MSI RX 480 Gaming X 8 GB

[W1zzard]

MSI's Radeon RX 480 Gaming X is the first custom-design RX 480 with a good cooler that manages low noise levels and temperatures, which is the only way to compete with the GTX 1060. The card is also overclocked out of the box and includes user-adjustable RGB lighting.

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[Chaitanya]

How long before reviews of Sapphire cards?

 

[W1zzard]

How long before reviews of Sapphire cards?

Haven't heard anything from Sapphire yet regarding reviews of their cards, but reviews on other sites seem to indicate they aren't doing so well.

 

[darkangel0504]

Okay . . .

The game uses an in-house game engine by IO Interactive that is one of the first to leverage DirectX 12. The game's DirectX 12 implementation, however, is too riddled with bugs to be integrated into our test bench for now. In this test, we're testing the game in DirectX 11 mode, which is still reasonably taxing on high-end GPUs.

 

[W1zzard]

Okay . . .

DX12 in Hitman has been fixed since, on next rebench it will use DX12

 

[natr0n]

One thing that bothers me about MSI's AMD cards they always leave 1-2 ram chips uncovered been like this for years.

MSI's Nvidia cards are almost always completely covered in heatspreader.

 

[sutyi]

Power consumption seems a tad bit high on these overclocked AIB RX 480 boards.

That +20% power consumption is not really worth the +4-5% extra performance in my eyes.

 

[matteo]

nice review, would have been great if driver version were 16.7.3 since those improve performance by a tot on tomb raider also i would love to see hitman in dx12 rather on old dx11 and also doom on opengl/vulkan too.
great work on the review, i think i will lean toward one of those rx480 for my next home factotum build on a matx case, i feel nvidia's a bit anchored on the old dx11 side for my taste and the rumor on volta's arch around the corner i might turn on amd this time for my mainstream rig, its impressive on how good this card perform in certain scenarios catching up the 980ti.
In some games the card seem to loose too much like the battlefield series and ac too, i hope it is a driver related problem.

 

[buggalugs]

Power consumption seems a tad bit high on these overclocked AIB RX 480 boards.

That +20% power consumption is not really worth the +4-5% extra performance in my eyes.

It is when one card is silent and the other sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

Hey Wizzard you said in the review:

"Nearly all board partners have thus far either struggled to come up with a cooling solution that successfully manages the heat output of AMD's RX 480 GPU, or they have failed to come up with a proper configuration for their fan settings. MSI's RX 480 Gaming X, however, acts like most other MSI Gaming cards,"

When you say "nearly all board partners" who are you referring to? In the reviews I can only see this MSI 480 and the Asus Strix 480. How are you coming to this conclusion.?? Have you tested more but reviews arent finished or something?

I find it a little confusing how a 150Watt card (even if its a little more than 150Watt) is having problems with heat. Pretty much all the AIB partner coolers have run virtually silent for a few generations now, even on highend 250watt cards. Even with current gen other, higher end cards draw more power than the 480. Most of these coolers are designed to handle up to 250-275 watts. I dont understand it.

 

[KainXS]

One thing that bothers me about MSI's AMD cards they always leave 1-2 ram chips uncovered been like this for years.

MSI's Nvidia cards are almost always completely covered in heatspreader.

It is a little annoying really, Its probably because AMD designed the 480 with the ram too close to the heatsink screw holes on the reference design, the only card I see that does not have that so far is the nitro since it does not use a metal plate but the heatsink base itself(sadly the heatsink looks narrow though).

The power consumption is also a little sad but some of the partners are saying that its to stabilize the boost clock when oc'd so thats OK for me, everyone should know by now that polaris is power hungry when overclocking.

Haven't heard anything from Sapphire yet regarding reviews of their cards, but reviews on other sites seem to indicate they aren't doing so well.

hmm is something wrong with the sapphire cards?

 

[Ferrum Master]

Looking at Tomb Rider and Fury X performance... Looks really odd.

 

[bug]

Power consumption seems a tad bit high on these overclocked AIB RX 480 boards.

That +20% power consumption is not really worth the +4-5% extra performance in my eyes.

What about the +$35 over MSRP?
Nvidia was supposed to be evil one this round because of FE, but it seems the RX480 is selling above MSRP as well.

 

[rtwjunkie]

hmm is something wrong with the sapphire cards?

I wish it wasn't so, since I have been counting on Sapphire to deliver, but some of the other reviews on it paint it not as good as the MSI version. In truth, it's still a great performer on its own merits though.

 

[sutyi]

It is when one card is silent and the other sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

That might be true for some, but I would prefer that 150-165W power budget with the same cooling solution. That would make it even more silent and probably cooler by a couple of degrees. Would probably hold the references 1266MHz boost clock relatively stable too.

 

[Chaitanya]

Haven't heard anything from Sapphire yet regarding reviews of their cards, but reviews on other sites seem to indicate they aren't doing so well.

I thought if anyone would have had good AMD cards it would have been Sapphire, but its very unsual they have managed to miss opportunity on these cards.

 

[raghu78]

wizzard
Why was the 16.7.3 whql drivers not used for this review ? This driver bought significant gains for Rx 480 in RoTR especially in DX12. hexus used that for the Sapphire Nitro Rx 480 OC review . the review came out on 29th July (3 days before this review).

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/94969-sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-4gb-8gb-oc/?page=10

Anyway the gap between Rx 480 and GTX 1060 should reduce with Hitman DX12, RoTR DX12. btw do you have any plans for adding Doom Vulkan. Right now your test suite is dated with very few 2016 games.

 

[Caring1]

1060 wins again, and it's cheaper where I live.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Wow, it's performance per watt has taken a serious nose dive, but in the grand scheme of things it's a decent card, although it's clear the 1060 is an excellent alternative in this price range. Competition FTW!

 

[Captain_Tom]

What about the +$35 over MSRP?
Nvidia was supposed to be evil one this round because of FE, but it seems the RX480 is selling above MSRP as well.

It's because demand is so high - a very big difference. Nvidia used the FE pricing in order to make it look like they weren't jacking up prices.

 

[bug]

It's because demand is so high - a very big difference. Nvidia used the FE pricing in order to make it look like they weren't jacking up prices.

I see. So the 480 sells above MSRP because of high demand and the 1060 because of different reasons. I don't need further arguments, I'm sure both Nvidia and AMD report their sales figures directly to you.

 

[Roph]

Why do you need sales figures? Nvidia creates a price range - $250-300. So you could argue that a $299 1060 isn't "overpriced" because the founders edition is even more overpriced.

AMD's got a single MSRP - $200 for 4GB and $230 for 8GB.

I'm waiting to buy an AIB RX480 here in the UK, there are tons of GTX 1060s to choose from in stock, it's impossible to buy an AIB 480 right now. Constantly out of stock.

 

[Enterprise24]

So 480 non ref max OC = 1060 ref stock.

 

[Caring1]

Why do you need sales figures? Nvidia creates a price range - $250-300. So you could argue that a $299 1060 isn't "overpriced" because the founders edition is even more overpriced.

AMD's got a single MSRP - $200 for 4GB and $230 for 8GB.

I'm waiting to buy an AIB RX480 here in the UK, there are tons of GTX 1060s to choose from in stock, it's impossible to buy an AIB 480 right now. Constantly out of stock.

But those prices are in U.S. dollars, and don't always equate to local currency.
It seems prices fluctuate according to demand in different countries.
Nvidia is slightly lower priced here (Australia) then the U.S. in comparison to AMD cards.

 

[bug]

Why do you need sales figures? Nvidia creates a price range - $250-300. So you could argue that a $299 1060 isn't "overpriced" because the founders edition is even more overpriced.

AMD's got a single MSRP - $200 for 4GB and $230 for 8GB.

I'm waiting to buy an AIB RX480 here in the UK, there are tons of GTX 1060s to choose from in stock, it's impossible to buy an AIB 480 right now. Constantly out of stock.

Funny, I can see plenty of 480s on overclockers.co.uk...

 

[Figus]

Funny, I can see plenty of 480s on overclockers.co.uk...

They are ALL reference card.