AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB Review

[truegenius]

why no crossfire test ?

efficiency did inproved from previous gen, 290 performance at ~150w, but that also mean 28nm gtx970 performance at similar watt even after full node shrink advantage ( sure price is low but i am talking exclusively abou arch efficiency ) . GCN needs overhauling.

 

[quilciri]

why no crossfire test ?

Read 17seconds's comment.

 

[Metzenw]

I'm saddened by the power consumption of this card. the Performance Per Watt barely seems better then what nVidia had almost two years ago. On 28nm vs 14nm. Is this a fault of Samsung's 14nm process? I had hoped to replace my 290x with an equal performing card at half the power. But I can wait for Vega, I don't want to get price gouged by nVidia cards right now.

 

[Taintedskittles]

Pretty nice card,
PCIE power issue not withstanding. Wanted to replace my ancient hd7870. But I'm looking for something with a little more horsepower. The gpu market is pretty horrible right now. RX480's in supply, then you have GTX1070 either nowhere to be found or price gouging. Cheapest gtx 1070 I can find right now is a FE for $450, AIB are $550. What ever happened to that $380 MSRP?

Guess I'll wait for gtx1060/ti, rx490/vega, or gtx1070AIB to come down in price/restock supplies.

Winter has Come!

 

[ImDaBaron]

AMD is on damage control on Reddit right now because of this review. Thank you Tomshardware for pointing this out and confirming some fears from last nights leaks on the power consumption. Hopefully people if they buy the card will be careful with it or wait for AMD to come up with some solution.

 

[Sakkura]

The last time Chris used stock-clocked cards in a comparison, he got grilled by people saying that nobody runs their high-end GPUs at plain stock clocks. Use factory OC, then you have people complaining that it isn't a fair stock-to-stock comparison or that he should be comparing between factory overclocks or between manual overclocks.

There is just no pleasing everyone at the same time. At least not without including a hundred different GPUs and GPU variants. No matter which way you slice it, it becomes a nightmare.

I think its also a bit unfair to have the field stacked with overclocked cards, sure factory overclocks from board partners, but overclocks none the less.

But it's much worse this time. Using all stock cards at least puts everyone on a level playing field. Using all factory OCed cards could potentially do the same (assuming you find a fair way to give everyone an "equally good" factory OC). And manually OCing every card would also be at least doing the same for everyone (though the variability of overclocking means some cards would randomly happen to clock better than usual and some worse than usual, giving a skewed picture compared to what would happen, on average, in the wild).

But comparing a stock clocked (and reference cooled) card to factory OCed cards is the opposite of a level playing field. I don't understand why he didn't at least set the other cards to their reference clocks.

 

[cmi86]

So all this talk of people freaking out over ~10w extra being drawn from the pci-e slot. Yes it is excessive and needs to be addressed. That said what happens to the pci-e +12v when you are running CF or SLI? Its pulling 150w or even 225w or 300w through the slots so i really don' t see how it is the end of the world to draw a few extra watts through 1 slot ? 3rd party cards will have either 2x6 pin or 1x8 pin, problem solved.

 

[redgarl]

Hardwarecanucks is having a way more in depth review... that card shine in DX12 where Nvidia 900 GTX are destroyed.

However, I think this card is about 20-30$ too expensive.

 

[Aspiring techie]

If nothing else, it's safe to say that the GTX 960 and 970 are officially dead.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I posted this in another thread, and thought it bears putting here too:

I agree that for a card that touted low power usage, the RX 480 is a FAIL. Price / performance is excellent, but that wasn't the big selling point. Not to sound like a nVidiot, but I'm inclined to believe the GTX1060 will render this card irrelevant.

The thing is, the GTX 1060 is probably not going to compete in the same market segment as the RX 480. It'll likely be a $250-$300 card.

Anyway, I'd say with AMD's R&D funds compared to Nvidia, the RX 480 is as expected. A good card. Not great. Not bad. Just good.

 

[redgarl]

Once again, Toms is dropping the ball... I should do these reviews if what we get is this.

http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/GPU/RX-480-ABC/RX-480-ABC-93.jpg

 

[jimmysmitty]

I posted this in another thread, and thought it bears putting here too:

I agree that for a card that touted low power usage, the RX 480 is a FAIL. Price / performance is excellent, but that wasn't the big selling point. Not to sound like a nVidiot, but I'm inclined to believe the GTX1060 will render this card irrelevant.

The thing is, the GTX 1060 is probably not going to compete in the same market segment as the RX 480. It'll likely be a $250-$300 card.

Anyway, I'd say with AMD's R&D funds compared to Nvidia, the RX 480 is as expected. A good card. Not great. Not bad. Just good.

Small R&D never stopped ATI from kicking nVidia hard.

Once again, Toms is dropping the ball... I should do these reviews if what we get is this.

http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/GPU/RX-480-ABC/RX-480-ABC-93.jpg

Chris is one of the better reviewers out there. Sure not everyone is going to like the results here, that is why there are multiple sources. So far it is not anything that the hype led up to, short of DX12 that is still a minority and should only be considered once it becomes more of a majority.

I think it is an OK GPU. I think AMDs mistake is allowing the hype to build up. That is what hurts them the most, not the actual performance but the hype that says "IT WILL BE TEH BESTZ CARD EVAR!!!!!" crap. Some people actually thought it would be a $200 dollar 980Ti level GPU. Some sites posted "leaks" showing it at Fury levels. It is neither.

 

[InvalidError]

I think AMDs mistake is allowing the hype to build up. That is what hurts them the most, not the actual performance but the hype that says "IT WILL BE TEH BESTZ CARD EVAR!!!!!" crap.

Well, at least for now, it is the "best card evar" at $230 MSRP.

 

[jkteddy77]

Well, very disappointing for me. This card would have sold a lot more cards if it could have managed between 390 and 390x performance. Then CF 480's would be able to nearly match the 1080 for less, and beat the 1070 for about the same amount.
Instead, it looks like CF 480's can only really match the speed of a single 1070, which wouldn't be a bad thing is 2 480 8gb's didn't cost $480, while a single 1070 that would always give consistent performance only costs about $420...
AMD completely lost the high end market's interest now, and used 390's and 970's could easily steal customers from the new 480.

 

[dwards]

Why are the results for TomsHardware sow low for the RX 480? In every other review I see it delivers the same or better performance than a GTX 970, but here is like it's always behind

 

[photonboy]

Why the complaint about DX11 testing?

Where you planning to play DX12 games exclusively?

 

[Hupiscratch]

Judging by what I saw @ QHD, a 480 on crossfire will have a hard time against the 1070, specially if you factor the power delivery problems presented on this article.

 

[10tacle]

I just don't like reading toms reviews of AMD products anymore. It's not that they are (always) being untrue or stacking the deck against AMD because they are not...blah blah

Oh good grief. Guru3D had essentially the exact same review and comments, hence their "Great Value" rating and not "Guru Recommended" that they gave the 1070. The 480 is not a mind blowing new innovation card for the low-mid segment. It's more of a refresh. Benchmarks compared to the 290/380 prove it. The two good things worth mentioning are the lower price and lower power use.

Also take note that the GPU has received a lukewarm reception from readers on many different tech sites (not just here on Tom's) as well. You think that's some sort of massive bias conspiracy against AMD too? Read through those 200+ comments on the Guru3D review. It's the same complaints we saw here from people saying Tom's didn't go dancing in the street about the Fury X which was SUPPOSED to be the 980Ti killer and wound up being anything BUT that (it had zero overclocking headroom already being maxed out, and an overclocked factory superclocked 980Ti destroyed it).

Jumping up and down and celebrating because the 480 keeps up with a nearly two year old higher tier and more expensive GTX 970 is not much to brag about. Every new generation card should be expected to outperform the previous same tier card, and come close to matching the previous card's next up tier (including across tiers between AMD and Nvidia).

As expected, AMD continues to rule the main stream market for performance and value as they have for many generations now. In other words, it's nothing earth shattering. Finally, unlike Nvidia, it's another showing by AMD of a rather weak reference design (overclocking potential specifically).

 

[Samer1970]

GTX 1060 will eat it alive ...

 

[ocer9999]

Fail! 150w half performance of 1070 that has the same 150w?
Good that they focused on being very energy efficient, otherwise I wonder where that would be today

 

[Nintendork]

I really don't know why you to "overcomplicate" things with power consumption methods just to look more pro.

 

[Sakkura]

Why are the results for TomsHardware sow low for the RX 480? In every other review I see it delivers the same or better performance than a GTX 970, but here is like it's always behind

They did compare the stock RX 480 with overclocked cards.

 

[monsta]

All that hype for an underwhelming performance, the 480 is a let down.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

Now it's time to mock those "RX 480 will beat 980", "RX 480 will be best card ever".
GJ on review.
One small remark, yesterday, I've seen ASUS GeForce GTX 970 STRIX for 239.99 on newegg. Today, they are a bit pricier, but there are quite a few cards below 260$

 

[InvalidError]

All that hype for an underwhelming performance, the 480 is a let down.

From a performance point of view, somewhere between GTX970 and GTX980 for $200-230 MSRP is fair enough: that's roughly double the bang-per-buck.

My biggest disappointment is power draw: the 14nm RX480 needs almost as much power as the 28nm GTX970 to provide the performance. The GTX1060 will likely give the RX480 a run for its money while using half as much power.