Radeon RX 480 8GB reference review

This,

Sure the 970 was a bit more expensive for the ~same performance, but that was almost 2 YEARS AGO.

The only advantage of the RX 480 is the vram and possible better performance in future DX12 games.

And the argument that you can get 2xRX480s and beat a single 1080 is not the best, as very few games are actually proper optimized for multi-gpu nowadays (I recently gave up on 2x970s for single-gpu). Not to mention the heat and power draw...

I guess it's a good bang for buck (the 8GB, not the 4GB), and custom models will likely be better, but also more expensive. I'm still waiting on AMD's high-end line, because the RX480 8GB is definitely mid-range performance no matter the PR talk (you can't call a 970/980 high end either at this point).

 

Another power hungry and loud AMD graphics card.

 

219 EUR in Germany now, the price is A BLAST!

 

One thing is sure though: Vega will use way more power. HBM2 is not going to help with that.

 

Great lenghty and in depth great review as always Hilbert , awesome review. Well there you have it , the goods = it beats the old GTX 970 3.5+5 GB Vram in performance and it's in the same ballpark as the 390 series and very close to the GTX 980 4 GB Vram / Fury Nano. Price / Performance ratio is excellent , for the price indeed it delivers the performance i was expecting. The bad , poor overclocking headroom with the same gimmicky tricks that the GTX 1070/1080 suffers , why are they keep trying to control so much how we overclock this new video cards :/ A little noisy at full load.

Overall this will be a perfect upgrade for those with a 1080p monitor replacing 380X , 960 , 970 and less performing video cards. Now let's wait for aftermarket variants of this video card , i'm still puzzle with the low overclocking headroom and maybe just maybe it will get better then. That's my personal opinion on this new great up to date video card. king of performance per dollar ! Thumbs up ...

 

Thank God Hilbert mentioned that there might be a problem for owners of previous generations.
I tried to point to that fact, but AMD fans just tried to point how wrong I am.

For me - I got everything I anticipated - boring product, which I still believe is a cock up from AMD (they wished to position it as a high-end, but ended up moving it to mid-range price wise, because it didn't deliver).

 

I thought they were PR talking that it is mainstream/mid end card Now there was an insane hype machine else of course. I wonder who thought a 199/239$ would bring something better then 1½-2½ year old performance (depending on which maker nvidia or amd). 1070 brought 1 year old performance while 1080 brought more. I have no doubt vega will bring more then 1-2 year old performance.

 

Thanks for the review
Disappointed, Power Draw is more than 1070, but in fps its slower with 10-20%
When that 490 will be available? I'm ready for 1070, but who knows, maybe 490 will do more :wanker:

 

Replacing a 970? The difference in performance is minimal at best.

I'm not sure about this card, it tries to get into the middle segment but the price point is way off.

What remains to be seen is how the after market cards will perform. For example, there seems to be a Twin Frozr version in the works.

 

...and performance wise.

Price is not bad if you consider is near high end performance...2014 high end performance GPUs.

 

I don't think it was ever positioned for high-end. That would be weird on so many levels. If they suddenly made really really really bad high-end card sure. But they aren't challenging their own last gen high-end Fury X either?

 

we are not talking about games where mgpu doesnt work in dx12.
of course games that dont support explicit multiadapter wont have any CFX/SLI scaling... whats so special about that?

obviously explcit mgpu isnt implemented in dx12 in this game yet.
crossfire/SLI isnt enabled at application level in most dx12 titles.
developers are happy to offer at least base dx12 functionality, like running the game with the API in first place before they start to work on extra functionality like explicit multi-adapter. the only one who showcase it are the aots-devs

same for hitman (no cfx/SLI in dx12, only in dx11)


but then when you look at that picture and see 71fps vs 110,9fps
perfect cfx scaling like in cod3 would mean 140fps... substract 30fps just for fun and you are on 110fps...

it's a pretty simple general statement: if a game has good cfx/sli/multi-gpu/explicit multiadapter scaling then two non-OC RX480 for 400-500$ will reach or beat one non-OC GTX 1080 for 700-800$

 

GTX 1080 can be found for $610.

 

So here in Australia we have


Gigabyte Radeon RX480 8GB for $439.00
https://www.ple.com.au/Products/624298/Gigabyte-Radeon-RX480-8GB-GDDR5-HDMI-3xDisplayPort

Gigabyte GeForce GTX1070 G1 Gaming 8GB for $779.00
https://www.ple.com.au/Products/624...70-G1-Gaming-8GB-GDDR5-DVI-HDMI-3xDisplayPort

I have been waiting for an awfully long time to upgrade. And after over a decade of being on the RED side, I am really considering switching to the green. I have the budget to go 2 x 480's, but why? There's barely any benefit only in a few cases and we all know how crossfire is anyway.

Any idea on when the 490 is coming out? Seriously AMD, you can't just wait a few months to combat nVidia every time. And every time by the time AMD combat them, nVidia ends up releasing something better. So I have a feeling when the 490 comes out, nVidia is going to pull the 1080 Ti out of their ***.

 

With a truckoad of luck and replacing:

- "reach or beat" by "sometimes beat"

And

- "GTX 1080" by "GTX 1070"


We can all cherry pick working CFX games but real life AAA bestsellers list is stubborn: the major part of AAA games ppl use to buy (and play) are not well supported...or supported at all.

Roy can play DOOM with his 295X2 fantastically at 4K maxed (sic) (without CFX support and enough VRAM to do it) all day long but we all know he is an AMD fanboy.

I mean an AMD exec.

 

Great review HH!
Its a GREAT card! At a GREAT VALUE!
Sorry, but some people here just say without think. Say that this card is to compete if the 970 do not know read numbers. 970 is dead! The best price in US market that is the most cheap is USD 350????!!!!! Any more questions???
This card is to compete with 980 that the best price is around USD 400!?!?! Think that this card and its drivers are too much new, it will increase too much performance in a few time with updates.
Its 8GB FULL DX12 support! At USD 240?!?!
This card is with any doubts the best buy performance x price at the globe!
Great job AMD. Sorry Nvidia fanboys, cry more and say less .....

 

I agree ^^

The RX 480 is exactly as advertised though..... Everyone expectations got lost in the hype. I am surprised the power usage is high.

After market will add a 6 or 8 pin which will be interesting to see where it OCs.

Great review Hubert. Thank you.

 

269 euro at azerty.nl (according to comments at tweakers.net). Cannot check that, though. Azerty's site is extremely slow at the moment. Probably because of the 480.

Edit: It looks like you already found that out on a previous page.

 

Nice review. The performance is so 2014. Asus 8GB costs 293,90€ here, available in four days. Well that's underwhelming.

 

According to PC Perspective the 4GB variants actually have 8GB on the card. They were given a VBIOS to flash in order to swap between them. That's pretty interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRSL8jq1wzw&feature=youtu.be&t=345