AMD RX 400 series (Polaris) MegaThread! FAQ & Resources

[Math Geek]

rumors go up to 1400 mhz or so for custom cards. but nothing specific has been released by anyone yet. leaked benchmarks seem to suggest a rather decent performance boost when oc'ed real high. that's all there is really until the cards are out. but promising enough that it's worth waiting to see what they can do before making a buying decision.

 

[Ags1]

GamerNexus got the reference design to 1390MHz at about 190W. I guess with harvesting golden chips and an 8-pin connector, there MIGHT be clocks as high as 1450 in some custom models, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Also I expect that would only happen at a price point not interesting to me.

Any chance that AMD has put lower-binning chips in the reference design, knowing that it cannot overclock anyway because of the power limitations. They're keeping the good stuff back for the custom cards, which are all going to clock at 1500MHz and give NVidia a heart attack!

 

[Math Geek]

their hybrid experiment was rather interesting and telling for what custom cards might be able to do. looks promising anyway.

 

[TehPenguin]

The thing with custom cooled 480's that worries me is the price.
I still think the 480 has to compete with the 970 and, at least in europe, the custom pre-overclocked 970's sell for just €230. Those 970's match the 980 when overclocked a bit further.

So either the custom 480's will not go crazy with the price or the gains form the overclock will surpass the 980.

I think in this regard the 480 indeed is a hard sell.

 

[Martell1977]

Are there any rumored or confirmed clockspeeds on the non-reference RX480s?

There was an ASUS Strix model shown on their website @1328mhz. Which is odd considering that was/is the maximum stable OC I've seen people getting online. This might change with better cooling and now that the card draws less from the slot.

 

[Math Geek]

better cooling and better power management as well will get better speeds in a more stable way. i'm sure mnay custom cards will have 8-pin power instead of 6 pin's like the reference card.

 

[calken]

Once again, Nvidia has shown how good their marketing department are.

They have announced the pricing of their 1060 cards as $249/$299 to combat sales of the RX as there will be people on the fence on whether or not to buy an AMD card. This might just make them hold on to their cash for a little while until we see what the 1060 can do.

I'm hoping that AMD will have another driver ready for the 1060 launch that gives us another 3%.

 

[Math Geek]

we just need amd's partners to hurry the frack up with the custom cards. if they were out and demonstrated the promise some better cooling and 8-pin power has for the cards, then it would be a non issue at the prices they announced for the cards.

but with custom cards still "coming soon" we are left guessing on all fronts, which leaves the door open for nvidia to come in with the 1060 and keep us all in suspense. i'm suggesting people wait for the custom cards and the 1060 to see what happens. it's just smart for the consumer to wait right now with nothing in stores to temp us.

 

[madmatt30]

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/powercolor-radeon-rx-480-devil-13-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-188-pc.html

This is the card that was touted to me a month back as THE model too look out for.
Apparently Powercolor mean business with this one & are after the big boy manufacturers crowns.
'Expect close to 20% performance increase over the reference model' is what was quoted to me.

The price is overinflated because its pre-order , £225 should be the UK rrp.

 

[Rogue Leader]

20% performance increase and a price under $250 US would be a really killer deal.

That said I'll believe it when I see benchmarks. But proof AMD is not out of the game just yet. Numbers will tell the tale

 

[-Fran-]

That PowerColor has a longer PCB than reference by a good inch or two. Does it mean they have better power delivery or something of the like? That is, if the picture being used is in fact the one for the card being announced/sold.

In any case, the "Devil" cards were dual GPUs as well, weren't they?

Cheers!

 

[madmatt30]

Traditionally dual cards yes.

The photo isnt a site mockup, its info etc supplied from powercolor themselves , note the video outs (which coincide with 480 specs) & the fac its only a twin slot rather than the 3 slot dual GPU older models

 

[Ags1]

Assuming a rough average clock of 1150MHz for the reference card, the PowerColor card would need an average clock of 1380MHz (and a memory OC too) to get 20% better performance. My concern is the card would be drawing well over 200W doing that. Admittedly it would be performing like a moderately overclocked GTX1060 at that point.

Rogue Leader, don't say AMD is out of the game yet. AMD is the only one with any pieces on the board so far. We'll see how the GTX1060 does in the real world soon enough. And whether it is actually available in meaningful quantities. Presumably from the same wafer size, AMD makes at least twice as many RX480s, even assuming none of the NVidia chips qualify as 1070s or 1080s.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Assuming a rough average clock of 1150MHz for the reference card, the PowerColor card would need an average clock of 1380MHz (and a memory OC too) to get 20% better performance. My concern is the card would be drawing well over 200W doing that. Admittedly it would be performing like a moderately overclocked GTX1060 at that point.

Rogue Leader, don't say AMD is out of the game yet. AMD is the only one with any pieces on the board so far. We'll see how the GTX1060 does in the real world soon enough. And whether it is actually available in meaningful quantities. Presumably from the same wafer size, AMD makes at least twice as many RX480s, even assuming none of the NVidia chips qualify as 1070s or 1080s.

I didn't say AMD was out (PS look at what GPU I have) I was responding to the posts saying that AMD is dead meat once the 1060 shows up. The proof will be in the pudding, the numbers. So we can;t make such declarations.

 

[Ags1]

Sorry, I misread your statement as something like "It looks bad for AMD, but there is a slim hope the most extermely overclocked RX480s might compete with the GTX1060." I see now we are actually saying the same thing!

Anyway, I'm getting the RX480 mostly because of price. Hopefully some fast 4GB models will come out.

 

[madmatt30]

the issue I have (in the uk at least) is the official pricepoint of the 1060 (& the 1070)
nvidia's official rrp for the founders 1060 is 275 uk pounds - thats just plainly too much no matter how impressive it is technically.
Its being touted as the ultimate mid range card but there is no way on that planet its at a mid range pricepoint imo.That is plainly a high end pricepoint.
& in all honesty I personally expect to be underwhelmed when it finally dropped,like the 480 its been overhyped to the extent that people expect a game crushing 1440p gpu when its plainly going to be good for 1080p & nothing more -otherwise there would be absolutely no market for the 1070.

 

[-Fran-]

http://techreport.com/news/30370/doom-long-awaited-vulkan-support-is-rolling-out-today

I hope Toms has some goodies in this regard soon.

Cheers!

 

[Math Geek]

did you see the bit about tomb raider adding some better dx 12 support including async and multi-gpu support. i look forward to some reviews on that. the one review i saw of course showed some decent gains for amd cards with async compute added. but the multi-gpu is supposed to be like AoS where it can handle different cards together. i look forward to some testing of that feature.

i sure hope this is a trend that continues and multi-gpu support becomes the norm.

 

[Martell1977]

I know it wont happen, but I'd love it if AMD were "sandbagging" nVidia for once. The 1060 comes out and the same day, AMD releases a driver that changes the 480's performance to not only match, but beat it. That would be funny, but odds of that are nil.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Did the Vulkan update on Doom for my RX 480, my minimum framerate went from 60 to 80, and averages now around 100. I didn't really notice a difference in how it played TBH but the numbers don't lie, it performs even better.

 

[TehPenguin]

Did the Vulkan update on Doom for my RX 480, my minimum framerate went from 60 to 80, and averages now around 100. I didn't really notice a difference in how it played TBH but the numbers don't lie, it performs even better.

Incredible gains! Wish more games used Vulkan.

 

[cdrkf]

We're starting to get a fairly consistent pattern here... next gen api games get a meaningful boost on gcn, not on nvidia.

I think the reality of it is NV have been getting the full performance of their hardware out under dx11, whereas if you look at the theoretical performance of AMD cards they are consistent in that they sit lower in the rankings than you'd expect. Next gen apis look like they allow devs to tap into what's left.

 

[-Fran-]

Holy cow, that is a massive gain, Rogue Leader!

So it was not fumes and smoke that ASync brings tangible benefits to the table.

Cheers!

 

[TehPenguin]

Battlefield is AMD sponsored, right? Will it use Vulkan, too? Would be nice to see what other games will get the Vulkan API.

nVidia is also seeing some performance boosts with it so it's a win-win, it seems.

 

[BurgerandChips66]

https://youtu.be/Vg5hz7_X_Ss

Vulkan benchmarks in Doom ^^^^

Will test my R9 380X and see if it helps any.