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

[Stuka87]

Finally gave up and picked up a PowerColor RX 480 from ComputerUniverse. It was actually the cheapest one, despite being probably the best AIB RX 480 you can get your hands on.

It'll take a week or two to arrive, can't wait to play with this badboy!

Is this the Devil card? Certainly looks like it has the best cooler on it. Sadly it wont fit in my case, so I went with Sapphire.

 

[guskline]

Stuka87, your Sapphire RX480 Nitro+ got good reviews. Heck I was able to snatch a reference Sapphire RX 480 8 g and I'm pleased with it.

 

[f2bnp]

I feel like Sapphire somewhat dropped the ball with their latest Nitro cards. I kind of like the aesthetics and overall sensible size compared to the PowerColor Red Devil, however the performance, thermals and even acoustics are certainly worse. On top of that, most retailers charge extra for the Nitro!

At first, I didn't feel like buying the Red Devil card, I'm just not really keen on just how large the card is, nor am I really fond of the whole "DEVIL" theme. Feels a little too edgy. But then again, it was the cheapest and probably best performing card of the bunch and my case doesn't have a window. Once it is in there, I won't be seeing it often, so who cares.

 

[IEC]

Looks like Jet.com has several RX480s at around $200 and $250 for the 4GB and 8GB custom cards with TRIPLE15 or SHOP15 code - sometimes less if you are a first time customer (SHOP10 code). Availability, particularly of 4GB RX 480s seems to be getting better.

 

[bononos]

Can't decide on the 470 or 480, is the slight hit performance-wise still ok for the 470?
And I suppose 4Gb is still ok for high/vh settings at 1080 for a reasonable time, since I'm not too bothered about special texture packs.

 

[zinfamous]

Can't decide on the 470 or 480, is the slight hit performance-wise still ok for the 470?
And I suppose 4Gb is still ok for high/vh settings at 1080 for a reasonable time, since I'm not too bothered about special texture packs.

I wouldn't worry about the overall performance difference between the two if price is your main concern. And if ultra texture settings are of no concern to you, then 4gb should be plenty for some time now. It remains to be seen, though, what the quality and demands of "medium" "low" "high" textures mean in the coming years, in comparison to today's "ultra" or "very high" or whatever.

What I mean to say is, thinking about how when I was growing up, an "extra large" beverage at McDonald's is today's "medium" or even "small."

When Skyrim was released in 2011, the official Ultra HD texture pack that came out a few months later, was labeled as 2k textures and needed roughly 2gb VRAM minimum to run. Apparently, the "Skyrim HD" release that is coming out next month (free for those with Legendary edition) use 4K+ textures and, I think, using some of the best EMB mods from the community and should require ~5gb+ VRAM. This provides a nice benchmark of how yesterday's high end is very much now the "medium-end" in the very same game, 5 years later.

Today's ultra texture packs tend to bottom out at "4K" and require roughly 3-4gb minimum, while the newest DX12 offerings are demanding 5-7gb minimums. (Some have posted that Doom is consuming up to 7gb of VRAM?).

That being said, I would be surprised if medium/lowest texture packs are pushing more than 4gb over the next couple of years.