MSI RX 480 Gaming X 8 GB

[CounterSpell]

so... in what particular aspect does rx480 is better than gtx1060?

I just want to understand why people claim RX480 is better than 1060.. all the benchs say otherwise...

Im not a fan of nvidia or amd...i just want to make a good choice, and lately, everything points to gtx1060, instead of rx480

 

[HumanSmoke]

[OT]

AMD chose the 14nm process for 2 big reasons:

1) It is MUCH cheaper than TSMC's 16nm

Show proof or quit with the guerrilla marketing. Neither TSMC nor Samsung (nor any other foundry) release wafer costs - especially those weighted for yield. What is known is that Samsung's 14nmLPC (the successor to LPP) and TSMC's 16nmFFC both offer similar production cost reductions due to fewer mask steps (8-10) being required for complex IC's.

2) GloFlo's 14nm process is 9% denser than TSMC's 16nm. As it matures its clock-speeds should mostly catch up to Nvidia's, and when it does they WILL be able to scale higher than Nvidia can in the top end. Expect nvidia to hit a wall at about 16 billion transistors while AMD manages to scale to 18-20 billion. Sure it will probably use 320w, but who cares if it manages to win by 10% performance and costs less to make?

Again, show proof* or quit with the guerrilla marketing.
1. Samsung hasn't proven to be able to scale their process to anywhere close to that of TSMC.
2. Even if Samsung could produce a monolithic GPU in the 550-600mm^2 range, the increased transistor density will require a lower transistor switching voltage and lower frequencies as is the case currently.
3. You seem to think that Samsung/Glofo's process advancements occur in a vacuum. TSMC's process also improves as the node becomes mature. Answer me this: If Samsung is poised to leave TSMC in its wake, why has its (and TSMC's) largest customer, Apple, ditched Samsung for the A10 with insider talk pointing to Samsung's ramp, yield, and heat/power issues. Apple has access to both Samsung's 14LPC and TSMC 16FFC's projections and seem to have reached a definitive conclusion...are you going to tell me Apple make foundry partner manufacturing decisions based on frivolous and arbitrary reasons?

* Actual proof not rumour/claims from some random on WTFtech

[/OT]
On topic: Nice looking card. Wouldn't buy. The Sapphire Nitro card looks to be almost 20% (!) cheaper locally.

 

[Jism]

so... in what particular aspect does rx480 is better than gtx1060?

I just want to understand why people claim RX480 is better than 1060.. all the benchs say otherwise...

Im not a fan of nvidia or amd...i just want to make a good choice, and lately, everything points to gtx1060, instead of rx480

- asynchronous compute (see vulkan / doom for example)
- fully DX12 capable
- best bang for the buck currently (more available then Nvidia)
- new card, driver updates will follow as well
- and because you can, AMD is just more fun

- and be cool with other AMD fanboys as well.

Remember that asynchronous compute and vulkan will play a very important role in future games, and since AMD is having both major brands in consoles (MS / Sony) this will become more and more important for dev's to work on. You'll get to see more and more from AMD very soon, esp when the HBM2 party starts to throw off.

I'd put my money on a R480x for the WQHD resolutions, and within a year buy a second 480x for less then 230$ and increase performance with games up to 50%.

 

[Malabooga]

so... in what particular aspect does rx480 is better than gtx1060?

I just want to understand why people claim RX480 is better than 1060.. all the benchs say otherwise...

Im not a fan of nvidia or amd...i just want to make a good choice, and lately, everything points to gtx1060, instead of rx480

Because it wins all DX12 games except NVidia sponsored ROTTR (in which they somehow managed to make AMD cards run slower than DX11 but somehow that game got chosen for only DX12 representative) and Vulkan (Doom)

Unfortunately this benchmark suite is pretty irrelevant when it comes to choosing card for next 2-3 years. I have NVidia Maxwell card and Dx12/Vulkan has been nothing but huge dissapointment, drivers are awful and performance is really bad. Thats something you dont see in this review (well if you knew Hitmans history, NVidia had huge problems with that game and thats the reason its not tested in DX12. I wonder why author doesnt mention that also)

Some sites have put up analysis of DX11 and DX12/Vulkan separately, and while GTX1060 wins DX11 by 5-10%, RX480 wins DX12/Vulkan by 15-20%.

 

[CounterSpell]

Some sites have put up analysis of DX11 and DX12/Vulkan separately, and while GTX1060 wins DX11 by 5-10%, RX480 wins DX12/Vulkan by 15-20%.

can you link them?

 

[Malabooga]

And thats without Doom (Vulkan) included which GTX1060 loses by 25-30%

So, this last develpment with Doom Vulkan pretty much sealed the deal for me for dumping my GTX970 and picking up RX480 4GB for small markup (maybe i even pick up 8GB one if the price is right).

But for me theres no doubt, RX470 4GB and RX480 4GB are pretty much unchallenged for mainstream in this gen so far, im not sure why is GTX1060 even a thing as its quite overpriced compared to these and not really hardware equipped for new APIs (Async Compute which is never coming for my card, another lie from NVidia.....)

 

[Fluffmeister]

Hmm the 1060 does just dandy in those tests (whilst using less power) , and a i7 5960X CPU?

Again the realistic picture for average joe isn't getting shown.

 

[evernessince]

Is the RX 480 a good card? Yes but it isn't the card AMD needed. Instead what we have is a good card for the price with decent power consumption that can't overclock. The only two things it has over the 1060 is DX 12 support and price. Once again neither card is a clear cut winner and Nvidia will win out simply because it's brand.

 

[Captain_Tom]

What Samsung/GloFo calls "14 nm FinFET" is roughly equivalent to what TSMC calls "16 nm FinFET", and would be called "20 nm FinFET" if it were made by Intel. Both processes are basically a 20 nm node with FinFET, they have chosen a different measure just for marketing.

They are different process bud. Their 14nm node is literally more dense.

 

[Captain_Tom]

Is the RX 480 a good card? Yes but it isn't the card AMD needed. Instead what we have is a good card for the price with decent power consumption that can't overclock. The only two things it has over the 1060 is DX 12 support and price. Once again neither card is a clear cut winner and Nvidia will win out simply because it's brand.

It is selling out like crazy with while having flooded the market. It is capturing marketshare - which is exactly what AMD needs.

 

[sweet]

It is selling out like crazy with while having flooded the market. It is capturing marketshare - which is exactly what AMD needs.

It has been selling extremely well, but I'm not sure about "capturing marketshare" as my fellow miners bought a lot of them.

 

[shk021051]

Doom (vulkan)?

 

[Shatun_Bear]

I've been browsing TPU for years but am I right in thinking that the review Performance Summary, that so many put so much stock in, is based on the cards benched in the test? Sorry, I know it sounds obvious but just want to be sure otherwise I'll have egg on my face with the next comment?

So if it is, and you throw in more recent games like:

DOOM running under Vulkan (which any AMD user would set the game to)
Total War: Warhammer DX12
Hitman DX12

The performance summary would be very different, as the performance advantage the 480 has in DOOM and Hitman is huge and noteworthy in Warhammer too. For me personally I would take out at least two old games from the performance summary and replace them with DOOM and WH at least. I would probably replace Crysis 3 and BF3 as they are very old. I did ask W1zzard when he would include DOOM and apparently that is coming. Shame it wasn't ready for this review.

 

[Shatun_Bear]

Some more observations for people that just see the numbers and don't investigate a little. Those making posts like 'the 1060 wins again' are funny. It's all about perception and the factors in each review.

- The power consumption figures are massively off from KitGuru's review of custom cards. KG have some of the best PSU reviews around so I would be inclined to take their figures on power seriously. KG has the power consumption much, much more competitive with the 1060. Look at this chart for the apparently more power hungry 480 Strix:

http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...us-rx-480-strix-gaming-oc-aura-rgb-8192mb/29/

- Next, were the new Tomb Raider AMD drivers used for this review? Hexus benched the game with them, and the Nitro 480 they tested jumped a huge amount in performance (you may have used them I just want to be sure)?

 

[ZeroFM]

I've been browsing TPU for years but am I right in thinking that the review Performance Summary, that so many put so much stock in, is based on the cards benched in the test? Sorry, I know it sounds obvious but just want to be sure otherwise I'll have egg on my face with the next comment?

So if it is, and you throw in more recent games like:

DOOM running under Vulkan (which any AMD user would set the game to)
Total War: Warhammer DX12
Hitman DX12

The performance summary would be very different, as the performance advantage the 480 has in DOOM and Hitman is huge and noteworthy in Warhammer too. For me personally I would take out at least two old games from the performance summary and replace them with DOOM and WH at least. I would probably replace Crysis 3 and BF3 as they are very old. I did ask W1zzard when he would include DOOM and apparently that is coming. Shame it wasn't ready for this review.

All this three games heavy support from AMD . But i agree , need ,,new'' game include in test

 

[Shatun_Bear]

All this three games heavy support from AMD . But i agree , need ,,new'' game include in test

Indeed they do. But I would argue that the reason for their inclusion (at least WH:TW and DOOM) is not merely because they favour AMD cards, but because they are far more relevant I think to most buyers right now than what I propose they should replace: BF3 as there is already BF4 being benched, and Crysis 3. Two titles which are very old. WH:TW and DOOM are two of the biggest PC titles released this year. Hitman's DX12 bench inclusion is perhaps less essential.

Regardless, that they should be benched in a mode that gives most performance for each card is also a no-brainer, as no-one should not play these games with the superior drivers for their hardware.

My point was, swap out two of these older ( in my opinion less relevant games) with the two bigger PC titles of the year and the Performance Summary is going to look very different. So people declaring one card is superior to the other based on the performance summary alone are being slightly ignorant of the context here. For example, we could have a review from some large site in a few months. DOOM Vulkan, WH:TW DX12, No Man's Sky and the new Battlefield 1 DX12 make up half of the benching suite. All super relevant, newer PC games. Nothing out of the ordinary (on the contrary, a broad and fair selection of relevant games for PC gamers). A performance summary is knocked up from it, and suddenly it shows the reference 480 is 7% faster than the 1060 at 1440p. Que lots of people going around claiming the 480 is faster than the 1060. This then has a knock-on effect on perf per dollar etc etc.

TL;DR - Context is key.

 

[Captain_Tom]

It has been selling extremely well, but I'm not sure about "capturing marketshare" as my fellow miners bought a lot of them.

I know a lot of people buying this card (For gaming), and I am seeing it pop up in the forum signatures.

 

[CounterSpell]

And thats without Doom (Vulkan) included which GTX1060 loses by 25-30%

So, this last develpment with Doom Vulkan pretty much sealed the deal for me for dumping my GTX970 and picking up RX480 4GB for small markup (maybe i even pick up 8GB one if the price is right).

But for me theres no doubt, RX470 4GB and RX480 4GB are pretty much unchallenged for mainstream in this gen so far, im not sure why is GTX1060 even a thing as its quite overpriced compared to these and not really hardware equipped for new APIs (Async Compute which is never coming for my card, another lie from NVidia.....)

cool. but what games nowadays have dx 12 and async? its just a few games. And thats why i think for the majority of actual games, the 1060 is a better deal. IMHO

 

[Recus]

AMD chose the 14nm process for 2 big reasons:

1) It is MUCH cheaper than TSMC's 16nm, and that allows them to be ultra competitive in the low - high end brackets. People just never seemed to notice when AMD took the performance crown. As such, AMD finally understands that their best days were the 4000 - 6000 series where they dominated price/perf and rarely worried about Halo products.

2) GloFlo's 14nm process is 9% denser than TSMC's 16nm. As it matures its clock-speeds should mostly catch up to Nvidia's, and when it does they WILL be able to scale higher than Nvidia can in the top end. Expect nvidia to hit a wall at about 16 billion transistors while AMD manages to scale to 18-20 billion. Sure it will probably use 320w, but who cares if it manages to win by 10% performance and costs less to make?

Well AMD used TSMC 16nm for XBox One S.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...as-a-gpu-overclock-and-we-have-benchmarked-it

 

[Figus]

cool. but what games nowadays have dx 12 and async? its just a few games. And thats why i think for the majority of actual games, the 1060 is a better deal. IMHO

When i buy a gpu i hope to use it at least for 18 months... so is better look for the future.

 

[Captain_Tom]

Well AMD used TSMC 16nm for XBox One S.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...as-a-gpu-overclock-and-we-have-benchmarked-it

Very interesting, I didn't see that. Also interesting that games easily take advantage of it without an update.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

IFy

It's slightly more power for slightly more $$$ (i.e. not superior if you don't have the extra $20-30). I'll probably go for the 1060 because of the Linux drivers (yet again). It seems AMD hasn't fixed any of their OpenGL implementation issues in the new driver (which seems to be actually the old driver, but with some parts open sourced).

If you don't have 20 bucks "extra" to use for a couple hundred dollar video card you shouldn't be upgrading in the first place. That is a poor argument, 50$ + ok at least it's worth considering but minus at high resolutions (ones not used mostly by mid-range cards) the 1060 is better than this card in pretty much every way...INCLUDING power consumption, so yeah..."20 bucks" or even "30 bucks" you will make back and then some simply by the power efficiency difference in the cards. Oh, and you'll be getting more FPS and the quality of your experience will be better.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

AMD did not give any much more headroom on OC's, so every card (reference or AIB) is looking at a already maxed out chip where OC's are really marginal. Yes it could reach 1500MHz but proberly not for 24/7 usage and just good enough for one run and nothing more.

This is the proces limitation. It suits best at 1200 up to 1400Mhz in very rare cases, but anything above is a litterally no go on Air.

It's not the VRM, it's overdesigned up to 250W, it's not the 6 Pins vs 8 Pins header either, 6 pins is enough for a rough 300 up to 400Watts far above spec, it's not the cooling as well, still 130W TDP / chip (there is some TDP loss at VRM & memory chips as well) is very excellent to cool.

Nvidia's approach is different, they render frames based upon tile's rather then 1 frame at a time. This puts all the 'cores' at work and with the right programming utilizing all available cores.

The moment AMD applies the very same rendering technique, nvidia can pack up their cards and brainstorm for something new. Because AMD cards have a much better raw performance then Nvidia in general, they tend to utilizing things in a more efficient matter.

The 480X is not a bad card or chip, when was the last time we had a chip for 200 up to 270$ with this type of performance? It's bin a while, and we all should praise AMD anyway for giving us that chip that does very very well up to WHQD resolutions. Compare that with Vulkan API and you have a very decent and beefy card. Wait 1 or 2 years, buy yourself a second 480x and double the performance in many games. What more do you want?

Not to be political but to make a point...This sounded like James Comey laying out the case for indictment against Hillary for 3/4 of the press conference only to say at the end "nothing to see here". I say that because you lay out the case that Nvidia does a better job with potentially "less" than what AMD has and list every metric that can't be improved on AMD's cards while saying how efficient and better Nvidia's approach is....only to say "nothing to see here" by saying AMD only needs to use same graphical strategy as NVIDIA with their intrinsically "better/beefy" cards and NVIDIA is toast essentially. Yet that is NOT what IS, it is what it is so to speak, and that isn't happening so yes valid point perhaps but whether it is or not it's fairly moot for the moment as long as the cards perform as they do at the present time. AMD's card is slower overall period, and it doesn't overclock as well etc etc so you throw all that in that was listed and you really have to conclude AMD has a great card, but for now you have to be objective with what IS and say NVIDIA's card is faster and more power efficient with more OC headroom. The "what if" scenario you bring up may be true, but never seems to come to fruition so what difference does it make at this point?

 

[Shatun_Bear]

IFy


If you don't have 20 bucks "extra" to use for a couple hundred dollar video card you shouldn't be upgrading in the first place. That is a poor argument, 50$ + ok at least it's worth considering but minus at high resolutions (ones not used mostly by mid-range cards) the 1060 is better than this card in pretty much every way...INCLUDING power consumption, so yeah..."20 bucks" or even "30 bucks" you will make back and then some simply by the power efficiency difference in the cards. Oh, and you'll be getting more FPS and the quality of your experience will be better.

No it is not. You are failing to consider at all the advantage the 480 has in DX12 and Vulkan titles. This is a huge factor for me between the cards. From the trend we are seeing, with pretty much all DX12 and Vulkan DOOM favouring the 480 in benches, we can propose that this advantage will continue with the upcoming big PC titles. Deus Ex and Battlefield 1 DX12 will be very interesting. So unless you buy these cards with the intent to play old games first, the 480 advantage in newer titles is a big plus over the 1060.

The second thing you need to consider is the trend for AMD cards to better mature over time. This is not fanboy nonsense, it is real. If we look at the last new cards AMD released (and I mean new, not the 300-series refresh), the Fury series, look at the review of Sapphire Fury from last year in our very own TPU and look at the Performance Summary figures. At the time of the Strix and Sapphire Fury's launch reviews, the Fury reference was only 6% faster in 1440p than a GTX 980:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/R9_Fury_Tri-X_OC/30.html

Fast forward to the present and this MSI 480 yesterday and look at the Perf Summary again and noticed that the Fury is now placed as 11% faster at the same resolution:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/RX_480_Gaming_X/23.html

That is huge to me.

These two factors mean my next card (because I am actually in the market for a new card) is going to be either a 480 or 1070. I think the 480 is a better buy than the 1060 for sure.

 

[geon2k2]

[OT]

Apple has access to both Samsung's 14LPC and TSMC 16FFC's projections and seem to have reached a definitive conclusion...are you going to tell me Apple make foundry partner manufacturing decisions based on frivolous and arbitrary reasons?

Actually there are very good reasons for them to choose something different than Samsung:
1. Samsung is a competitor, so why to give them money and finance their R&D not to mention that to depend on a competitor to produce your product is not very good business.
2. By manufacturing in Samsung fab you give them access to your blueprints so they can either copy, inspire or be notified in time to respond to any significant architectural change you are doing.

For the above reasons if I would be Apple I'd choose anything other than Samsung, even if it will cost me a bit more, even if the quality isn't that good.
The fact that they went to Samsung in the first place proves that they found there something they couldn't find anywhere else.