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.
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Hurn - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
The real question, here, is why the R9 380 beats the pants off of the R9 380X in many tests.Example: Dirt Rally 1920x1080 Ultra Quality. The 380 gets 64.3, while the 380X only gets 33.1. Half the speed from a card that's supposed to be faster?? Investigation needed!
Ryan Smith - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Thanks.It looks like I errored when transcribing the results into the database. I've gone through and corrected the charts.
Archie2085 - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
@Ryan Any possibility you can cover whats leakage on this process . Lower Temps leading to lower power draw without reducing clocks??? either changing coolers or lowering ambient temp by blowing cold air??Been seeing posts of disproportionate increase in temps and powerdraw
FourEyedGeek - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I'll wait to RX 490.Locut0s - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
So I guess like the 1080 this will be a "preview" that we will never get an actual review of.pencea - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Yup exactly.Anand still hasn't done a review of both GTX 1070 or 1080, and now the 480. While other major sites have already done both reference and custom reviews, along with SLI testing on the Nvidia cards.
Unacceptable for a site like this.
X-Alt - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Let's look at it this way2900XT->7970->R9 290X->Fury X-???
6970->7950->R9 290->Fury Nano\390X->???
6950->7870->R9 280X->R9 380X->RX480
6870->7850->R9 270X->R9 380->??
All that matters is how the 1060 stacks up
dani_dacota - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Ryan, did you have a separate 4GB card to test or did you switch the vram config in the bios. Reason I ask is because I am wondering if the extra 4GB of vram might be pushing the RX 480 to post power consumption figures as high as the 970 even though the gpu chip itself is more efficient. If the extra 4GB of vram consumes 15-20W of power itself than the power efficiency numbers might improve significantly compared to the 970.FreeKill - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
*Wondering what year we'll get the REAL full version of this GPU as a re-badge* I completely understand chip harvesting to sell the highest percentage of chips out of a fab, But I can't help but be pissed off with AMD about advertising to everyone that this is a fully enabled chip as I highly doubt it is, I believe it has 40 CU's and 2560 SP's and is currently neutered in order to hit their marketing points (power, price) They've done this with virtually every newly released GPU for years now so I should be used to it but time will tell if suddenly there's a 40 CU, GDDR5X Polaris based card in 12 months badged as a 570. I think Tahiti (7970) and Fiji (Fury X) are the only two GPU's they haven't neutered and lied about from day 1Several examples:
Tonga:
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/an...
Hawaii:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=385046
Tams80 - Saturday, July 2, 2016 - link
I don't understand your issues with this, other than perhaps a concern for wasting natural resources.As long as AMD provide what they claim to, at the price they state; then what is the issue? Sure, they could make something better, but that is not the market they have targeted with this product.