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Official AMD Polaris Review Thread: Radeon RX 480, RX 470, and RX 460

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rsndetre said:
I noticed the prices dropping for last generation cards and so I made a performance/price comparison between GTX960, GTX970, RX 480 and GTX 1060.

I used Tomshardware for benchmarks and I eliminated the tests that seem to show poor scaling with the GPUs or skewed results in favor of AMD or nVidia. Out of 8 DX11 games I was left with only 4.
Hitman was showing better performance in general, under AMD cards.
Project CARS had more love for nVidia.
The Division and The Witcher 3 are not scaling well (CPU bottleneck ? dunno ...)

The prices are in euro without vat, cheapest cards on the market. The performances are relative to GTX 970.

Code: 
         |       |        DX12          |        DX11	       |
GPUs     | Price | Perf.   | FPS/Price  | Perf.	  | FPS/Price  |
----------------------------------------------------------------
GTX 960  | 131	 |  62.91% |   0.205    |  61.33% |   0.425    |
GTX 970  | 212	 | 100.00% |   0.201    | 100.00% |   0.428    |
RX 480   | 256	 | 112.91% |   0.188    |  90.45% |   0.321    |
GTX 1060 | 259	 | 107.75% |   0.177    | 107.73% |   0.378    |

Seems to me this is a good time to buy a GTX 970.

Another thing to mention. Very few models of RX480 were available (3-4 models, but I don't know about actual quantities) and were sold in 2-3 days.
GTX 1060 came with a lot of models and now are almost all out of stock (to be available again in few days).
Click to expand...

Judging by what's happened regularly with nVidia. Driver optimizations for Maxwell in new games is due to stop when GP102 releases. You won't be liking the 970 when that happens.
 
rsndetre said:
Seems to me this is a good time to buy a GTX 970.
Click to expand...

With that card falling off the cliff by December of this year, I can think of better ways to throw away $200.

Seems like 1060 is the better overall buy if you want great performance in yesterday's api for the next ~year.
 
I keep hearing the argument with DX 12.
DX12 is not an issue and will not be for years. Some of the mainstream games only recently migrated to DX11. Some are on older APIs.

Even so, I expect GTX970 to match RX470 in DX12 games but to provide much much better DX11 performance. Basicly I could buy a new GTX970 now for what RX470 is rumored to cost.

My only dilema is:
- should I buy GTX970 now
- wait for prices to drop on GTX1060 and RX 480.

... but , last time bitcoin miners bought AMD products, the market didn't recover for months.
 
rsndetre said:
I noticed the prices dropping for last generation cards and so I made a performance/price comparison between GTX960, GTX970, RX 480 and GTX 1060.

I used Tomshardware.
Click to expand...

Stop right there, you had to discard so many games because of crazy bias. Come on, Toms included such old games, who plays Metro anymore. Project Cars? Why, when Forza 6 kills it for visuals, performance and driving sim?

Try your comparison again using Computerbase.de, proper testing of games in APIs that they run the best at, as well as real testing of GPUs inside a gaming case, after a warm up period.

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-07...hnitt_benchmarks_in_1920__1080_und_2560__1440

Your DX12 comparison needs a bigger sample size than available at Toms.

http://www.golem.de/news/geforce-gt...ingen-direct3d-12-und-vulkan-1607-122214.html


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The GTX 970 is well behind 1060 and 480 in Quantum Break & Forza. An example with side by side video gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRkhA5V1qXU
 
rsndetre said:
I keep hearing the argument with DX 12.
DX12 is not an issue and will not be for years. Some of the mainstream games only recently migrated to DX11. Some are on older APIs.
Click to expand...

How many games are in the benchmark you referenced at Toms? 8?

Yeah. How many AAA games per year are released for PC? Only a handful. The rest are low graphics, indie titles, etc where the GPU isn't very important cos these games simply do not have the budget to push graphics to the max.

Wanna count how many games in the next few months are in DX12 and major AAA titles?

More than some review site's entire benchmark suite.

Let's face it, we PC gamers buy GPUs to play only a handful of AAA titles each year. That's the reality. As long as many AAA titles are going DX12 or Vulkan, it's a key factor for future proofing of GPUs. Nobody cares about the rest of the low budget games because they do not impact GPU benchmarks.
 
Silverforce11 said:
Stop right there, you had to discard so many games because of crazy bias. Come on, Toms included such old games, who plays Metro anymore. Project Cars? Why, when Forza 6 kills it for visuals, performance and driving sim?
Click to expand...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-pascal,4679.html


I didn't go for more reviews because I was lazy tbh. If someone wants to compare performance across more sites and games, is welcome.

I saw a comparison on reddit but ... I get the feeling that many titles that have some sort of problems are included.

Edit: just as a side note. I don't know about Forza, don't care much about it.
I'm playing WoT, CS:Go, Overwatch, Hearthstone. These are my games.
From time to time I'm playing something like Skyrim or I would like to play The Witcher 3. But I didn't want to spoil the experience with my GTX660.

GTX960 was cut down too much for my taste. Had better hopes with the migration to 14nm/16nm but AMD/nVidia decided to jack up the prices. I was expecting something in the price range of GTX960 but to perform like RX480.
 
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Silverforce11 said:
Some very interesting die shot of Polaris 11:

Sapphire-Radeon-RX-460-Dual-2.jpg


Does anybody know what's interesting with this?!

GloFo made Polaris 10, it's USA plant. Why does this have a Made in Taiwan stamp on the die itself? 😵

http://www.globalfoundries.com/about/vision-mission-values/globalfoundries-fast-facts

Is there a Samsung 14nm FF production in Taiwan??
Click to expand...

AMD didn't trust GloFlo with their precious mobile chip. If they changed their plant at some point guy who made that call needs a medal.

Here is to hoping Vega, and for their own success Zen, is not a GloFlo product.
 
Well I think we can put to rest this idea of AIBs doing a better job with their versions of the RX480

power1.png


A full 80 watts more than the 1060, for less performance. The RX480 doesnt even beat the 970 in terms of performance per watt.

nitro-480-power-draw-100673121-large.png
 
sm625 said:
Well I think we can put to rest this idea of AIBs doing a better job with their versions of the RX480

<SNIP>

A full 80 watts more than the 1060, for less performance. The RX480 doesnt even beat the 970 in terms of performance per watt.

<SNIP>
Click to expand...

It's GCN 1.0 vs Kepler all over again. RX 480 was possibly the worst foot to put forward after singing about efficiency for the last few months. The switch and bait "we meant the RX 470" isn't helping their cause.
 
railven said:
It's GCN 1.0 vs Kepler all over again. RX 480 was possibly the worst foot to put forward after singing about efficiency for the last few months. The switch and bait "we meant the RX 470" isn't helping their cause.
Click to expand...

Well it's a big step for them, Hawaii vs Maxwell was much much worse.

jJZoH9P.jpg


As for performance:

7fSLIUU.jpg


Power usage for Asus 480 is onpar with custom 1060. Performance is single digit % different. Pretty close and these guys didn't include the other DX12 titles. 😉

Guess what happens when they throw in a few more DX12 titles in their benchmark suite? We'll see it in a few months.
 
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sm625 said:
Well I think we can put to rest this idea of AIBs doing a better job with their versions of the RX480

A full 80 watts more than the 1060, for less performance. The RX480 doesnt even beat the 970 in terms of performance per watt.
Click to expand...

This has been explained over and over on many forums. Unless AMD rips all the compute and ACEs out of their cards (like nVidia did), GCN is not going to sip power like nVidia chips do. The architectures are just different.

But 480 has 390 performance for WAY less power consumption.
 
Silverforce11 said:
Normally that's the stamp on the package.

Stamp on the die *usually* is from source of production.
Click to expand...

Stamp on the package is for the place where package was done, if the die has been manufactured elsewhere you ll see the mention "diffused in germany" for instance like for some AMD s APUs, of course all products do not have this mention.

182790_2254_draft_large.jpg
 
Silverforce11 said:
Well it's a big step for them, Hawaii vs Maxwell was much much worse.

jJZoH9P.jpg


As for performance:

7fSLIUU.jpg


Power usage for Asus 480 is onpar with custom 1060. Performance is single digit % different. Pretty close and these guys didn't include the other DX12 titles. 😉

Guess what happens when they throw in a few more DX12 titles in their benchmark suite? We'll see it in a few months.
Click to expand...

One card vs the rest of the cards. This iteration of Polaris 10 came out as a pig. And users are being told to fiddle with options to address its hunger. I doubt the majority of users will go the extra mile.

Throw in DX12 I'm pretty sure power consumption will go up some more. Unless you think those idle bits won't use power when they get called in to service.
 
railven said:
One card vs the rest of the cards. This iteration of Polaris 10 came out as a pig. And users are being told to fiddle with options to address its hunger. I doubt the majority of users will go the extra mile.

Throw in DX12 I'm pretty sure power consumption will go up some more. Unless you think those idle bits won't use power when they get called in to service.
Click to expand...

If you mean turning the fan up, sure. That will get you the 1266 boost as well. I already tested it and works fine as well.

I don't think it's crazy to adjust a fan profile, but that's just me.
 
Zstream said:
If you mean turning the fan up, sure. That will get you the 1266 boost as well. I already tested it and works fine as well.

I don't think it's crazy to adjust a fan profile, but that's just me.
Click to expand...

Convo is about power draw, not thermal throttling.

If one does the extra steps to crank down the power draw, the fan change isn't necessary.
 
railven said:
Convo is about power draw, not thermal throttling.

If one does the extra steps to crank down the power draw, the fan change isn't necessary.
Click to expand...

For the average consumer you're right. AMD screwed the pooch here by launching the card with overly aggressive voltage profiles and aftermarket cards are hit and miss (just look at the Asus vs. Sapphire power consumption differences).

However you can't really ignore the elephant in the room. Having native hardware support for DX12/Vulcan will *improve* performance per watt per frame for the 480's and likely erase any power efficiency lead the 1060 has.
 
Madpacket said:
For the average consumer you're right. AMD screwed the pooch here by launching the card with overly aggressive voltage profiles and aftermarket cards are hit and miss (just look at the Asus vs. Sapphire power consumption differences).

However you can't really ignore the elephant in the room. Having native hardware support for DX12/Vulcan will *improve* performance per watt per frame for the 480's and likely erase any power efficiency lead the 1060 has.
Click to expand...

Possibly only for DX12/Vulkan games, of which are currently a minority of the catalog of games people will be playing.

Posters are being a tad disingenuous when they keep harping about DX12/Vulkan future potential for a product available now that has to deal with 99% of the games not designed to use its strengths.

It's all good and dandy to "future proof" a purchase, but that is basically the sales slogan AMD has been using for almost a half decade. "Just wait and see."
 
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