Discussion: Polaris, AMD's 4th Gen GCN Architecture

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All in all a oc'ed aftermarket 970 seems to be the better choice at 1080p. The price drops make it super attractive.
Watched a couple reviews and the 480 was either a bit behind or quite a lot behind. With the exception of Hitman, I believe.
 


They have a Sapphire and XFX as well.

I'm watching the stock drop at my local Microcenter as we type. They had about 30 cards in stock this morning, now they have 7, 2 of which are 4gb XFXs (apparently nobody wants them they have sold none). I'm going to go there during lunch in 15 minutes to try and snag one before they sell out.
 


I wouldn't say that but it is going to be a more realistic view since these days you can only buy after market 970s for the most part. Until the board partners get their custom designs out.

I do wonder if the limit to OCing is due to the cooler or the process. Guess we will find out when the Sapphire Nitro, Asus Strix and EVGA SSC cards start to come out.
 
I still think toms should have reduced the clocks to stock on all cards to do a fair comparison. In this review http://www.techspot.com/review/1198-amd-radeon-rx-480/ it beets the 970 in everything except 1080 tomb raider and comes close to the 980 in many which is not the impression the toms review/benchmarks gave.
 
Performance wise they land within expectation range. what i did not expect was power consumption. Over 160w even during typical gaming session. Quite significantly slower than 1070 but using more power. So Kyle was right about this. Is amd simply can't match nvidia power efficiency or is it because of GF 14nm node?
 
i'm not sure it is just the clock speeds affecting that review. it is so far off of most of the others i have looked at. many of them used oc'ed cards as well and saw the same/similar results as techspot and techpowerup and most of the others.

but tom's is way off the mark compared to them, that there has to be something else involved other than just clock speeds. i'm used to tom's being a good 10% higher than everyone else but this time that seems to be off by a much larger %.
 
@simon12

This is similar situation when toms bench amd 6800 series vs nvidia gtx460. Back then many questioned toms decision to bench 6800 series against EVGA GTX460 Superclocked that clock at 800mhz+ (i think it was 850mhz to be exact) while reference 460 was clocked at 675mhz. They defended their decision back then saying that most 460 will be able to hit that clock. And this is when boost still not exist. Meaning that for some 460 without manually overclocking the card you can't get that performance.

Btw what is the estimation peak boost for 970 ref? For board partner oced card it seems normal for them to boost above 1300mhz.
 


It is the same 14nm LPP node that AMD is using for their Zen CPUs. Might be an issue with the fact that that node is designed for low power use, it is what Samsung designed for their SOCs for phones I doubt they had a high powered GPU in mind.

It is still much better power wise than its previous gen but seems too high for the performance level it is at.

the 16NM TSMC that nVidia is using however is designed for high power devices so nVidia might have a process advantage.



The lets do a comparison:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600536049%204814%208000&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=30

Only stock 970 you can get is a PNY, which is probably junk TBH. Right now the Asus Strix GTX 970 is $264, the same price as the PNY GTX 970, and offers a additional $30 dollar mail in rebate. To top it off it is also clocked at 1114MHz base but a 1253MHz boost. Even better is that most 970s hit 1400MHz boost easily, especially the after market coolers like the Asus Strix cooler.

So who is going to buy a stock GTX 970 when a superior version is available for the same price? Unless they plan to water cool it which means OCing as well.

That is why I am not against the comparison because that is what the RX 480 has to compete with. It is much like the Fury X. It didn't have to compete with the stock 980Ti, it had to compete with all the after market 980Tis that were clocking much higher than the stock 980Ti.

When I bought my 980Ti it was the same price for a Fury X but was clocked much higher than the stock 980Tis used in reviews which gave it a performance advantage along with more VRAM. Which would you pick?
 
So this just happened - Last one at Microcenter

CzSKNnl.jpg


Hope I have time tonight to set it up
 


Yes I will. Will be interesting to see how it performs considering my system is essentially outdated 6 year old prior gen AMD tech.
 


Nice.

And also:

http://www.ebuyer.com/rx-480

The UK prices are GOOD in my eyes. I'm about to YOLO and get the 8GB one, but I'm a bit scared of the power consumption issue over the PCIe.

Cheers!
 


Order it online and request in store pick-up. I've done that with them before w/o issue at Microcenter.
 




Something interesting you could look into if you like:

http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-radeon-rx-480-4gb-video-cards-8gb-memory_183548

Have fun with your card.
 


On the Toms review they said the aftermarket cards had some problems at stock GTX clock rates.

@Rogue: Anything in general above $200 at Microcenter requires a paper voucher since expensive stuff is locked up.

Overall, I would say the RX 480 is certainly good. It is between a GTX 970 and GTX 980, and greater than a 390 and seems to be maybe just almost at a 390X. The power issues are a little concerning, but I recall Karadjge saying that those PCIe cable 75W ratings are severely underrated.
 


If that is true... That is very dumb... Why would they need to do that? Are Samsung GDDR5 modules that bad they didn't pass some certification?

It sounds too darn weird to believe it, haha.

So, in order to know if the card is a 8->4 GB version, you'd need to track the GDDR5 chips in it. Not a hard thing to do. The next step would be to wait for a custom BIOS. I wonder if the $50USD is worth the risk...



The problem with the extra power is not how much it is, but where it comes from. It is *very* different when the power comes from the PCIe power cable and the MoBo through the PCIe slot. The latter has the huge implication it will force the MoBo to transit more amps through the motherboard with some side effects; some nastier than others.

Cheers!

EDIT: Added 2nd Quote.
 


The issue isn't the 75w of PCIe power- it's the fact it draws over 75w from the motherboard slot. That is much worse than overloading the cable which is fed directly from the PSU.

Thankfully- this issue is specific to AMD's own reference design. Custom cards with overclocking in mind are likely to use more phases, and will draw less from the PCIe slot.
 


£173 for a 4gb card. that is a good price :)

Frankly given the performance of this card, your looking at 1080p for the most part. I don't really see than the 8gb is worth the extra. 4gb model makes more sense to me, although I think I'd still wait for after market as Toms Review suggests there are issues with AMD's default power design.
 


Yep I'm well aware of that issue too, but my thinking is an 8-pin connector would therefore require less from the motherboard PCIe slot. Also, I don't know the specifics, but I'm pretty sure the motherboard itself doesn't matter much in this situation, it's not like the motherboard VRM does anything with the GPU, it is just a medium by which energy can pass onto the GPU. I don't see how the motherboard itself would suffer from it. The actual energy conversion process takes place at the VRMs and the GPU, where the heat would be. I must be overlooking something.
 
The problem with the MoBo delivering extra juice is the extra power that has to travel through the circuitry affecting *everything* in it by means of heat and signal noise. All the resistances and capacitors are meant to work within certain power values, so they will have a harder time delivering the expected values after a sudden surge in input. I *really* don't want to delve any deeper than that, 'cause I can't remember all the fancy terms I learned in my electrodynamics course, haha.

Cheers!
 


For some reason Microcenter had it as In-store only, they did not allow you to do this. Same thing happens with the GTX 1070 and 1080. Probably because of limited supply and to prevent people from hoarding them.



Whaaaaaat. Makes sense, 4gb cards are near impossible to find. Newegg had one for about 2 minutes and it sold out. Microcenter had only 2 of these XFX 4gb cards in stock, the other 30 or so were 8gb. As soon as that flash appears I'm going to do it.




Ah ok, I rarely buy anything expensive there, usually just accessories (compressed air, cables, fans, blank discs, etc).

PCIe cable ratings are underrated, however the slot problem is a bit concerning. That said my system is old and my data backed up, if the motherboard crapped out tomorrow I wouldn't cry it would just bring my system upgrade forward.
 
From what I'm seeing, there is a stable OC limit at 1,340mhz core clock on the 480's and that produce makes for a loud 480. With Tom's mentioning that the extra draw is coming through the mobo as opposed to the 6-pin, I wonder if that is the limiting factor for the OC potential and having that cooler doesn't help. I would think that pulling extra to begin with, that OCing would make it worse and lead to power irregularities.

Not sure if I missed it in the article, but why does it draw from the PCIe slot instead of getting the extra from the 6-pin(if it's going to overload a power source, I'd rather the 6-pin as it would likely handle it better)? This a design flaw?
 
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