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

[jimmysmitty]

The low inventory is a tad annoying. Soon they will pop up on EBay for stupid prices and stupid people will pay them.

Makes it feel as bit rushed, especially with the news on the 4GB ones being 8GB parts.

@rouge, enjoy your new GPU. Always fun to upgrade even the smallest part in a PC.

 

[9third]

Just got an rx 480 from microcenter (xfx rx 480 8gb) setting it up now

 

[TehPenguin]

One thing I don't get is why do we have to wait a couple of weeks for the AIB models? I'm tempted to jump the 480 but with the reference being the only model available I feel like a good 970 will be the better option and they are about the same price atm.

 

[TechyInAZ]

One thing I don't get is why do we have to wait a couple of weeks for the AIB models? I'm tempted to jump the 480 but with the reference being the only model available I feel like a good 970 will be the better option and they are about the same price atm.

Probably, especially if your buying a highly overclocked 970 vs a stock RX 480.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I was just at Best Buy, we were getting a new printer. Anyway I looked at their GPU selection, which was pathetic to say the least: GT 730, R7 370, GTX 950, GTX 960, and $700 Nvidia GTX 1080 Founder's Edition.

 

[-Fran-]

https://tweakers.net/reviews/4709/10/amd-radeon-rx-480-crossfire-vr-dx12-en-overklok-getest-vr-games-op-de-oculus-rift.html

Interesting. I grabbed this link from the Article posters.

Looks like the 480 does deliver in VR tasks. Look at, ironically, "Project Cars". I don't know Adrift, but it seems like it doesn't favor any AMD card and they don't show the 390X.

Cheers!

 

[TechyInAZ]

I was just at Best Buy, we were getting a new printer. Anyway I looked at their GPU selection, which was pathetic to say the least: GT 730, R7 370, GTX 950, GTX 960, and $700 Nvidia GTX 1080 Founder's Edition.

That's pretty typical of Best Buy. The only place I'd go to besides microcenter to get parts at would be Frys Electronics. However, everything online is so much cheaper.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

There's not a Frys by me; I usually buy at Amazon or Microcenter, and now that I have Prime Amazon seems like the wisest choice to me.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Amazon had the XFX RX 480 8GB available for approximately 5 minutes today on Prime for $249, its long gone now.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Amazon had the XFX RX 480 8GB available for approximately 5 minutes today on Prime for $249, its long gone now.

Did you try yours out yet? Also, I thought the 370 and 360 were supposed to come out today...

 

[Rogue Leader]

Amazon had the XFX RX 480 8GB available for approximately 5 minutes today on Prime for $249, its long gone now.

Did you try yours out yet? Also, I thought the 370 and 360 were supposed to come out today...

I heard the 470 and 460 won't be out for a week or two.

Still at work, then got to do some family stuff after, hoping to try it late tonight.

 

[Dubnoman]

I wanted to post here rather than make a thread for some questions I have.

I take interest in this GPU to be a replacement for my Radeon HD 7950.

Some questions. I read the Tom's Hardware review and they talked about the stress test and said that it can draw a lot of power through the PCIe slot. Is this anything to be concerned about? Should I expect third party GPU makers (or AMD themselves) to correct this in their products in the coming months?

Second question. Does the RX 480 run at high temperatures given its power draw and performance, or is it sufficiently cool?

 

[cdrkf]

Reviews are generally positive (with the note about high power draw from the PCIe slot which Raja commented on in the AMA as something that shouldn't be happening).

Comments are rather negative though- 'omg GTX 1060 sooo much better'... I'm pretty sure no one knows how that card performs yet. Power consumption will likely be lower of course, but when we're talking 150W territory this is hardly a big issue. Polaris looks to be very competitive with pascal in performance vs die size (it's only 230mm square after all), so I doubt gp106 will be much faster.

I get the impression these days AMD could release the greatest product of all time and they'd get little praise for it. Then again I think they'll sell plenty of them, and the robust memory configurations they're offering will probably garner them quite a few recommendations in that price point.

 

[Ags1]

Just picked up the Sapphire reference RX480 here in Holland, where supply seems to be plentiful. I went for the 8GB one after learning the 4GB model ships with 7GHz memory, which I thought would hurt me in VR - I paid more for the the bandwidth not the extra gigabytes. Also in the few reviews I've found of the 4GB model there is a measuable gap of about 2-7% between it and the 8GB model. The performance seems to be coming in around 970 levels, which has to be step up over my current Intel Graphics 530...

This dutch review does suggest that the RX480 has a lot of potential in VR:

https://tweakers.net/reviews/4709/10/amd-radeon-rx-480-crossfire-vr-dx12-en-overklok-getest-vr-games-op-de-oculus-rift.html

In Project Cars (ok, it's just one game) it comes in between the 980 and 980Ti. In Adr1ft it is no worse in terms of minimum frame rates than a Fury X (but way worse than the 970).

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Reviews are generally positive (with the note about high power draw from the PCIe slot which Raja commented on in the AMA as something that shouldn't be happening).

Comments are rather negative though- 'omg GTX 1060 sooo much better'... I'm pretty sure no one knows how that card performs yet. Power consumption will likely be lower of course, but when we're talking 150W territory this is hardly a big issue. Polaris looks to be very competitive with pascal in performance vs die size (it's only 230mm square after all), so I doubt gp106 will be much faster.

I get the impression these days AMD could release the greatest product of all time and they'd get little praise for it. Then again I think they'll sell plenty of them, and the robust memory configurations they're offering will probably garner them quite a few recommendations in that price point.

That low die size is probably contributing to how hot it gets. It seems to me like 85C is the cap for it? That is what it looked like in the Tomshardware review.

 

[Sakkura]

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.

Nah, looks to me like AMD just had two main version in mind - a cheap 4GB version with slow memory, and a more expensive 8GB version with faster memory. But they're giving board partners the option of creating in-between variants, like 4GB of faster memory or 8GB of slow memory, to hit whatever price and performance target they'd like.

 

[Ags1]

I wanted to post here rather than make a thread for some questions I have.

I take interest in this GPU to be a replacement for my Radeon HD 7950.

Some questions. I read the Tom's Hardware review and they talked about the stress test and said that it can draw a lot of power through the PCIe slot. Is this anything to be concerned about? Should I expect third party GPU makers (or AMD themselves) to correct this in their products in the coming months?

Second question. Does the RX 480 run at high temperatures given its power draw and performance, or is it sufficiently cool?

The Toms review said the extra power draw is no issue at stock clocks, but they could not overclock due to very high spikes on power draw on the PCIe slot.

Regarding your second question, my RX480 comes with a 2 year guarantee... Beyond that, I couldn't care what temperature its internal widgets reach. Realistically, the card is good enough this year and next year, but it will need an upgrade after that, so the guarantee is sufficient.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I wanted to post here rather than make a thread for some questions I have.

I take interest in this GPU to be a replacement for my Radeon HD 7950.

Some questions. I read the Tom's Hardware review and they talked about the stress test and said that it can draw a lot of power through the PCIe slot. Is this anything to be concerned about? Should I expect third party GPU makers (or AMD themselves) to correct this in their products in the coming months?

Second question. Does the RX 480 run at high temperatures given its power draw and performance, or is it sufficiently cool?

The Toms review said the extra power draw is no issue at stock clocks, but they could not overclock due to very high spikes on power draw on the PCIe slot.

Well they could have, they just did not want to.

 

[TechyInAZ]

First RX 480 build on PCPP I've seen. Really awesome bank for your buck right there: http://pcpartpicker.com/b/rXxYcf#cx1794031

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

Sapphire RX 480 Nitro

Quickrelease fans, RGB Sapphire logo, redesigned cooling a bit and I believa a backplate, 8 pin power also confirmed I believe.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I was just at Best Buy, we were getting a new printer. Anyway I looked at their GPU selection, which was pathetic to say the least: GT 730, R7 370, GTX 950, GTX 960, and $700 Nvidia GTX 1080 Founder's Edition.

That's pretty typical of Best Buy. The only place I'd go to besides microcenter to get parts at would be Frys Electronics. However, everything online is so much cheaper.

What Microcenter? So far as I know there is none in AZ and first place I would expect it to be would be Phoenix.

BTW Frys price matches online.

 

[Rogue Leader]

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.

Nah, looks to me like AMD just had two main version in mind - a cheap 4GB version with slow memory, and a more expensive 8GB version with faster memory. But they're giving board partners the option of creating in-between variants, like 4GB of faster memory or 8GB of slow memory, to hit whatever price and performance target they'd like.

Did you read the article? AMD admitted 4GB cards have 8GB of memory limited by the BIOS.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Sapphire RX 480

The beauty!

@Techy: Only problem is some lousy Zalman PSU. Certainly don't want that think lowering the life expectancy of my RX 480.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

It's beautiful. I'm very curious how well it overclocks. Sapphire didn't want to release any specs yet.

 

[TehPenguin]

Sapphire RX 480 Nitro

Quickrelease fans, RGB Sapphire logo, redesigned cooling a bit and I believa a backplate, 8 pin power also confirmed I believe.

Any info on availability?