The Upcoming AMD RX 480 Graphics Card, Pictured

[wifiburger]

yeah another GPU from ATI, well might as well put out lots of them because we all know where these cards / technology will end up -> in a freaking console at a discount price, why bother forking 800$ now when PS5 or Xbox 2 will have this GPU soldered into the board for like 80$

 

[IInuyasha74]

I find is strange how little excitement Toms shows towards RX480. Did not even mention $199-$229 price in this article

1. The known price of the RX 480 4GB is $199.
2. Any one reporting a higher price is simply spreading rumors. AMD hasn't officially said any other price for the RX 480.
3. It wasn't mentioned in this article because this at least the third article we have written about the RX 400 series, and it is at least the second article over the RX 480. The first one (Linked in the article) covered the pricing and technical details.

 

[HusseinH]

Looking forward to this!

 

[littleleo]

I hope it's a big winner, AMD needs one badly. I can't keep 1070s and 1080s on the shelf right now. I have overseas customers asking for them.

 

[George Phillips]

RX480 should have been clocked like 1070/1080, but it doesn't.

AMD's Best Polaris has poor performance per watt, Polaris RX480 has a TDP of 150 but ONLY has the performance of a old factory over clocked 28nm Maxwell 970.

Nvidia Pascal 1070 has a TDP of 150 but beats the Best 28nm GPU the Maxwell Titan/980ti.

Nvidia Pascal 1080/1070 are an UPGRADE, AMD Polaris is a EPIC FAIL DOWNGRADE, just goes to prove you get what you pay for.

 

[none12345]

"1. The known price of the RX 480 4GB is $199.
2. Any one reporting a higher price is simply spreading rumors. AMD hasn't officially said any other price for the RX 480."

$199 for the 4gb version 229 for the 8gb version, so that poster was correct to say 199-229

 

[neblogai]

"1. The known price of the RX 480 4GB is $199.
2. Any one reporting a higher price is simply spreading rumors. AMD hasn't officially said any other price for the RX 480."

$199 for the 4gb version 229 for the 8gb version, so that poster was correct to say 199-229

Yes, that's what I meant, and even more so because we have not seen 4GB version yet. In all the leaks, and rx480 retail box photos we only saw 8GB version which will cost more than $199. It is not a rumour- it is common sense.

 

[Bloob]

RX 480 TDP is NOT 150W. RX 480 has power requirement of 150W (PCIe + 6-pin). If nVidia reported power requirements the same way, the 1070 would have a power requirement of 225W (PCIe + 8-pin). We do not know the actual TDP of 480, but since 2 480s were reportedly more efficient than a 1080, which has a TDP of ~180W, then we can guess the ballpark.

 

[g-unit1111]

Kind of looks like my old GTX 660. I'll wait and see what MSI, Gigabyte and Sapphire bring to the table before I pull the trigger on buying one of these, and I do want to buy one at some point.

 

[IInuyasha74]

"1. The known price of the RX 480 4GB is $199.
2. Any one reporting a higher price is simply spreading rumors. AMD hasn't officially said any other price for the RX 480."

$199 for the 4gb version 229 for the 8gb version, so that poster was correct to say 199-229

Yes, that's what I meant, and even more so because we have not seen 4GB version yet. In all the leaks, and rx480 retail box photos we only saw 8GB version which will cost more than $199. It is not a rumour- it is common sense.

Can you show a single page published by AMD, one of its board partners, or a retail website that lists an $229 price tag?"

The answer is no right? Then it is a rumor. Just because people say it on the Internet, doesn't make it true. Knowing the exact dollar amount an item will cost is also not common sense.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Hope all the pre-hype is mostly true or a lot of people are going to be severely disappointed.

 

[Ohjuler]

RX480 should have been clocked like 1070/1080, but it doesn't.

AMD's Best Polaris has poor performance per watt, Polaris RX480 has a TDP of 150 but ONLY has the performance of a old factory over clocked 28nm Maxwell 970.

Nvidia Pascal 1070 has a TDP of 150 but beats the Best 28nm GPU the Maxwell Titan/980ti.

Nvidia Pascal 1080/1070 are an UPGRADE, AMD Polaris is a EPIC FAIL DOWNGRADE, just goes to prove you get what you pay for.

AMD and Nvidia measures TDP differently. AMD uses max for their TDP, Nvidia uses average. On average, the Polaris cards will very likely uses much less than the Pascal cards.
Secondly, the 480 is not meant to be competing with the 1070 or 1080. There is no such thing as a bad graphics card, just a badly priced one. The 480 is 200 dollars, and provides unmatched performance in that price bracket.
AMD's answer to the 1070 and 1080 comes out later, just like Nvidia's answer to the 480, 470, and 460 comes out later.

 

[alextheblue]

Yea the PCB is rather small, but really the best part about that is what to expect from the RX 470/460. We will probably see this PCB less on RX 480 GPUs than any other honestly. The RX 480 is the high-end part in the line, everyone will want to push it to its limits, which means a decent sized dual-slot cooler. This PCB only has one place for a PCI-E power connector also, so OEMs will likely ditch it first chance they get for something with a single 8-pin connector or two 6-pins for additional overclocking headroom. There will be compact models, but most will probably go the other direction.

As for the RX 460 and 470, those could end up being extremely compact, as they consume even less power and will need even smaller thermal solutions. I'd imagine using the Firepro variant of the RX480 in compute systems will be awesome as well. You could crossfire four of the suckers and not need a 1000 W PSU.

Very true. The higher performance boards will be larger for various reasons, power, thermals, etc. Fancy backplates and mega coolers... I can't wait to see what kind of headroom the OC variants offer! But I like that Polaris 10 is flexible enough to pull off a very compact board, and it helps that AMD is showing that off with a small low power reference design. So we may very well see different cards covering different use cases. On to the other models: the 470 is still P10 IIRC, so I doubt it will see huge size reductions there. However...

Polaris 11 should allow for a super small design without really sacrificing anything. I am hoping will even see some decent half-height variants. Pricing should be excellent too. 2+ TFlops, in a small, affordable, extremely low-power design? You could upgrade some really restrictive OEM boxes with this, without swapping out the PSU in most cases! That's always a challenge, help someone without a lot of money fix up their OEM junkware without spending a fortune.

Polaris-based Firepro will definitely bring large gains in efficiency and price/performance. But Vega may end up being even more impressive in that realm. Time will tell.

 

[neblogai]

Can you show a single page published by AMD, one of its board partners, or a retail website that lists an $229 price tag?"

The answer is no right? Then it is a rumor. Just because people say it on the Internet, doesn't make it true. Knowing the exact dollar amount an item will cost is also not common sense.

First slide in previous article has RX480 at 4/8 GB of memory. Announced price was $199. It is common sense to assume $199 price to be only for a 4GB card, especially because in another slide price of two RX480s is shown as 'under $500'. And then, if you still believe the price of 8GB model to be $199- there is a tweet of AMD Poland. It is here: http://videocardz.com/61262/amd-radeon-rx-480-8gb-to-cost-229-usd. It has the prices that I talked about.
I know you have to report only true confirmed information, but please know your stuff.
However, price is not the issue here. We know at $199 it is great. The issue is still the same attitude I see- it makes it look any news regarding RX480 annoy you a lot. It is a strange, because Polaris series are set to become a great success.

 

[bit_user]

AMD and Nvidia measures TDP differently. AMD uses max for their TDP, Nvidia uses average.

Then it's not TDP. TDP is meant to be the realistic upper limit on power consumption / heat dissipation. It's not the absolute limit that you could hit with a specially-designed torture test, but it's supposed to be the highest that's likely to occur in real-world usage.

That still leaves some wiggle room, but definitely shouldn't equate to "average". They can't just arbitrarily change this definition, because system builders are supposed to be able to use it for specifying PSU wattage, cooling, etc.

 

[Gargamel Shmidth]

"From the leaks I've seen, it's still slower than the GTX 1070, though it's also quite a bit cheaper. I think its main competition will be the GTX 1060."

RX480 = GTX1060
Big Polaris/Small Vega = GTX1080
BIG VEGA HBM_2 = New Ethusiast level of Performance able to Run 4k/5k Games in min. 60FPS (average should be 75FPS
But we have to wait a Year to look at it ;-)

 

[englandr753]

Although I plan to hold out until AMD lays out all of their cards on the new releases, I'm VERY skeptical to do business with AMD again (through Sapphire) with the "customer NO support" I received on my 295x2 that kept dying and costing me in total 150.00 in shipping and packaging over 5 RMA's.

They finally had to give me a 390x and I sold it immediately before it died for a loss of 400.00 less than I had tied up in the original card and shipping/packaging fees.

I've been a VERY avid AMD supporter for the last 5 years but now I'm back with Intel with a 5930k CPU so I plan to get the best card for my money which for now appears to be the 1080.

I do have a 1200 psu sitting inside my case with 4 connectors ready to go into all 4 video cards IF these new AMD cards prove well enough to give the 1080 a run for its money for a similar dollar figure.

I still see myself leaning towards Nvidia due to the sucky customer NO service from Sapphire/AMD and to stay away from the multi card config.

I'd also consider picking up a single AMD card to get me through until 2017 until Nvidia releases Volta which makes me drool...

 

[IInuyasha74]

Can you show a single page published by AMD, one of its board partners, or a retail website that lists an $229 price tag?"

The answer is no right? Then it is a rumor. Just because people say it on the Internet, doesn't make it true. Knowing the exact dollar amount an item will cost is also not common sense.

First slide in previous article has RX480 at 4/8 GB of memory. Announced price was $199. It is common sense to assume $199 price to be only for a 4GB card, especially because in another slide price of two RX480s is shown as 'under $500'. And then, if you still believe the price of 8GB model to be $199- there is a tweet of AMD Poland. It is here: http://videocardz.com/61262/amd-radeon-rx-480-8gb-to-cost-229-usd. It has the prices that I talked about.
I know you have to report only true confirmed information, but please know your stuff.
However, price is not the issue here. We know at $199 it is great. The issue is still the same attitude I see- it makes it look any news regarding RX480 annoy you a lot. It is a strange, because Polaris series are set to become a great success.

Yes, the price of the RX 480 4 GB card is $199. Everyone knows that. It's not about common sense, AMD came straight out and said it.

See, now reading is key, because if you don't read things carefully, you tend to make mistakes like this. You linked a website that is widely known for posting rumors without any real evidence to support them, and you state that AMD's Polish Twitter was the source. Not only did you fail to realize that AMD doesn't have a polish Twitter account, but the page you linked said that its source was Facebbook and Reddit, which you overlooked twice.

Then to check the validity of this statement, I checked both pages they linked. The Reddit page is a post by a random user that is in no way affiliated with AMD, and he sites the AMD Polish Facebook page as the source. I then checked every post and comment from the last 30 days on AMD's Polish Facebook page to see if at any point AMD said that the 8 GB graphics card would cost $229 or gave any other mention of its pricing, and guess what? They never did. The post displayed on the page you linked doesn't show up anywhere on the page.

I love to see news about upcoming tech products. Not only does my job completely revolve around it, but as a tech enthusiast I am personally interested in learning about new computer hardware. The problem is that there is a serious issue with people believing unconfirmed rumors as though they are facts without bothering to check to see if it is true. You didn't even bother to read the source on the page you linked, which means they could have linked just about anything and you probably would still believe it is true.

It is perfectly possible that the 8 GB version will cost $229, but we cannot publish that without a source or direct confirmation from AMD without undermining the credibility of our site as a whole. If we publish it, people will believe it is true. Then what if the 8 GB version is $239 instead? People would be rightfully outraged at us for lying to them and they would then rightfully so never trust us again. If you are still dissatisfied with the content we publish because it isn't filled with rumors, then you can go read somewhere else, but don't expect us to publish unverified information just to please you.

 

[cmi86]

I am really excited to see what AIB partners can do with this chip. Leaked real world gaming reviews show the RX-480 using about 100w under gaming loads which makes me think a single 8 pin on high end OC cards like lightnings would be sufficient (and cool) however I am expecting 2X 6pin just for headrooms sake.

 

[bit_user]

Then what if the 8 GB version is $239 instead? People would be rightfully outraged at us for lying to them and they would then rightfully so never trust us again.

Seems a slight exaggeration, but it would chip away at Toms' credibility. You rightly point out there are enough rumor mill sites, and Toms doesn't want to get a reputation as yet another. Spreading rumors is easy - journalism is hard.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Then what if the 8 GB version is $239 instead? People would be rightfully outraged at us for lying to them and they would then rightfully so never trust us again.

Seems a slight exaggeration, but it would chip away at Toms' credibility. You rightly point out there are enough rumor mill sites, and Toms doesn't want to get a reputation as yet another. Spreading rumors is easy - journalism is hard.

A slight exaggeration yes, but just slight. We tend to get rather critical responses when we make mistakes. We try to hold ourselves to a higher standard and we have an enormous reader base, so it is only fitting really. Not that we mind. Of course we never want to make mistakes to warrant negative responses, but we prefer to get told straight out when we get something wrong so we can correct the issue. Helps keep us on our toes.

 

[falchard]

There is one thing I really really really like about this cooler. The cover has screws so you can take it off and clean the dust in the heat sink easier.

 

[koss64]

Im shocked at how short that board is.I can just see the sub $150 single card solutions now....
These cards are going to dominate the middle and low income bracket.I was going to bite the bullet and buy the Wiiu but this gives me a moment of pause.

 

[sykozis]

AMD and Nvidia measures TDP differently. AMD uses max for their TDP, Nvidia uses average.

Then it's not TDP. TDP is meant to be the realistic upper limit on power consumption / heat dissipation. It's not the absolute limit that you could hit with a specially-designed torture test, but it's supposed to be the highest that's likely to occur in real-world usage.

That still leaves some wiggle room, but definitely shouldn't equate to "average". They can't just arbitrarily change this definition, because system builders are supposed to be able to use it for specifying PSU wattage, cooling, etc.

TDP actually has nothing to do with power consumption. TDP literally means Thermal Design Power. It's the amount of heat, represented in Watts, that is required to be dissipated to maintain a safe operating temperature. The fact that GPU makers have managed to keep power draw so close to the TDP is just a coincidence.