The Polaris RX 480 Owners Thread.

Erasmuz · 7 Aug 2016 at 07:35

I posted this in another thread but I think the question may be better off posted here. Can someone with an XFX RX 480 Black Ed 8GB confirm the length of the card for me?

24cm fits my case, 25.4 probably won't. I've noticed that most reference RX 480's say they're 24cm long but the XFX says it is 25.4cm long. Are they measuring theirs from the lip of the PCI bracket maybe for the extra CM? I hope so as I'd really like to order one, but it needs to be close to 24cm from the back of the card to the PCI cover-plate.

Kaapstad · 7 Aug 2016 at 07:56

Erasmuz said:
I posted this in another thread but I think the question may be better off posted here. Can someone with an XFX RX 480 Black Ed 8GB confirm the length of the card for me?

24cm fits my case, 25.4 probably won't. I've noticed that most reference RX 480's say they're 24cm long but the XFX says it is 25.4cm long. Are they measuring theirs from the lip of the PCI bracket maybe for the extra CM? I hope so as I'd really like to order one, but it needs to be close to 24cm from the back of the card to the PCI cover-plate.

Are you talking about the reference XFX 480, if so they should all be the same size.

Here is one of my Sapphire reference cards with a ruler next to it.

Huge pic warning

Exactly 240mm

Erasmuz · 7 Aug 2016 at 09:11

Thank you very much!! Yes it's the reference card, as long as it's identical to your Sapphire it will fit perfectly. I wonder where they got 25.4cm from?

HRL · 7 Aug 2016 at 11:06

1.5 cm is probably the 8-pin power hanging out of the back, at a guess.

On my Nitro OC+ I'd say it was more like 2cm extra though.

Yrkoon · 7 Aug 2016 at 18:29

AMDMatt said:
Yes, compatibility mode ensures that less voltage is taken from the PCI-E slot and more from the 6PIN. You don't really need it unless you are using a Motherboard from the early 90s, but the option is there for people who are concerned about that.

Undervolting just provides less voltage overall, reducing temperatures and fan noise.

If you want the ultimate efficiency, enable compatibility mode, power efficiency and undervolt at stock clocks. You'll save a fair bit of power, if you are that way inclined. Memory should do at least 900v at stock clocks.

thats cool, thanks for the explanation

edit: this explains my recent readings on gpu z, for some reason after the win 10 anniversary update that i installed on friday, all my watt man settings were back on default lol i just set them back to proper settings, even the fan profiles switched to auto

just ran valley benchmark voltage sticking to what i set

los · 9 Aug 2016 at 23:07

Anyone watercooled one of these?
What's the max temps you can goto on these?

adam98150 · 10 Aug 2016 at 01:40

God damn. In two minds about what vid card to get. Zotac 1060 mini or the 480 nitro? Big jump from a 280x?

Yrkoon · 10 Aug 2016 at 02:28

adam98150 said:
God damn. In two minds about what vid card to get. Zotac 1060 mini or the 480 nitro? Big jump from a 280x?

rx 480 is pretty much inbetween a 390 and a 390x, yeh good jump and much more future proof than the 1060, due to hardware for dx12 and vulkan and long term driver support.

i came from a oc 270x and its about twice as fast and i only have a reference 480

TheMorningStar · 10 Aug 2016 at 05:58

The RX480s seem to be doing pretty well in crossfire mode when compared to the 390 cards. Do they have anything extra in hardware? I'm just looking at the Time Spy thread.

Brazo · 10 Aug 2016 at 07:57

Yrkoon said:
rx 480 is pretty much inbetween a 390 and a 390x, yeh good jump and much more future proof than the 1060, due to hardware for dx12 and vulkan and long term driver support.

i came from a oc 270x and its about twice as fast and i only have a reference 480

I've just bought a 480 so hardly an Nvidia fan but a lot of the benches I have seen put the 480 significantly behind 15-20 fps. If it does catch the 1060 up, we could be waiting a long time and it has a lot of ground to cover!

Bonke · 10 Aug 2016 at 10:21

I am about to order one of the Nitro cards, but I have my doubts regarding my motherboard (GA-H61M-DS2 rev 1.2) upon checking MSInfo32 it states that I run legacy bios, and the sapphire product page states that the nitro cards require UEFI bios. Will the card work at all on that motherboard?

Freddie1980 · 10 Aug 2016 at 10:25

TheMorningStar said:
The RX480s seem to be doing pretty well in crossfire mode when compared to the 390 cards. Do they have anything extra in hardware? I'm just looking at the Time Spy thread.

Probably just driver maturity, AMD generally gets it working eventually so long as the game can support rendering across multiple video cards.

los said:
Anyone watercooled one of these?
What's the max temps you can goto on these?

I doubt your going to find many watercooled RX480's, if you stick a water block on one the cost of the card will be north of £300 at which point you might as well look at a GTX1070.

Overlag · 10 Aug 2016 at 11:37

los said:
Anyone watercooled one of these?
What's the max temps you can goto on these?

About 50c with the fans inaudible. Loop has a 3770k running at 4.6. When both are at full load stress testing it's about the same but that rarely happens in the real world.

Rebuilding the loop at the moment. Will post a picture soon.

Core isn't a particular a good one but under water it can run at 1366 totally fine.

Freddie1980 said:
I doubt your going to find many watercooled RX480's, if you stick a water block on one the cost of the card will be north of £300 at which point you might as well look at a GTX1070.

This logic makes no sense to me at all, and I've seen it all over the Internet. Ok then so I buy a 1070 instead but then I still need to spend £100 on a water block for it so now I've spent even more?! Where does it begin? If I buy a 1070 and spend money on a waterblock I might as well get a 1080 instead?

I guess watercooling should be limited to 6950x and Titan X(p) owners?

Burr · 10 Aug 2016 at 14:28

Overlag said:
About 50c with the fans inaudible. Loop has a 3770k running at 4.6. When both are at full load stress testing it's about the same but that rarely happens in the real world.

Rebuilding the loop at the moment. Will post a picture soon.

Core isn't a particular a good one but under water it can run at 1366 totally fine.

This logic makes no sense to me at all, and I've seen it all over the Internet. Ok then so I buy a 1070 instead but then I still need to spend £100 on a water block for it so now I've spent even more?! Where does it begin? If I buy a 1070 and spend money on a waterblock I might as well get a 1080 instead?

I guess watercooling should be limited to 6950x and Titan X(p) owners?

I see what your saying here. I guess for some folks the extra FPS/eye candy is more valuable than the reduced noise/temps. Really all depends on how you like to spend your money i suppose.

Bantu · 10 Aug 2016 at 14:52

Burr said:
I see what your saying here. I guess for some folks the extra FPS/eye candy is more valuable than the reduced noise/temps. Really all depends on how you like to spend your money i suppose.

That's exactly right. The reason a lot of people watercool is for improved clock speeds and memory speeds. If you are spending that much on an RX480 + waterblock for performance reasons then you may as well get the 1070 which will do that without the need for water.

If however you are looking for a block for aesthetic or noise/temp reasons and don't care much about the extra performance, then go for it... OCUK will sell you one in fact with the block already installed

Freddie1980 · 10 Aug 2016 at 15:12

Overlag said:
This logic makes no sense to me at all, and I've seen it all over the Internet. Ok then so I buy a 1070 instead but then I still need to spend £100 on a water block for it so now I've spent even more?! Where does it begin? If I buy a 1070 and spend money on a waterblock I might as well get a 1080 instead?

I guess watercooling should be limited to 6950x and Titan X(p) owners?

It depends I guess, normally on new releases you get two high end cards and the 2nd card isn't typically far behind in performance like the GTX680/670, 7970/7950 or the 290/290x with the 2nd card costing 25%/30% less in which case adding a water block makes sense.

Joe_Easy · 10 Aug 2016 at 18:31

Got my card a few weeks ago but only now had a chance to play with it due to work travel and moving house...

Beautiful looking card, great quality feel to it...very solid...will let you know how the gaming and benchmarking goes...

My first AMD card so very excited to try the red team, I like where AMD are going with DX12 and Vulkan as they seem to be bringing a greater focus on the gamer recently...

DHR · 11 Aug 2016 at 09:02

EDIT - DOH Wrong thread

Kaapstad · 11 Aug 2016 at 09:18

Joe_Easy said:
Got my card a few weeks ago but only now had a chance to play with it due to work travel and moving house...

Beautiful looking card, great quality feel to it...very solid...will let you know how the gaming and benchmarking goes...

My first AMD card so very excited to try the red team, I like where AMD are going with DX12 and Vulkan as they seem to be bringing a greater focus on the gamer recently...

Welcome and on TROH.

The Roll of Honour.

Date 10/08/2016, Make Sapphire Nitro+ OC 8gb, Joe_Easy, Link
Date 07/08/2016, Make Sapphire Nitro+ OC 8gb, bigSadFace, Link
Date 06/08/2016, Make PowerColor Reference 8gb, los, Link
Date 04/08/2016, Make Sapphire Nitro+ OC 8gb, bayo000, Link
Date 31/07/2016, Make Sapphire Nitro+ OC 4gb, Blackjack Davy, Link
Date 30/07/2016, Make Sapphire Nitro+ OC 8gb, MichaelM, Link
Date 29/07/2016, Make Sapphire Nitro+ OC 8gb, JustEner, Link
Date 28/07/2016, Make Sapphire Nitro+ OC 8gb, zophiel, Link
Date 28/07/2016, Make Sapphire Nitro+ OC 8gb, merlah, Link
Date 27/07/2016, Make PowerColor Reference 8gb, Pete @r..., Link
Date 12/07/2016, Make Gigabyte Reference 8gb, xb8browney, Link
Date 12/07/2016, Make Gigabyte Reference 8gb, eNe, Link
Date 11/07/2016, Make XFX Reference 8gb, orbitalwalsh, Link
Date 09/07/2016, Make Asus Reference 8gb, Gripen90, Link
Date 05/07/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 4gb, Boomstick777, Link
Date 02/07/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, FredFlint, Link
Date 02/07/2016, Make XFX Reference 8gb, swanseajack, Link
Date 01/07/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, SouthEastBlue, Link
Date 01/07/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, KonfuciousK, Link
Date 30/06/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 4gb, Tute, Link
Date 30/06/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, Overlag, Link
Date 30/06/2016, Make Gigabyte Reference 8gb, MDPlatts, Link
Date 30/06/2016, Make XFX Reference 4gb, Bantu, Link
Date 30/06/2016, Make XFX Reference 4gb, TheLegendOfMart, Link
Date 30/06/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, montymint, Link
Date 30/06/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, roy23, Link
Date 29/06/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, stulid, Link
Date 29/06/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, Kaapstad, Link
Date 29/06/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, whyscotty, Link
Date 29/06/2016, Make Sapphire Reference 8gb, AMDMatt, Link

To get on the Roll of Honour all you have to do is post a pic with your user name on it of your RX 480.

Erasmuz · 11 Aug 2016 at 15:35

I am the proud new owner of an XFX RX 480 Black 8GB edition, reference design but factory overclocked to 1328Mhz.

I now have it relatively stable after a few issues to start, but I'm still having an issue with thermal throttling. I thought I'd post here in case someone with the same card could help.

I found straight out of the box the card was a little unstable, and would struggle to pass 1100Mhz in bench marking. After a little tinkering I found it NEEDS the power limit raised in WattMan (I just stuck it on 50%). After that it was a lot more stable and it will sit on boost 1328Mhz - until it thermal throttles.

It does a good job of staying above 1200Mhz even when thermal throttling which is nice, but is there anything I can do?

I tried to under-volt but I noticed my default's under 'Voltage Control' are actually lower then what a lot of people were setting theirs too a month ago. I suspect (I could be wrong) AMD's latest drivers to fix the power draw issues probably under-volted, or more appropriately volted their cards meaning there's less play now to under-volt.

I can of course crank the fan speed above 3000 but crickey! Sounds like a tornado then. Should I just be happy with 1200Mhz+? Fire Strike scored 11,484 (graphics score of 13 735) with fans set to Tornado