AMD Radeon RX 480 (14nm Polaris)

[chinf]

Is it just me, or is the Scan product link incorrect - a price of £19.99 and directing to "Asus Cerberus DPI Adjustable Optical PC Gaming Mouse"?

[bestdanman]

A bit underwhelming to be honest. Performance may increase with partner card cooling and driver improvements, but the fact that it doesnt manage to beat a 970 in quite a few games is worrying. And if the rumours are true that uk resellers have had their stock for a week or 2 then we havent actually seen the 10% drop in the pound reflected in the prices yet. Those 8GB cards are going to be pressing £275 if thats the case, which is way over their target market, and alot more than you can pick up an old 970 for. A pity, I was hoping to switch back to team red with this, but will have to wait

[Otherhand]

These days, 8GB would be a safe bet even at 1080p, Its just like when 2GB or 3GB seemed like too much VRAM back in the old days and now, 2 GB and 3GB are not enough. Better to have more than less.

Not sure if that's necessarily true. I had a 4GB GTX 770, and I never got the impression that the extra VRAM was doing me any good at all. I don't think the card was powerful enough to do anything with its theoretical resources. Years later: that card is reporting weird behaviour and needs replacing, seeming to have run to near the end of its life, and really I could have saved myself money and got a lower mem model.

I'm sure a 6GB 980 has an advantage over a 4GB 980, but I think they were jumping the gun a bit with the 4GB 770. Could be the same here with this card, being at the low end for its type.

[Nobull]

This is clearly a big lesson in not buying into hype. Based on what I read on reddit I was expecting a lot lot more. That aside this is a pretty abysmal showing from AMD. Last gen matching performance at pretty much the same price, poor temps, worse than expected power consumption and it's a chap OCer despite the new software. All in all an extremely underwhelming release. Thought I'd be having to talk myself out of buying on on release, now I'll just wait and see what effect the 1060 and Vega have on the market.

[badass]

Me buying the 8GB card was a sure thing.....before the reviews.

Before reviews:

110w Typical power
GTX 970-GTX 980 Performance or R9-390-R9-390x performance

After reviews:

150W ish typical (Toms hardware measure it as going over spec to 168W!)

Sub GTX 970/R9 390 Performance

It seems that a combination of the Memory holding it back, immature drivers and being overhyped is what has happened here.

I'm waiting for partner cards with decent, quiet cooling and hopefully more mature drivers.

I should have known. Every time the next AMD Graphics card's price is announced and it's surprisingly cheap, there is a reason.
I suspect that the memory is holding it back along with learning how to use GloFo 14nm with GFx cards efficiently. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new spin with lower power/higher clocks and maybe even GDDR5x

[Boon72]

already seeing price jumps from yesterday at Scan & Overclockers buy £10-£14

[Platinum]

Can someone explain to me how Nvidias 1070 with 1920 cores beats out the RX480 with 2350 cores?, I cant imagine the clock speed makes up that much performance?

How are Nvidia doing there chips differently?

Also power draw, does AMD have features on the card using silicon that do not contribute to gaming performance thats using power?


That said if I had to chose I would get the 480 over the 970 for future proofing looking at the DX12 scores.

[Platinum]

The wrecked currency markets well and truly scuppered this...

Cheers Brexit

[pastymuncher]

Sadly yet another disappointment from AMD. They really need to get on top of their power draw issues because this card draws way too much power for what it is. The reports of drawing too much power from the pci-e slot are alarming as well. No doubt when Vega finally gets launched that will be yet another power hungry card. It's just not good enough.

[kalniel]

Can someone explain to me how Nvidias 1070 with 1920 cores beats out the RX480 with 2350 cores?, I cant imagine the clock speed makes up that much performance?

How are Nvidia doing there chips differently?

Very different kind of 'cores'.

Also power draw, does AMD have features on the card using silicon that do not contribute to gaming performance thats using power?

Inevitably - there are bottlenecks. Likewise nVidia probably implement a huge number of tricks (which AMD are also trying) to shave power usage all over.

That said if I had to chose I would get the 480 over the 970 for future proofing looking at the DX12 scores.

Completely. The 480 is definitely a better choice than the 970, problem is it's not faster than the previous AMD cards - yes, it has a very different size/power/price profile - but enthusiasts care about that less. It's a very good card for system builders, but if nVidia can get a 1060 out in bulk they will win there as well - AMD do have the advantage of getting lots of cards out now, in plenty of time for verification and integration before the back to school season.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Gibbo has said they sold over a 1000 cards now - that is more than all the GTX1080 cards they sold to date(AFAIK)!!

[Platinum]

Thats imressive, rumours about the 1060 are 1024 cores at $275 so the 480 might still do well, best wait for reviews though.

Nvidia over the past few years have destryed AMD on power usage, guess there massive R&D budget helps there.

I hope AMD can sell a ton of these and get some cash in the bank though, they need it

Rumours of Polaris in Apple products and other design wins (XBOne S and Scorpio) is good news as well.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The noise is that Polaris is GCN1.2 with some added improvements,so I do wonder if it was meant to be on 20NM originally??

[Platinum]

Gibbo has said they sold over a 1000 cards now - that is more than all the GTX1080 cards they sold to date(AFAIK)!!

Whatever you say about the cards AMD's stratigy to go mainstream first really seems to be paying off then.

[SlickR]

$300 dollar performance of the GTX 970 at $200, I'll take it, but I'll wait for custom designs which are always so much better.

The 8GB version does seem to have a rather large price premium though, I was expecting it to be $230 at most, considering they are using the old GDDR5 memory, not the newer one.

[scaryjim]

... After reviews:

Sub GTX 970/R9 390 Performance

...

Except on the games where it beats a 980. And even where those are games that typically favour AMD over NVidia, Polaris seems particularly susceptible to title-based performance variation. If you mostly play Hitman or The Division, it's a no brainer.

As CAT's already pointed out, TPU tested it with 16 games and reckoned it came out ahead of the 970 on average.

... The reports of drawing too much power from the pci-e slot are alarming as well. ....

Indeed; it's not the first time AMD have played fast and loose with the PCIe specs, but they've done it previously by ensuring that the extra draw came from the direct card supply, not the motherboard supply. I did notice that Tom's were using the old driver; wonder if that has any impact? I can't imagine AMD designing the card that way, which suggests they had a sample running outside of design parameters. Wonder if there are yield issues they're having to cope with too? In that sense it feels a bit like the GTX 480 launch - a potentially decent chip struggling with a process that isn't really ready for it. Going for a smaller, lower power chip means they've got more wiggle room, of course, and IMO it's still a good card, particularly for the price. But it's not quite the card people were expecting, I think...