RX 480 Alternative

[Tyler Yaccarino]

I picked up an RX 480 this week, and I have been a little disappointed with gaming performance on 1440P. Low FPS on medium to higher settings. Also, the PCIE power draw concerns me.

Is there another AMD card that someone can recommend for 1440P? I want to stay with AMD because I have a freesync monitor.

Thanks!

 

[thor220]

I'm getting crazy.. it seems that however wil try to fool costumers, drivers won't be enough to fix the card. So a 2nd release with more pin (8 or so) might help but the big question is.. how can be a deal or acceptable to buy a card that has so many issues ? It's the first time in years. To make it short.. I dont think that a bugged card like this one can be a good option. So what's a good alternative around 300 Euros?

Wait and see what the GTX 1060 brings to the table- it's being released on Thursday, July 7 and will supposedly be available to buy on July 13th. Rumors say it will very similar, if not slightly faster than the RX 480. It will undoubtedly be more efficient.

It'll probably cost more and you pretty much have to get the 6 GB model. So many games are going to be bottlenecked by 3 GB of VRAM. I'm expecting the 6 GB models to be around $280.

 

[MyHD4870x2Melted]

The power draw issue is being blown way out of proportion. Unless your putting the card on a 10yo MB... Then your just asking for trouble.
Also, a lot of other complaints like the comparability issue really puzzle me. It is like these people have never bought a new(just released) card.
Shame on AMD for releasing a card with a PCIe overdraw that MAY damage older/cheap motherboards! It is not like Nvidia has never released driver updates for working cards that have fried new/high-end motherboards... Oh wait... AMD is issuing a fix, you wil get slightly lower temps and you may get a slight boost in performance (like 1fps) and performance will improve as drivers are updated later on.

The GTX 1060 did get me excited until I saw the leaks. While it shows the 1060 out performing the 480 in benchmarks, the TFlops are at 4.4 vs 5.5 for the 480, also the 480 has a larger BUS size and the 1060 maxes out at 6gb of VRAM. This may be fine for single screen 1080p gaming but I do 3x 1080p with surround view so it has me a little worried that the 1060 couldn't handle it. I also do not like that there is no SLI. I got a 670 a long time ago and added another to keep my system running without having to pay an arm and a leg for a new card, if there is no SLI then I would have to do a full graphics card update every few years, but I also heard no SLI was for the 3gb only. I will wait and see but if the 1060 can handle 3x 1080p at a good price then I may just pick one up.

 

[thor220]

The power draw issue is being blown way out of proportion. Unless your putting the card on a 10yo MB... Then your just asking for trouble.
Also, a lot of other complaints like the comparability issue really puzzle me. It is like these people have never bought a new(just released) card.
Shame on AMD for releasing a card with a PCIe overdraw that MAY damage older/cheap motherboards! It is not like Nvidia has released driver updates for working cards that have fried new/high-end motherboards... Oh wait... AMD is issuing a fix, you wil get slightly lower temps and you may get a slight boost in performance (like 1fps) and performance will improve as drivers are updated later on.

The GTX 1060 did get me excited until I saw the leaks. While it shows the 1060 out performing the 480 in benchmarks, the TFlops are at 4.4 vs 5.5 for the 480, also the 480 has a larger BUS size and the 1060 maxes out at 6gb of VRAM. This may be fine for single screen 1080p gaming but I do 3x 1080p with surround view so it has me a little worried that the 1060 couldn't handle it. I also do not like that there is no SLI. I got a 670 a long time ago and added another to keep my system running without having to pay an arm and a leg for a new card, if there is no SLI then I would have to do a full graphics card update, but I also heard no SLI was for the 3gb only. I will wait and see but if the 1060 can handle 3x 1080p at a good price then I may just pick one up.

I think you have people genuinely concerned and then you have the Nvidia Fanboys stoking the flames. Scare tactics are pretty effective. The RX 480 does have an issue but it's nothing that should stop you from buying one and it'll be gone with a driver update soon enough.

On the GTX 1060, yeah that was the problem with the 960. Too small of a memory bus hurt performance in pretty much all games. The R9 380 or 380x was often the cheaper, better choice. Of course, you had to accept the higher power usage. In countries like Japan, where power is very expensive, I think Nvidia will win out simply because it still has the most energy efficient GPUs.

 

[JediMa]

The power draw issue is being blown way out of proportion. Unless your putting the card on a 10yo MB... Then your just asking for trouble.
Also, a lot of other complaints like the comparability issue really puzzle me. It is like these people have never bought a new(just released) card.
Shame on AMD for releasing a card with a PCIe overdraw that MAY damage older/cheap motherboards! It is not like Nvidia has released driver updates for working cards that have fried new/high-end motherboards... Oh wait... AMD is issuing a fix, you wil get slightly lower temps and you may get a slight boost in performance (like 1fps) and performance will improve as drivers are updated later on.

The GTX 1060 did get me excited until I saw the leaks. While it shows the 1060 out performing the 480 in benchmarks, the TFlops are at 4.4 vs 5.5 for the 480, also the 480 has a larger BUS size and the 1060 maxes out at 6gb of VRAM. This may be fine for single screen 1080p gaming but I do 3x 1080p with surround view so it has me a little worried that the 1060 couldn't handle it. I also do not like that there is no SLI. I got a 670 a long time ago and added another to keep my system running without having to pay an arm and a leg for a new card, if there is no SLI then I would have to do a full graphics card update, but I also heard no SLI was for the 3gb only. I will wait and see but if the 1060 can handle 3x 1080p at a good price then I may just pick one up.

I think you have people genuinely concerned and then you have the Nvidia Fanboys stoking the flames. Scare tactics are pretty effective. The RX 480 does have an issue but it's nothing that should stop you from buying one and it'll be gone with a driver update soon enough.

On the GTX 1060, yeah that was the problem with the 960. Too small of a memory bus hurt performance in pretty much all games. The R9 380 or 380x was often the cheaper, better choice. Of course, you had to accept the higher power usage. In countries like Japan, where power is very expensive, I think Nvidia will win out simply because it still has the most energy efficient GPUs.

This is very clear at least, so I'm considering to just buy the new one (my MB is an ASUS P8 Z77-V Pro and new drivers will fix any possible issue. 1070 and 1080 are too expensive and the 1060 is performing really far from RX 480 still costing more

 

[thor220]

If you do buy a new card chances are you won't even have to worry about this issue. Partner cards are coming out in a week or so. I'm really hoping we get to see some really good overclocks on these card. I want an RX 480 but the reference cards don't quite do it at 1440p. I need a card that can do 1440p well.