MSI RX 480 Query

[joeblggs]

I've just bought an MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB and have since read that it may not be a particularly good model. I know next to nothing about GPU's (and PC's in general) but someone referred to it as a "reference model" as if it were a negative. It would be very helpful if someone could explain what that means and/or whether this is a bad GPU?

As a side note I'm thinking of pairing this GPU with a i5-4690K is that a future proof pairing for gaming?


OS-Windows 7 64 bit
MB-AS rock z97 pro4
RAM-HyperX FURY 8GB DDR3
Cooler-Hyper 212 Evo
Current CPU-G3258

 

[LtMatt]

I've just bought an MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB and have since read that it may not be a particularly good model. I know next to nothing about GPU's (and PC's in general) but someone referred to it as a "reference model" as if it were a negative. It would be very helpful if someone could explain what that means and/or whether this is a bad GPU?

As a side note I'm thinking of pairing this GPU with a i5-4690K is that a future proof pairing for gaming?


OS-Windows 7 64 bit
MB-AS rock z97 pro4
RAM-HyperX FURY 8GB DDR3
Cooler-Hyper 212 Evo
Current CPU-G3258

I'm using a reference model 480 and it works just fine, quietly at temperatures around 80c.

Are you having any problems? If so i can help.

To answer your question, yes it is future proof.

 

[benjii]

There is nothing wrong with reference models. The main difference between reference and aftermarket cards are the cooler, the aftermarket ones are often better. In this case, there's also the fact that the reference has a 6 pin PCI-E, instead of the 8 pin the aftermarkets have. The aforementioned only matters if you intend on overclocking.

 

[joeblggs]

Thanks both, the only other issue i have encountered is that when I played games on medium settings with my old setup (G3258 OC to 4.0GHz and AMD Radeon Sapphire HD 7750) the performance was good, steady framerate no stuttering etc. Yet with the same CPU i had worse performance with the new RX 480 such as stuttering and framerate drops. I have been told that its down to bottlenecking but I would have thought that I would have had the same level of performance that I had on the old setup and that I simply wouldn't have got the benefits of the new graphics card ie: higher graphics settings and framerates. The games in question are ARMA 3&2 and GTA IV if that helps.

Also forgot to mention that I have a XFS XTR 750 PSU.

Thanks again for your help

 

[Limpnoodle]

Reference models are like ready salted, plain and simple

 

[LtMatt]

Thanks both, the only other issue i have encountered is that when I played games on medium settings with my old setup (G3258 OC to 4.0GHz and AMD Radeon Sapphire HD 7750) the performance was good, steady framerate no stuttering etc. Yet with the same CPU i had worse performance with the new RX 480 such as stuttering and framerate drops. I have been told that its down to bottlenecking but I would have thought that I would have had the same level of performance that I had on the old setup and that I simply wouldn't have got the benefits of the new graphics card ie: higher graphics settings and framerates. The games in question are ARMA 3&2 and GTA IV if that helps.

Also forgot to mention that I have a XFS XTR 750 PSU.

Thanks again for your help

Based on the information provided, bottlenecking sounds about right. Those two games are heavy on the CPU and since you got the RX 480 it is unable to keep up and feed the GPU. No easy fix for this one, you'll need a faster CPU. I would aim for something with four cores.

 

[joeblggs]

Based on the information provided, bottlenecking sounds about right. Those two games are heavy on the CPU and since you got the RX 480 it is unable to keep up and feed the GPU. No easy fix for this one, you'll need a faster CPU. I would aim for something with four cores.

Ah OK, my intention is to upgrade the CPU to the i5-4690K I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a problem with the RX 480 beforehand.
So just to clarify, even though the games ran fine on medium settings using the G3258 and the older Radeon Sapphire HD7750 1GB GDDR5 Gpu, no stuttering or framerate drops, that doesn't necessarily mean they would run on exactly the same settings when using the RX 480, where the games seem to run OK for 10 or so seconds then I get a stutter or framerate drop for a couple of seconds then back to normal and so on

My understanding was that with the RX 480 the games would run on the same settings (that I used on the old HD7750 GPU) but would struggle on higher settings due to demand on the CPU.

Thanks