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Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" Launched at $199

I've been hearing some worrying stuff about the power-draw exceeding PCI-E and 6-pin limits. Could this be remedied in a driver update or could I manually limit these in the AMD Crimsen software?
 
FoxEye said:
Only nV cards recently got a price drop.

The 380 has been, what, £170-£180 forever* :p (when I looked, months ago).

Some nV cards got a decent drop in the last few weeks, but even before that, a 390 was £240 for ages. Months.

So again, I have to ask, who is the £240+ 8gb 480 aimed at? The 4gb is OK; not earth shattering. But the 8gb - where is its market? Who is its market?
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The 380 starts at the £149, before special offers. And as I already said, the 8gb version is taking the position of the 380x as the in-between card, the upper mid-range. The high end, the 390/x successor, is yet to appear but that doesn't mean AMD could've positioned the 480 as it.

I mean, come on, the name itself should give you enough clues as to what card it intends to replace. 380->480. No 480x but two different variants 4gb/8gb? Well guess which one is replacing the 380x!
 
As a new gpu purchaser im confused by all this.

I was going to buy the 380 card before i heard about the 480 and decided to wait. Now it turns out that the next gen card hasn't moved performance on very much and costs about £50 more than the 380 would have.

Im left now wondering what to buy. To me its not good enough that a next gen card cannot outshine its previous gen rival with ease.
 
Poneros said:
The 380 starts at the £149, before special offers. And as I already said, the 8gb version is taking the position of the 380x as the in-between card, the upper mid-range. The high end, the 390/x successor, is yet to appear but that doesn't mean AMD could've positioned the 480 as it.

I mean, come on, the name itself should give you enough clues as to what card it intends to replace. 380->480. No 480x but two different variants 4gb/8gb? Well guess which one is replacing the 380x!
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The launch price of the 380 was £180 ish wasn't it. And it's been £180 for a while.

So I'm actually doing a favour to the 480 4gb by using that price. I'm not accounting for EOL price drops at all.

The 8gb at £240 is just plain bad value from a new node. The 28nm 390 has been £240 for months, and months. And won't fry your motherboard ;)
 
danlightbulb said:
As a new gpu purchaser im confused by all this.

I was going to buy the 380 card before i heard about the 480 and decided to wait. Now it turns out that the next gen card hasn't moved performance on very much and costs about £50 more than the 380 would have.

Im left now wondering what to buy. To me its not good enough that a next gen card cannot outshine its previous gen rival with ease.
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??? The R9 380 4GB is £150 to £160. OcUK had the RX480 4GB for £175 and plonked it up another £10. According to TPU its around 40% faster than an R9 280X/R9 380X which is a similar price.

The 8GB model has some weird pricing in comparison.
 
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Bantu said:
If the partner cards are at £300 they won't sell. There's no justifying those prices, even if it does end up overclocking like a beast. This should remain at 970/390 price points.

As said before at £175 it's almost a no-brainer. I suspect there was a miscalculation in the relative demand for 4gb vs 8gb, hence the price premium, but this is something we will never know.
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Of course they will be!

The ref 480 8gb is £240! The AIB cards with better cooling, power power circuitry... you can add on £30 for that no sweat.

We're looking at £270 for AIB custom cards. The ASUS will be £290 ish, count on it ;)
 
danlightbulb said:
As a new gpu purchaser im confused by all this.

I was going to buy the 380 card before i heard about the 480 and decided to wait. Now it turns out that the next gen card hasn't moved performance on very much and costs about £50 more than the 380 would have.

Im left now wondering what to buy. To me its not good enough that a next gen card cannot outshine its previous gen rival with ease.
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The 480 is significantly better than the 380 and is only going to improve.

@FoxEye: We were talking about market positioning, not value. That's a different conversation.
 
480 is a replacement for the 380, so in that respect it's a win as it's about twice as fast. It's basically brought 390 series performance to the X80 bracket for a lower price.

It's just not very good for everyone who is already on a 290/390/970, as there is a large gulf between the RX480 at £180-£230 to the 1070 at £380-£430.
 
I have a feeling performance over the next month will increase and considering it's a 380 replacement it's not bad.

I do feel underwhelmed though as it is the highest performance offering AMD have currently and I think I will wait.
 
danlightbulb said:
As a new gpu purchaser im confused by all this.

I was going to buy the 380 card before i heard about the 480 and decided to wait. Now it turns out that the next gen card hasn't moved performance on very much and costs about £50 more than the 380 would have.

Im left now wondering what to buy. To me its not good enough that a next gen card cannot outshine its previous gen rival with ease.
Click to expand...

One of the best reviews for you is on Eurogamer.

Here is what they say regards a growing number of people migrating to PC from console. Not a topic in here many will relate to but popular current trend. Why AMD did not use this instead of the PR for VR situation who knows.

"The benchmarks speak for themselves, but what we haven't really talked about is the actual experience of using the RX 480. What it offers is exactly the kind of experience that we loved about the R9 390 and the GTX 970 - the ability to take the games we enjoyed on console and just get a much better experience playing them on PC.

Take Grand Theft Auto 5, for example - it's capped at 30fps on PS4 and Xbox One, like a great many other titles. The RX 480 paired with a modestly priced Core i5 6500 and cheap 2133MHz RAM sees it running at 1080p60 with improved image quality. Star Wars Battlefront? Ramp everything up to ultra and once again you're locked at 1080p60 - a nice upgrade from the lower quality and 900p resolution found on PS4. The Witcher 3? Set everything to high, turn off HairWorks and once again you're gaming at 1080p60. In a world where the consoles set the baseline, it's the PC that takes those games to the next level. What's brilliant about the RX 480 is that buying into this excellent experience is now $100-$130 cheaper than it was.

And by extension, you still get good 1440p performance and yes, AMD has delivered the most cost-effective GPU for a premium VR experience. That's a key sell for the red team, but in a world where the headsets are so hugely expensive, we're not sure it's the most compelling use-case scenario for this product. This is for the players - which may also explain why the same GPU technology, albeit downclocked, is almost certainly set to feature in the upcoming PlayStation Neo..."
 
Gregster said:
I will but that doesn't make sense, unless the card is throttling of course due to the heat but I will see what is what and take it from there.
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I would expect this to be the case... undervolt to avoid the throttling so you get more consistent performance at a (presumably) lower boost clock.

I'm getting mine tomorrow too and am very curious about the noise side of the equation.

I wonder why the lone 6-pin connector on the card... is it purely a price thing? or were they trying to prove their low power consumption (and slightly failing...)
 
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