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

[renz496]

Polaris was intended to be a full generation of its own and compete on the high-end enthusiast segment. Problems with production quality and Nvidia's surprising performance led them to re-brand these as mid-range only cards.

That road map doesn't state anything about market segment- and that argument doesn't hold water when you considder:

AMD knew the specifications of the Polaris 10 gpu when they created it- and it is a less powerful gpu (by any measure) than their existing Hawaii and Fiji silicone.

The argument 'they dropped it to mid range due to nVidia' is nonsense because the card is mid range against their own existing product stack.What you are describing is them creating a massive, high core count chip like Fiji, and marketing THAT as a 'x80' part due to a performance problem. That just isn't what happened here- Polaris 10 is a small, mid range part (it happens to be the exact same size as Pitcarin). There is no way ANYONE at AMD expected it to go in any higher of a market segment than it did based on those specifications. The only potential change nVidia might have forced is they dropped the price of it slightly- I'd have guessed they would have preferred to sell it at $250 instead of $200 for the base model.

sometimes i was thinking AMD probably will not going to release anything faster than Fury X in 2016. this year AMD product stack probably like this:

ultra high end: pro duo
high end: Fury series
midrange: polaris 10 (replacing hawaii)
low end: polaris 11 (replacing all older GCN in this performance segment)

right now we have no solid info on Vega. if AMD really banking on HBM2 for Vega we most likely won't see Vega this year.

 

[TehPenguin]

These two cards are the ones I'd like to see face each other in a "value" contest: G1 Gaming 1060[/ur] and [url="https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-oc-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-37b-sp.html"]Nitro+ RX480.

Cheers!

According to THIS
The 4GB Nitro matches the 1060 reference but you can't overclock it any further. Seems a good price to performance. If the availability wasn't so bad I might've even considered it instead of the Palit 1060.

 

[-Fran-]

These two cards are the ones I'd like to see face each other in a "value" contest: G1 Gaming 1060[/ur] and [url="https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-oc-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-37b-sp.html"]Nitro+ RX480.

Cheers!

According to THIS
The 4GB Nitro matches the 1060 reference but you can't overclock it any further. Seems a good price to performance. If the availability wasn't so bad I might've even considered it instead of the Palit 1060.

Yeah, the 4GB looks very nice. I wish they used the same GDDR speed though. Seems stupid to me for AMD to make that segmentation. Specially when you can actually unlock some 4GB into 8GB ones, lol.

Cheers!

 

[TehPenguin]

These two cards are the ones I'd like to see face each other in a "value" contest: G1 Gaming 1060[/ur] and [url="https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-oc-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-37b-sp.html"]Nitro+ RX480.

Cheers!

According to THIS
The 4GB Nitro matches the 1060 reference but you can't overclock it any further. Seems a good price to performance. If the availability wasn't so bad I might've even considered it instead of the Palit 1060.

Yeah, the 4GB looks very nice. I wish they used the same GDDR speed though. Seems stupid to me for AMD to make that segmentation. Specially when you can actually unlock some 4GB into 8GB ones, lol.

Cheers!

I think unlocking the memory is a thing of the past now. Don't think you'd need much faster memory at this point, though.

 

[-Fran-]

I think unlocking the memory is a thing of the past now. Don't think you'd need much faster memory at this point, though.

But mah free stuff! x_X

Cheers! xP

 

[cdrkf]

Polaris was intended to be a full generation of its own and compete on the high-end enthusiast segment. Problems with production quality and Nvidia's surprising performance led them to re-brand these as mid-range only cards.

That road map doesn't state anything about market segment- and that argument doesn't hold water when you considder:

AMD knew the specifications of the Polaris 10 gpu when they created it- and it is a less powerful gpu (by any measure) than their existing Hawaii and Fiji silicone.

The argument 'they dropped it to mid range due to nVidia' is nonsense because the card is mid range against their own existing product stack.What you are describing is them creating a massive, high core count chip like Fiji, and marketing THAT as a 'x80' part due to a performance problem. That just isn't what happened here- Polaris 10 is a small, mid range part (it happens to be the exact same size as Pitcarin). There is no way ANYONE at AMD expected it to go in any higher of a market segment than it did based on those specifications. The only potential change nVidia might have forced is they dropped the price of it slightly- I'd have guessed they would have preferred to sell it at $250 instead of $200 for the base model.

sometimes i was thinking AMD probably will not going to release anything faster than Fury X in 2016. this year AMD product stack probably like this:

ultra high end: pro duo
high end: Fury series
midrange: polaris 10 (replacing hawaii)
low end: polaris 11 (replacing all older GCN in this performance segment)

right now we have no solid info on Vega. if AMD really banking on HBM2 for Vega we most likely won't see Vega this year.

Yeah they've confirmed that Vega isn't this year (invariably due to HBM).

What I am curious about is if the rumers are true that there are in fact 2 vega gpu's (I was expecting only one, as a direct replacement to Fiji). If there are two, that could be quite exciting as the *smaller* of the two is said to match the specifications of Fiji...

 

[madmatt30]

The 4gb nitro looks a great buy for UK members.
£199 Preorder price , the cheapest mitx zotac mini 1060 is £240.

 

[BurgerandChips66]

At this point I'm left thinking.... 'what were all those rumours about AIB cards hitting 1480 - 1600MHz about?'

The review I saw at launch where a reference XFX RX 480 was clocked to 1380MHz seems to still be the highest boost clock of all so far (not including water cooled and ln2 efforts).

Maybe in 12 months when the process has matured we'll see a few more cards hitting 1400MHz or above.

For now it's safe to say the RX 480 is a pretty poor overclocker and it looks like custom cards are not going to offer a significant performance bump vs. an overclocked reference card.

 

[renz496]

These two cards are the ones I'd like to see face each other in a "value" contest: G1 Gaming 1060[/ur] and [url="https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-oc-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-37b-sp.html"]Nitro+ RX480.

Cheers!

According to THIS
The 4GB Nitro matches the 1060 reference but you can't overclock it any further. Seems a good price to performance. If the availability wasn't so bad I might've even considered it instead of the Palit 1060.

Yeah, the 4GB looks very nice. I wish they used the same GDDR speed though. Seems stupid to me for AMD to make that segmentation. Specially when you can actually unlock some 4GB into 8GB ones, lol.

Cheers!

i think AMD intend to use actual 7Gbps GDDR5 module for the later batch instead of limiting 8GBps into 7Gbps to reduce cost. but then again there is no stopping board partner to use 8Gbps GDDR5 on their custom 4GB model.

 

[renz496]

At this point I'm left thinking.... 'what were all those rumours about AIB cards hitting 1480 - 1600MHz about?'

hype?

Maybe in 12 months when the process has matured we'll see a few more cards hitting 1400MHz or above.

maybe they can if they did some fine tuning like they did with Hawaii to Grenada transition. and it is possible by that time we see RX480 being rebrand into AMD next series.

For now it's safe to say the RX 480 is a pretty poor overclocker and it looks like custom cards are not going to offer a significant performance bump vs. an overclocked reference card.

to me RX480 is not necessarily poor overclocker. it depends on how AMD want to clock their chip. did they want to be conservative about it (and leaving headroom for manual OC to tap to) or did they want to clock the chip as high as possible closer to it's limit? imagine if GTX1060 have stock clock of 1.9Ghz with boost clock up to 2.0Ghz. manual OC probably can only go up to 2.1Ghz. what do you say about it's overclocking potential?

 

[ThrashDeathDoom]

My question is where will i be able to buy the RX480 Nitro+ 4gb? should i stick to trying to nab one on Amazon and Neweeg? something about that just screams to me that'll be sold out... any other main places that i should keep search tabs refreshing on?

 

[-Fran-]

I will most definitely be clicking "buy" whenever it appears online! The Nitro+ 4GB, that is.

If I can't find it, I'll just toss a coin between the G1 Gaming 1060 and the Nitro+ 8GB.

Cheers!

 

[TehPenguin]

I will most definitely be clicking "buy" whenever it appears online! The Nitro+ 4GB, that is.

If I can't find it, I'll just toss a coin between the G1 Gaming 1060 and the Nitro+ 8GB.

Cheers!

If you're in Europe the Overclockers UK have preorders available now and they're supposedly to ship on Tuesday.

I just wish to see more benchmarks from some more serious sites for the Nitro+ 4G.

 

[-Fran-]

I don't like pre-ordering... I have the belief if I spend the money on pre-order, I might miss on something in stock that wasn't said officially xD

Cheers!

 

[BurgerandChips66]

Here's a review of the 4GB version of the Sapphire Nitro+ edition of the RX 480.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3098825/components-graphics/sapphire-nitro-rx-480-review-polaris-rethought-and-refined.html

They got it to overclock to 1405Mhz.

Hope to see the review of the 8GB version soon.

Pre-orders for the 8GB version are about 300€ in my country.... I think I'll wait a few weeks and hope for a price drop as well as reviews of the other custom cards.

 

[TehPenguin]

There's a custom RX480 BIOS from a guy who OCd it to 1.7GHz with LN2

http://overclocking.guide/download/amd-radeon-rx-480-unlocked-air-bios/

Wonder what stable speeds people can achieve with air cooling with the custom bios.

@Burger: I'd just get the 4GB version, TBH. 249€ seems like a good price and you don't need the 8GB vRAM for 1080p unless you want to CF.
The only thing is availability. AMD is pullin an nVidia now with the custom 480's :lol:

 

[BurgerandChips66]

Hopefully somewhere between 1400MHz to 1450MHz if they can manage 1405MHz without.

I don't mind tinkering with custom bios roms either as I have done so in the past without bricking anything. Although in both cases they were Nvidia cards.

Think I'll probably get a 4GB version. As you said, it's pretty well priced. Plus it's not for my main machine - I'll only be doing 1080p stuff on it.

 

[TehPenguin]

Hopefully somewhere between 1400MHz to 1450MHz if they can manage 1405MHz without.

I don't mind tinkering with custom bios roms either as I have done so in the past without bricking anything. Although in both cases they were Nvidia cards.

Think I'll probably get a 4GB version. As you said, it's pretty well priced. Plus it's not for my main machine - I'll only be doing 1080p stuff on it.

The Nitro has dual bios so you're safe either way.

 

[Math Geek]

dual bios is nice so you can really get in there and tinker. if it won't run, then switch back to the other stock one and try again with different settings.

i'm putting dual bios on top of my requirement list for my next build as i am gonna go stupid and want to play with custom bios settings myself.

 

[TechyInAZ]

dual bios is nice so you can really get in there and tinker. if it won't run, then switch back to the other stock one and try again with different settings.

i'm putting dual bios on top of my requirement list for my next build as i am gonna go stupid and want to play with custom bios settings myself.

BIOS overclocking is worth it, but only if you have the time to.

I did a bit of BIOS overclocking on my EVGA GTX 750 TI FTW card (since for some reason the max power target is only 100%). But it was really complicated, I had a guy on the EVGA forums help me and after about 2 weeks we got the max out of my GPU. But right now I'm running stock since my memory is Elpida memory (terrible quality), and I didn't want to break my 750 ti. (I'm still going to need it for my 4k TV upgrade.)

 

[BurgerandChips66]

It will be interesting to see what can be done with bios mods to Polaris. I guess it is kind of like another level of 'free' OC performance IF that performance is there to be had.
Also had my best results so far with a 750Ti. Got the MSI Twin Frozr to 1460MHz core and 3200MHz vram. Had okay results with a 980Ti, but not those sorts of % gains!

I looked at modding the R9 380X but came to the conclusion there was nothing to be gained (Trixx already gave me all the additional voltage and TDP I needed to max out the clocks before I hit thermal limits).

It might be different with Polaris and the custom RX 480's however....

 

[TehPenguin]

Found another review of the Nitro+ 4GB! Apparently the cooling solution ain't that great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW3XNjW5C-8

Hope to see some more in depth reviews soon.

 

[BurgerandChips66]

https://youtu.be/jTFDJODCSCc

Here is a review from OCUK.....

At this stage, what else is there still to be released that might realistically eclipse this card? Possibly something from XFX?

 

[TehPenguin]

Yeah. I've seen the OCUK review but didn't think it's worth posting. Poorly done, imo.

 

[TehPenguin]

OK, I did it. I ordered the Nitro + 4gB. Should arrive on the 5th of August. Will report to you after the build is complete.