AMD Polaris Thread: Radeon RX 480, RX 470 & RX 460 launching June 29th

[krumme]

Except the 480 only has a uncontested window against NV perhaps as small as a week, and they botched the reference cooler and perf/W badly enough that anybody looking for their magic $200 card would be wise to wait and see for the 1060.

A 1060 for 200 usd? Next up in line is 400? I dont think so. 240 is my bet. And 290 for the 6 g version

Secondly my guess gf is printing those cards like mad because thats what they can do. We could see prices go down. Its great gf is in game. Wait and see. Nv is competing with apple and the likes for capacity its a hell and its reflected in price.

 

[HiroThreading]

People are stupid. Like paying a 10000$ plus premium for a Prius while needing to drive the damn thing over 150k miles to get anywhere close to a return on investment.

I think the card is great, and will recommend it to anyone around $200-50. For people complaining, they are either Nvidia users who have an allegiance (never understood that) or people whom expected a Ferrari at Honda prices.

I make a pretty good salary, and feel that I'm an enthusiast for pc gaming. I will not, and am not a person that spends money on $400 cards to only dispose of them two years later. I feel I'm in the minority on these forums, but every single one of my friends have purchased a 960 or 280 due to the price.

Price for performance remains supreme and should be for all enthusiast. For those that want a Ferrari, go and buy it, but please stop with the crap about the best card for your money in many years.

Well said.

It's also hilarious that people are deeming the RX 480 as a failure because it consumes roughly 40 watts more than expected. I mean come one, what a joke. An enthusiast forum where people run things way above spec, and suddenly 150w as opposed to 110w is a huge deal.

The RX 480 has the best perf/$ of any card on the market. This alone means that it's A ranked product.

Bit of a side note, but I bet a lot of the people trashing the RX 480 had no problem jumping in glee over the GeForce GTX 480, which consumed a good 100 watts more than expected, and was an absolute dust buster of a card.

 

[Elixer]

I don't care about perf/watt itself but in how it ties into the flagship card(s) down the line. That's because AMD/NV are both limited by the die size and upper end power usage. If NV wins in perf/watt by 50%+, it means AMD will need a much larger die to keep up. This time NV already tapped out a 610mm2 GP100, which means AMD won't have any die size advantage to play with. Even if GP102 has a 450mm2 die, AMD is going to need to make up A LOT of ground in perf/watt to have any chance to be as fast as Big Pascal. I am not counting on it.

I would be really curious to know how much this has to do with GloFlo's process.
I think the 480 is using 14nm LPP, and the mobile versions would be using 14nm LPE, but, obviously, those aren't performing as well as has been advertised.

Since FinFETS were supposed to reduce power by up to 150%, something in GloFlo's process has required AMD to use much more voltage than planned to overcome something. It might be leakage, or something else.

 

[Janooo]

Curiously the card does worse relative to Hawaii in DX12:

www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/72889-radeon-rx480-8gb-performance-review-24.html

It was all around slower than a Radeon R9 390 in the Hardware Canucks review.

So 480 is almost 30% faster than 970 and 10% faster than 980 in DX12.
I didn't know that NV cards were that bad.
It appears the custom 480's will be faster than 390X as well.
480 is going to be a good card for long time.

 

[antihelten]

I highly doubt that the PCI-e power connector is only pulling 75W with the rest coming from the slot. Most likely it's the same 20-30W from the slot you see from most designs, and the bulk from the PCI-e slot.

Tom's measured the 480 as drawing 86W from the PCIe slot (with the remaining 76W coming from the 6-pin connector)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-10,4616-9.html

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

As disappointed as I first was I luckily came to my senses and bought the $199 4gb version. I don't need a $400 1070 for the little gaming I do. I wanted more from the card, sure. For $200 and the ability to run any game at 1080p at max I think I got a hell of a deal.

 

[maddie]

I'm curious how much 14nm of Samsung/GlobalFoundries affects power consumption of RX 480?
Wouldn't it be better for AMD if they could stick with 16nm of TSMC?

Btw, looks like undervolting decreases power consumption quite nicely, like it already happened in the past with their CPU/GPU.

Power consumption is a disaster. Way past expected.

The only thing I find strange is that undervolting helps at all. With the following technologies, adaptive clocking, AVFS and BTC, there should not be any extra voltage to allow undervolting and maintain performance. I am thinking the control algorithms for the above are screwed and thus the present drivers. Which still does not explain the vast variation in power measurements between review sites.

 

[krumme]

I would be really curious to know how much this has to do with GloFlo's process.
I think the 480 is using 14nm LPP, and the mobile versions would be using 14nm LPE, but, obviously, those aren't performing as well as has been advertised.

Since FinFETS were supposed to reduce power by up to 150%, something in GloFlo's process has required AMD to use much more voltage than planned to overcome something. It might be leakage, or something else.

Yeaa whatever the reason - and surely there is a 20% deficit vs realitically expected for 480 usage and it is interesting - its of zero importance for desktop buyers.

Seconly. Gf having trouble improving samsung process is not the biggest suprise in years. The oposite would have been.

Now i think i won the zen bet for freq as i was absolutely lowest. Lol. People will go crazy and scream about the hype train but on a cpu they need to keep that good efficiency or they wont hit the 95w tdp.

The problem for amd is mobile and it can mean they get nowhere there and its a huge blow. The interesting is what happens when this 480 is underclocked? What do we know here?

 

[sze5003]

Here is a review for you including the 7970 at 1440p in some benchmarks

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_r9_rx_480_8gb_review,1.html

In short about 1.5x as fast

Thank you will read this when done work. Looks good enough for my upgrade itch for now. Also just read the atot review and looked at those graphs.

As disappointed as I first was I luckily came to my senses and bought the $199 4gb version. I don't need a $400 1070 for the little gaming I do. I wanted more from the card, sure. For $200 and the ability to run any game at 1080p at max I think I got a hell of a deal.

Let me know how it runs for you. I'd be interested in how loud and hot it gets. Looks like I'll get an 8gb AIB model then.

 

[SlitheryDee]

What would have been the last gen AMD $199 card? Was it the R9 380? Looking at benchmarks, it seems like anyone going from a 380 would be well satisfied. There was a huge gap between the R9 380 and the R9 390. Looks like it averages well better than a 50% improvement. Getting 390 level performance for the same price is quite the upgrade IMO. For the longest time that was the kind of graphics card consumer I was. Just hitting up the next gen offering at the same ~200 price point over and over again.

I don't know what the 390 debuted at, but it looks like it hovers around the $300 mark now, so getting that level of performance for $70-100 cheaper is still preferable. If you think about it the 1070 is in a similar, perhaps even less favorable, situation with the 980Ti after the latter's prices started coming down.

For that specific subset of gamers who are riding the mainstream pricing train every generation this looks satisfactory to me, if not quite what the hype made it out to be.

 

[96Firebird]

As disappointed as I first was I luckily came to my senses and bought the $199 4gb version. I don't need a $400 1070 for the little gaming I do. I wanted more from the card, sure. For $200 and the ability to run any game at 1080p at max I think I got a hell of a deal.

Not sure how it will effect performance, but the 4GB models have slower memory. 7GHz on 4GB vs 8GHz on 8GB.

 

[Midwayman]

To boot, 480 is only getting 21-22 MH/s in mining tests, which was the other thing people were excited about it for. That's slower than the midrange Hawaii cards and WAY slower than the 390. More reason to be glad if you didn't wait.

Its good news for people with hawaii cards for sure. Means strong used prices. Might trade in my 290 for a Rx 480 just to get the updated standards.

 

[krumme]

Its good news for people with hawaii cards for sure. Means strong used prices. Might trade in my 290 for a Rx 480 just to get the updated standards.

Its good for all except miners. Lol. Its would be hell if we had those reapers all over stock for 2 months.

 

[Rvenger]

We're not having two threads on this anymore. It appears that the OP posted the links that are already in the reviews thread. I am not keeping this one open any longer, it is pointless.

-Rvenger