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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FriendlyUser - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
Warframe is very, very light on the GPU. I get ~100fps at 1440p with a much older card and almost everything maxed. Try Witcher 3 for a challenge at 4k.Murloc - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
I can play age of empires 2 @4K on a gtx 275 get on my levelQuestor - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
Bandwagon much? One picture and you are already condemning a product that hasn't had a fair chance. You hurt yourself in the long when you subscribe to bandwagon jumping by spreading fanboy-ship; opinions not based on a clear factual completeness, but rather a possible detractor that is as yet unproven across the entirety of the products. Competition serves all of us. It brings prices more under control and forces innovation.mikato - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link
"It's a terrible product. Look at the temps."I don't know about everyone else, but I don't buy my GPUs based on thermal images and point temps. Amirite?
poohbear - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
How is it a bit disappointing??? do you really think most of us are running GTX970s?? The vast majority of people have gtx950 class cards, and this would be a nice step up considering the price.sharath.naik - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
Its disappointing because, 970 can overclock 10-15% sometimes more. You need to look at the thermals to understand that these are like already overclocked from the factory and cannot do more.smartthanyou - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
In no situation will a 10-15% overclock ever produce a performance difference that an end user would notice. In a benchmark application? Sure, numbers will increase but frames in a game will not increase to a point to make a difference.Overclocking 10-15% in almost all cases is pointless.
FriendlyUser - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
All these are reference and have zero electrical margin for overclock. Reviews have shown that the board uses all juice it can and is almost constantly at the limit (or over) of the PCIe slot power delivery! You will only be able to judge overclock in cards with more complicated designs. The chip itself is probably quite variable, being the first of the 14nm AMD generation. Some will overclock well, others wont.wumpus - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
Last I heard, 970 was at the top of the steam surveys (I won't enable whatever kludge they wanted to find out). It isn't a bad goal, but my confidence in AMD shipping it to newegg faster than nvidia can ship an as of yet hypothetical 1060 isn't all that great. Assuming they do, it doesn't really mean they have a long window of "the card to buy at ~$200".A bigger worry is how many of those 970s are going to be hitting the market. Until AMD can claw back some marketshare, there could easily be a used 970 for every new 480 buyer out there. And this is coming from someone who had been assuming that I would get a 390 (or two) and DYI some watercooling for an ideal VR rig (before prices skyrocketed. I'm guessing lose the watercooling and go with nvidia once both VR and nvidia 14nm prices come back to Earth). This card isn't helping AMD all that much.
lunarmit - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
It is, but it's just one card. Add in 1% for the 980, and 1% for the 980 ti and you have ~90% of the cards are powered below that once you factor in the AMD comparables.