 

[Frick]

To be fair the hype mostly came from fans.

The speed is about what I expected and quite good for the price, although actual retail prices remains to be seen. Power draw is ... actually alright, considering it's GCN. It really showcases how amazing Pascal is in that area though.

But AMD clearly has got to fire their cooler department. Seriously. Now bring on the flurry of AIB cards!

 

[Ruru]

Not a bad product, but now I'm sure that I won't be upgrading from my R9 290, at least not yet. Maybe newer drivers give more performance etc.

 

[chaosmassive]

"and then there's GTX 1060 coming soon, too"

how soon? like in 1-2 weeks?

 

[chinmi]

hot, power hungry, and not as fast as advertised by amd...

 

[newtekie1]

Well this is sad.

 

[GreiverBlade]

the card is nice at her pricepoint... no worries though, it was advertised as a cheap high midrange and it's what it is ...

Well this is sad.

not really ...it is sad only if you own a 980 or a 390X (or in case of sidegrading like a 290 or ... eventually a 970 3.5 edition )

oh well my 980 will hold till Vega and after Pascal, nothing worth it in the latest gen

 

[Chaitanya]

And my second thought is, how on Earth it consumes so much??

Seems like Tpu f*ed up. All other sites are quoting lower power consumptions.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10446/the-amd-radeon-rx-480-preview/6

 

[EzioAs]

I thought we'd get to see the in-game settings on each game page? Not to force you or anything but it'd be great if you could give us an update on that.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

"and then there's GTX 1060 coming soon, too"

how soon? like in 1-2 weeks?

Rumored to be early to mid july. So yes.

 

[XSI]

for me it looks like new 8800GT which was almost 8800gtx level for half the price. I see similar here 480x vs 980. price / performance. cheaper almost 2 times(or even more). and price/performance
ratio shows exactly that.

 

[KainXS]

So no OC headroom on the core, runs hot, and is loud and is over pci e power specs. ehhh when I read this I felt like

AIB cards might be decent(might get one eventually) but this reference card. . . . . . is not worth it(to me at least).

 

[Ruru]

hot, power hungry, and not as fast as advertised by amd...

Well, I'd say that if it's about 290X performance with a much lower consumption, I'd not say that it's power hungry. My 290 draws a lot more power and therefor generates a lot more heat than this 480, but that's not the reason if I would upgrade. Some people (like me) just don't care about power consumption.

 

[Eroticus]

and GTX 1070 not even priced at 379$

GTX 960 4GB price for 290x perfomence .

 

[v12dock]

I suppose they hit their performance point but I don't see them selling a lot of these cards.

 

[natr0n]

Was hoping that higher OC would help this card shine.

 

[iO]

Same problems as usual: over hyped by fanboys and crippled with a crappy cooler...

Lets hope non ref cards can fix this

 

[SonicZap]

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.