Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" Launched at $199

CREATIVE!11 · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:07

danlightbulb said:
Just picked off a few prices from OCUK for the NVIDIA and AMD card range, reflecting what I think would be the cards to buy (i.e not the cheapest ones available, although for some models there was only one to choose from).

GTX960 - MSI 4GB £158.99
GTX970 - MSI 4GB £249.95
GTX980 - MSI 4GB £275.99
GTX980Ti - MSI 6GB £389.99
GTX1070 - MSI 8GB £409.99
GTX1080 - MSI 8GB £589.99

380 - Sapphire 4GB £149.99
380X - Sapphire 4GB £179.99
390 - Sapphire 8GB £239.99
390X - Sapphire 8GB £259.99
Fury - XFX 4GB £349.99

Here is the new RX480:

480 - Sapphire 8GB £219.95

Ok so it performs better than the GTX970 in many games I believe, but not in others, and it is cheaper. If the AIB cards are cheaper than the GTX970 then ok, that sits almost in the right place against the GTX970, a little high maybe.

On the AMD side it is 390 performance is that what I'm reading? 390 and GTX970 being around equivalent? So against the 390 price the new card seems not to offer any real difference? And it is significantly more expensive than the card it is replacing, the 380/380X.

But if you were spending around £250 on an AIB card, then looking at those prices you would surely be silly not to spend the extra £25 on the GTX980?

Which existing card, or price point, should this new card be being compared to?

That's exactly why I've been debating a 980. Can also oc it.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:08

Rroff said:
I'd forgotten all about that - bit of a fail IMO after the talk from some parties. Not really surprising though IIRC nVidia can massively parallelise certain aspects of geometry setup overcoming limitations in the design by brute force while AMD has a more serialised but dedicated hardware unit for it - the optimisations with Polaris were supposed to massively increase the performance there but looks like the knock on effect on overall performance is less than stellar.

Still a 20% to 30% boost it appears,whereas Hawaii and Fiji are almost the same.

David Bisset · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:12

danlightbulb said:
Just picked off a few prices from OCUK for the NVIDIA and AMD card range, reflecting what I think would be the cards to buy (i.e not the cheapest ones available, although for some models there was only one to choose from).

GTX960 - MSI 4GB £158.99
GTX970 - MSI 4GB £249.95
GTX980 - MSI 4GB £275.99
GTX980Ti - MSI 6GB £389.99
GTX1070 - MSI 8GB £409.99
GTX1080 - MSI 8GB £589.99

380 - Sapphire 4GB £149.99
380X - Sapphire 4GB £179.99
390 - Sapphire 8GB £239.99
390X - Sapphire 8GB £259.99
Fury - XFX 4GB £349.99

Here is the new RX480:

480 - Sapphire 8GB £219.95

Ok so it performs better than the GTX970 in many games I believe, but not in others, and it is cheaper. If the AIB cards are cheaper than the GTX970 then ok, that sits almost in the right place against the GTX970, a little high maybe.

On the AMD side it is 390 performance is that what I'm reading? 390 and GTX970 being around equivalent? So against the 390 price the new card seems not to offer any real difference? And it is significantly more expensive than the card it is replacing, the 380/380X.

But if you were spending around £250 on an AIB card, then looking at those prices you would surely be silly not to spend the extra £25 on the GTX980?

Which existing card, or price point, should this new card be being compared to?

Or compare the 4GB model to the 4GB 980 and 3.5GB 970. At which point it spanks then in perf/dollar. Faster card for £190 vs £250 for the 970, or £276 for the 980 which narrowly beats it. Even in AIB form I expect it to be rather cheaper than a 970 at 4GB if you feel AIB cards are necessary, though with such a lower TDP the cooler as-is isn't such a limitation, which is the normal reason for going AIB in the first place.

LoadsaMoney · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:13

shankly1985 · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:14

LoadsaMoney said:

Your hate against AMD is really shining through lately.

Sasahara · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:14

danlightbulb said:
Ok so it performs better than the GTX970 in many games I believe, but not in others, and it is cheaper. If the AIB cards are cheaper than the GTX970 then ok, that sits almost in the right place against the GTX970, a little high maybe.

But if you were spending around £250 on an AIB card, then looking at those prices you would surely be silly not to spend the extra £25 on the GTX980?

Which existing card, or price point, should this new card be being compared to?

The 970 GeForce GTX 970 OC "Reference Fan" would be a closer comparison.
£210.

I would consider it a fail to buy a card almost 2 years after it's release for almost the same money.

Does the RX 480 give enough improvement over an almost 2 year old card. Obviously Brexit is hurting AMDs thunder, if the £-$ was 1.5 this would be a decent card upgrade at a good price, but now wouldn't a lot of people regret not having brought a GTX 970 20+ months ago and had that 20 months of gaming for the cost of £50 in lost new value?

For people just entering the PC gaming market or those that can only recently afford a card in this price range it's a better deal as they won't have such regrets.

danlightbulb · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:14

CREATIVE!11 said:
That's exactly why I've been debating a 980. Can also oc it.

Yeah.

I was always going to wait for the AIB cards for my purchase. I hope they do eek out a little more performance with the better cooling, more power connectors and manage to keep a decent gap to GTX980 price. £230 is the golden number for me, for an 8GB factory OC'd RX480.

David Bisset said:
Or compare the 4GB model to the 4GB 980 and 3.5GB 970. At which point it spanks then in perf/dollar. Faster card for £190 vs £250 for the 970, or £276 for the 980 which narrowly beats it.

I think as its new gen, 8GB should be expected, so its a fair comparison to compare old 4Gb to new 8Gb, from a consumer/new tech point of view.

Gregster · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:16

shankly1985 said:
Frame times in Tomb Raider advantage for 8gb I say, and reason not to pick 970 over 480.

After be twitter link, on phone can't be bothered looking for site review reporting this.

Take a look at @scottwasson's Tweet: https://twitter.com/scottwasson/status/748162402265403392?s=09

You getting one?

Kaapstad · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:17

Why is there a bandwidth difference between the 4gb and 8gb versions.

David Bisset · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:17

danlightbulb said:
Yeah.
I think as its new gen, 8GB should be expected, so its a fair comparison to compare old 4Gb to new 8Gb, from a consumer/new tech point of view.

Cool, so if you're buying now you'd say "No I won't have newer faster tech for less money as it's new tech so should have been a bigger jump, I'll buy the old one" .... ?

Kaapstad said:
Why is there a bandwidth difference between the 4gb and 8gb versions.

That... is a bit annoying

shankly1985 · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:17

Gregster said:
You getting one?

You must have missed my post where I did say I waiting for AIB GPUs before making the choice.

I don't buy reference designs.

Your point is? :rolleyes:

Orangey · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:18

Seanspeed said:
Which is so ridiculous when they're pushing DX12, where all the multi-GPU works needs to be done by developers on an individual basis. It is no longer handled largely in the drivers like before.

Thank you, I'm smelling a lot of BS.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:20

Sasahara said:
The 970 GeForce GTX 970 OC "Reference Fan" would be a closer comparison.
£210.

I would consider it a fail to buy a card almost 2 years after it's release for almost the same money.

Does the RX 480 give enough improvement over an almost 2 year old card. Obviously Brexit is hurting AMDs thunder, if the £-$ was 1.5 this would be a decent card upgrade at a good price, but now wouldn't a lot of people regret not having brought a GTX 970 20+ months ago and had that 20 months of gaming for the cost of £50 in lost new value?

For people just entering the PC gaming market or those that can only recently afford a card in this price range it's a better deal as they won't have such regrets.

The RX480 4GB was around £175 today,so not sure how £35 cheaper after a 21% stronger pound in 2014,is that bad.

So,£35 cheaper than the GTX970,but as you know the exchange rate in September 2014 was $1.62 to a pound:

http://www.exchangerates.org.uk/GBP-USD-30_09_2014-exchange-rate-history.html

ATM,it is $1.34 to a pound:

http://www.exchangerates.org.uk/Pounds-to-Dollars-currency-conversion-page.html

That is a 21% difference from when the GTX970 was launched in September 2014.

OFC,typical AMD launch timing!!

Kaapstad · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:20

David Bisset said:
Cool, so if you're buying now you'd say "No I won't have newer faster tech for less money as it's new tech so should have been a bigger jump, I'll buy the old one" .... ?

That... is a bit annoying

It could be a bit GTX 970

Simply going from 4gb to 8gb should make no difference to the bandwidth.

FoxEye · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:21

Any more info about these 480s frying cheap motherboards by drawing too much current from the PCI-e slot?

David Bisset · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:24

Kaapstad said:
It could be a bit GTX 970

Simply going from 4gb to 8gb should make no difference to the bandwidth.

If anything 4GB is easier on the memory controller! No idea why the memory is clocked lower on the 4GB models :/

Mr Latte · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:24

So can anyone give me a list of 2016/2017 games that support DX12

TheRealDeal · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:25

Kaapstad said:
It could be a bit GTX 970

Simply going from 4gb to 8gb should make no difference to the bandwidth.

No its just using slower Ram speeds for some reason. It was explained somwhere in this thread. I think it was to give the 8gb version more performance.

TheRealDeal · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:26

David Bisset said:
If anything 4GB is easier on the memory controller! No idea why the memory is clocked lower on the 4GB models :/

Yea it is just lower clocks.

shankly1985 · 29 Jun 2016 at 20:26

Mr Latte said:
So can anyone give me a list of 2016/2017 games that support DX12

Imo most titles going into 2017 will support DX12.