The AMD Radeon RX 480 Preview: Polaris Makes Its Mainstream Mark
by Ryan Smith on June 29, 2016 9:00 AM ESTGaming Performance, Continued
While AMD’s launch drivers for the RX 480 have by and large been stable, the one outlier here has been Grand Theft Auto V. In the current drivers there is an issue that appears to affect the game’s built-in benchmark on GCN 1.1 and later cards, causing stuttering, reduced performance, and in the case of the 380X, complete crashes. AMD has told me that they’ve discovered the issue as well and will be issuing a fixed driver, but it was not ready in time for the review.
Continuing our look at gaming performance, it’s becoming increasingly clear that RX 480 trends closely to the last generation Radeon R9 390 and the GeForce GTX 970. Given their architectural similarity, in a lot of ways this is a repeat of 390 vs 970 in general; the two cards are sometimes equal, and sometimes far apart. But in the end, on average, they are close together on our 2016 benchmark suite.
For mainstream video card users, this means that last year’s enthusiast-level performance has come down to mainstream prices.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
449 Comments
View All Comments
Chris A. - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
To replace my 7850 on my 1080p monitors maxed out at 60 Hz, it's an absolute winner.proxopspete - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
That's where I am... just need a non-stock coolercatavalon21 - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
I too have the 7850. I still would like to see some basic compute numbers for both, but yeah, this would handily fill the role for gaming...SunnyNW - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
Others with 7850s...Did you notice that the FPS numbers for the 7850 seemed a little on the low side... Going back and testing I easily get around 30 fps at 1080p in the games where it was showing in the 20s. Does the choice of OS make a performance difference? Between Win 7/8/10?Laxaa - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Same here. Now I'm debating if it's wise to go with the 8GB version, or if I should spring for the 4GB one and save money. I'll eventually get a 4K display, but that will mostly be because of work.HollyDOL - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
eww, that's not really stellar, given the charts now GTX-1060 will likely have it for breakfast...D. Lister - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
If I were Nvidia, at this point I would probably take half a 1070, factory-OC the bejeezus out of it, add 6GB gddr5, slap on a $150 MSRP and call it a day. :pChris A. - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
Remember that die size on the 1070 is 40-50% larger than the RX480, so their margin is going to be smaller to reach that price point.Yojimbo - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Yeah there's no reason to use GP104 when they have GP106 for that purpose.Ananke - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
NVidia has never in its history "slapped" $150 when they can put $300 price tag. At best, whenever such thing as GTX1050 happen, it may be around $200 mark for half of this performance. NVidia will never cannibalize its prices, they sell their 1070/1080 with markup easily anyway. There is no reason for them to not have markup on 1060/1050 as well.