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MSI RX 480 Gaming X 8 GB Review

Name: MSI RX 480 Gaming X 8 GB
Brand: MSI

W1zzard

on Aug 1st, 2016,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: MSI

(120 Comments) »

Introduction

AMD's Radeon RX480 Series was released in late June and is the company's first graphics card based on its new "Polaris" GPU architecture, and its first chip built on the 14 nanometer FinFET process. It is also the first AMD GPU made at GlobalFoundries, which is a deviation from the year-long relationship with TSMC.

The silicon driving the RX 480, which is based on "Polaris," is codenamed "Ellesmere" and is externally referred to by AMD as "Polaris 10." Polaris 10 on the Radeon RX 480 comes with 2304 shaders enabled, 144 texture units and 32 ROPS that are connected to a 256-bit wide memory bus with 8 GB of GDDR5 memory.

In this review, we are taking a look at the MSI RX 480 Gaming X, a custom-design Radeon RX 480. We've tested many MSI Gaming cards in the past and nearly all of them impressed with good temperatures and low noise levels. Let's hope MSI can pull it off on the RX 480 as well, a card where many AIBs have failed to produce good board designs that can compete with NVIDIA's GTX 1060 offerings.

MSI has told us pricing of their RX 480 Gaming X to be $259-$269, so we'll be using $265 throughout this review.

Radeon RX 480 Market Segment Analysis
	Radeon R9 380X	Radeon R9 390	GeForce GTX 970	Radeon RX 480	MSI RX 480 Gaming X	Radeon R9 390X	GeForce GTX 980	GeForce GTX 1060	Radeon R9 Fury	Radeon R9 Fury X	GeForce GTX 980 Ti	GeForce GTX 1070
Shader Units	2048	2560	1664	2304	2304	2816	2048	1280	3584	4096	2816	1920
ROPs	32	64	56	32	32	64	64	48	64	64	96	64
Graphics Processor	Tonga	Hawaii	GM204	Ellesmere	Ellesmere	Hawaii	GM204	GP106	Fiji	Fiji	GM200	GP104
Transistors	unknown	6200M	5200M	5700M	5700M	6200M	5200M	4400M	8900M	8900M	8000M	7200M
Memory Size	4 GB	8 GB	4 GB	4 GB / 8 GB	8 GB	8 GB	4 GB	6 GB	4 GB	4 GB	6 GB	8 GB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	512 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	512 bit	256 bit	192 bit	4096 bit	4096 bit	384 bit	256 bit
Core Clock	970 MHz	1000 MHz	1051 MHz+	1120 - 1266 MHz	1303 MHz	1050 MHz	1126 MHz+	1506 MHz+	1000 MHz	1050 MHz	1000 MHz+	1506 MHz+
Memory Clock	1425 MHz	1500 MHz	1750 MHz	2000 MHz	2000 MHz	1500 MHz	1750 MHz	2002 MHz	500 MHz	500 MHz	1750 MHz	2002 MHz
Price	$210	$260	$265	$199 / $239	$265	$310	$360	$249 / $299	$530	$600	$440	$379 / $449

Packaging

You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + documentation

The Card

We've seen MSI's new TwinFrozr thermal solution on the company's GTX 1060, 1070, and 1080, and it looks great due to MSI's attention to little details. On the back, you will find a sturdy metal backplate. Dimensions of the card are 28 cm x 14 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include a DVI port, two HDMI ports, and two DisplayPorts. Note that one DisplayPort has been switched to HDMI. This is to cater to users who are looking to either run two VR headsets or a VR headset and a TV off their graphics card. It's also good to see a DVI connector included, something the reference design lacks.

The HDMI port is now version 2.0b, and DisplayPort has been updated to 1.3 HBR3/1.4 HDR ready, which enables support for 4K @ 120 Hz and 5K @ 60 Hz, or 8K @ 60 Hz with two cables. GPU accelerated encoding is now supported for H.264 at up to 4K30, and HEVC is supported at up to 4K60. Accelerated decoding is supported for HEVC at up to 4K60 Main-10, VP9 is supported at up to 4K, and H.264 works at up to 4K120.