Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" Launched at $199

[dragos1977]

Will this be an improvement over my 7950 at 1440?

 

[h4rm0ny]

Surely they could've done that later. They needed something around 1080 level to help push the brand and give Nvidia a right bashing, but instead they release this disappointment.

Who ever makes the decisions at AMD needs to be fired

One of the primary aims of the new architecture is mobile devices. Polaris delivers mid-range desktop graphics at an efficiency great enough that it can beat out Nvidia in laptops. That is AMD's biggest goal with Polaris because this is the biggest market. People on forums like this forget that for every enthusiast buying a discrete GPU, there are thousands of laptops being sold.

Polaris is likely to be a big success and the decision makers at AMD are doing fine, imo. Plus, this should still sell very well. Releasing in the mid-range is a very fine strategy and the only real problem is people not understanding that and insisting on comparing it to things above it in the market place. This replaces the 380/285 (which I have). It looks like it could double performance and has new features I want. By that measure, it's a good card.

 

[implosiveturnip]

do the 470 & 460 release today as well then? I'm actually looking forward what they can bring to my HTPC as my current ddr3 6670 is a bit poo tbf.

I'm just hoping AIBs will do some half height cards like the 750ti... otherwise its a 750ti for me ;_;

 

[Seanspeed]

Will this be an improvement over my 7950 at 1440?

Yes, definitely.

 

[RavenXXX2]

Will this be an improvement over my 7950 at 1440?

Yes. A big improvement.

 

[HAz]

Wow, one is listed at £218 actually and you know already these went up £20 due to the pound, which means the 1060 will also go up £20, as will any new stock of 970/980, 390/390x/1080/1070/980ti/960.... etc.

Who cares, end of day people expected it to beat a 970 at least and it fails, for £240 there is better ways to spend your money

 

[harney]

ITS A MID RANGE CARD.

AMD ALWAYS SAID THEY WERE GOING FOR MID RANGE, VEGA IS HIGH END NEXT YEAR.

SHUT UP

O.K.

 

[eddyr]

couple of questions if spomeone doesn't mind, the brands all have different prices, why? Any reason?

Why would the extra 4gb not make a difference at 1440p?

Whatever they feel they can get away with. If they sell then they make a bit more profit. Some may offer longer warranty or better support which you could argue adds to costs and justifies a slightly higher price.

The extra 4GB may not have a chance to be useful as the GPU does not have the performance to run the more graphically intensive settings at playable frame rates.

 

[Radeon Wattman]

The 4GB is looking like a great deal. Should keep me going until Vega

 

[jimjiminy]

Will the 4Gb be a big improvement on a 280X Toxic at 1080 & 1440?

 

[Diagro]

Who cares, end of day people expected it to beat a 970 at least and it fails, for £240 there is better ways to spend your money

yea you can buy old cards, which will loose support soon and have less advanced tech built in.

Thats a great idea.

 

[Yutang13]

The dealbreaker for me right now on the RX 480 - performance aside - is the lack of an active DVI port, can't run 120hz without it.

I know how it feels I have a 144Hz monitor that you have to use Dual link Dvi with. Won't a DisplayPort to DVI adapter work?

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah,not sure why the 8GB one is so expensive.

 

[RavenXXX2]

4GB price is good, keep it that way.

 

[Toss3]

couple of questions if spomeone doesn't mind, the brands all have different prices, why? Any reason?

Why would the extra 4gb not make a difference at 1440p?

Because it doesn't on the 290,290x, 390, 390x which are all basically on the same level of performance. Only chance you'll run into a memory wall is if you plan on using crossfire. Even at 4K you'll probably have a hard time noticing a difference. And if you do run into a ram-issue you can always lower the texture resolution.

Source

 

[Diagro]

Will the 4Gb be a big improvement on a 280X Toxic at 1080 & 1440?

massive

 

[drunkenmaster]

AGAIN, I'm not saying I expected that same performance leap! I am saying that this sort of jump is hugely minor by comparison.

If you dont like the Nvidia example, I can use AMD. A 7870 *beat* a top-line 6970. The leap wasn't quite as big as Nvidia's, but it was still significant.


380X money for 390 performance is nice, but I'm not exactly going to say I'm hugely impressed.

The 7870 was 212mm^2, the 6970 was 389mm^2. RX480 is 232mm^2, Fury X is 600mm62, hawaii is 438mm^2.

The 7870 had a 256bit bus and was a 190W card, the 6970 was a 256bit bus and was a 200W card and they had nearly identical performance.

Now, how fast do you think the 7870 would have been if the 6970 was 15% bigger, and the 7870 used 80W instead of 190W(a similar power difference as RX480 vs Hawaii)?

In reality, the RX480 has huge power reduction rather than going high end for power usage, there is also a fair amount of unused but turned on transistors that in games hopefully quite soon will start making their presence worthwhile, which this gen with DX12 already available and devs working with it, will be far far easier than trying to get new hardware features working through DX11 which required api support for a feature or extensive, difficult and often not worthwhile work arounds.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

This may or may not be in error, but anyone noticed OcUK listing the 4GB as 7000MHz memory, whilst 8GB as 8000MHz?

 

[styuR]

I know how it feels I have a 144Hz monitor that you have to use Dual link Dvi with. Won't a DisplayPort to DVI adapter work?

They look to cost a fair amount.

 

[Diagro]

The 7870 was 212mm^2, the 6970 was 389mm^2. RX480 is 232mm^2, Fury X is 600mm62, hawaii is 438mm^2.

The 7870 had a 256bit bus and was a 190W card, the 6970 was a 256bit bus and was a 200W card and they had nearly identical performance.

Now, how fast do you think the 7870 would have been if the 6970 was 15% bigger, and the 7870 used 80W instead of 190W?

You wont get through to him