Gaming Performance, Continued

The Witcher 3 - 2560x1440 - Ultra Quality (No Hairworks)

The Witcher 3 - 1920x1080 - Ultra Quality (No Hairworks)

The Division - 2560x1440 - Ultra Quality

The Division - 1920x1080 - Ultra Quality

Grand Theft Auto V - 2560x1440 - Very High Quality

Grand Theft Auto V - 1920x1080 - Very High Quality

Grand Theft Auto V - 99th Percentile Framerate - 2560x1440 - Very High Quality

Grand Theft Auto V - 99th Percentile Framerate - 1920x1080 - Very High Quality

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.

Hitman - 2560x1440 - Ultra Quality (DX11)

Hitman - 1920x1080 - Ultra Quality (DX11)

Hitman - 2560x1440 - Ultra Quality (DX12)

Hitman - 1920x1080 - Ultra Quality (DX12)

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.

Gaming Performance Power, Temperature, & Noise
Comments Locked

449 Comments

View All Comments

  • TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link

    So it cant to 60FPS constant at 1080p, but it CAN do 90FPS constant at 2160x1200? Did you fail math?
  • Sushisamurai - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link

    I think the point of yojimbo's post is that it should be able to hit 90fps @2160x1200 at medium to low settings. It can't hit 60FPS at ultra high settings at 1080p
  • Yojimbo - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link

    Yes exactly. Ironically, math is my area of expertise.
  • cocochanel - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link

    You must be smarter than the engineers at AMD. They said this card was designed for VR, they would not make such a claim if the card did not deliver. 3-4x higher performance ? Where do you live ?
  • CiccioB - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link

    In a world where marketing claims results to be false for most of the times.
    Wasn't Polaris 10 going to have 2.5x efficiency gain vs GCN? An AMD engineer told that as well. And has even put it on a slide.
    I just saw 40% gain. While Pascal gained more than 60% over Maxwell. Which was still 40% better than GCN.
    If an AMD engineer tells you that this card can fly, would you accelerate the fan at the level to try that claim? You know, an engineer has told you that it can! And it was an AMD engineer, nothing less!
  • FriendlyUser - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link

    Perf/W would be much better if they had used GDDR5X, which they did not, for cost reasons. HBM is even more power efficient. Then you have the board itself, which probably is not as electrically sophisticated as the much more expensive nVidia 1080 board. Finally, you don't know which of the two process technologies is better for perf/W (two different foundries). In the end, I don't think the chip design is the main difference.
  • Yojimbo - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link

    The RX 480's perf/W is really no better than the GTX 970, which uses GDDR 5 RAM like the RX 480 as well as a 28nm process compared with the 14nm process of the RX 480. I do think the architecture is the main difference. Polaris 10's architecture seems to be significantly less efficient than Maxwell's, after accounting for the advantage of the 14nm process of the RX 480. Pascal is even more efficient architecturally than Maxwell.
  • Meteor2 - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link

    The 1080/1070 take the performance/power crown. But the 480 comfortably takes the performance/price crown. What's interesting is that the 1080 isn't quite fast enough for AAA titles at 4K and the 1070 sits in no man's land, while the 480 runs AAA and 1080p and does VR. It's clear which option is the solid buy.
  • Yojimbo - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link

    Yes the RX 480 will take the performance/price crown assuming supply can keep up with demand, but for how long? The GTX 1060 will be out in a month or two and be very competitive in price/performance.

    The 1080 is fast enough for AAA titles at 4K if one doesn't max out the settings. A similar thing can be said for the 1070. Also similar is RX 480's VR claim. It can only manage VR gaming when settings are not maxed out. Are you a console gamer or you just have selective memory? This paragraph should be redundant for a PC gamer.
  • Demibolt - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link

    Not here to argue, just fact checking.

    GTX 970 can be purchased for ~$240 from several online retailers (less if you get a used one from ebay). Given the close performance figures between the 2 cards and the inevitable price-drop that will happen with the GTX 970, It is objectively too soon to say the price/performance benefit of one cards beats out the other.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now