Which brand of RX 480 do you like best?

[Vegasus]

I've seen six different brands of RX 480s on Newegg and I wonder what the pros and cons of each are.

Also, is it possible to lower an overclocked model to stock clocks? I think I'll prefer a cooler and quieter card to one that gets 1 or 2 more FPS. I'd prefer to buy one with standard clocks but it seems factory overclocked cards are popular.

 

[raghu78]

MSI Gaming series is outstanding in terms of build quality, fan noise and GPU temps. its the best Rx 480 card for sure. Even on Nvidia GPUs MSI Gaming is very good.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/RX_480_Gaming_X/22.html

 

[Bacon1]

People have said the XFX GTR is amazing.

 

[Dave2150]

People have said the XFX GTR is amazing.

+1, It's the best by far.

 

[Yakk]

XFX

Hard swap fans FTW!

 

[Piroko]

Also, is it possible to lower an overclocked model to stock clocks? I think I'll prefer a cooler and quieter card to one that gets 1 or 2 more FPS. I'd prefer to buy one with standard clocks but it seems factory overclocked cards are popular.

Yes, you can adjust the clocks, power target, voltage and fan profile of all 400 series Radeons through the regular control panel.

There are also a number of models with silent & oc bios presets, they can be toggled through a switch on the card (while the system is shut down!). Here is a large spreadsheet of most models that includes information about different bios presets and what they will do with the clocks and power limit. The fourth column lists the maximum boost clocks with the different bios settings (listed in the second to last column).

 

[zinfamous]

XFX GTR version seems to be the major winner these days.

 

[Vegasus]

MSI Gaming series is outstanding in terms of build quality, fan noise and GPU temps. its the best Rx 480 card for sure. Even on Nvidia GPUs MSI Gaming is very good.

Do you know what the difference is between their Gaming and Armor cards?

People have said the XFX GTR is amazing.

What do you hear is good about them?

 

[Bacon1]

Do you know what the difference is between their Gaming and Armor cards?



What do you hear is good about them?

Temps, Overclocking, Power usage.

 

[kalrith]

I just installed an XFX GTR over the weekend. So far, it seems really nice. The 3-year warranty on the card and 5-year warranty on the replaceable fans are big pluses to me. I'll check the temps and try some overclocking tonight.

 

[Vegasus]

Temps, Overclocking, Power usage.

Is Gaming faster, hotter and hungrier?

 

[kalrith]

I did a little bit of testing with my XFX GTR 480 last night. I let it idle for an hour, and the card was 31° with the fans off. So, I'd say the heatsink is quite impressive. At stock, I think the fan profile is too aggressive. The fans were running at 74% to keep the card at 65° under load. I changed the fan profile to target 70° with 80° as the max, and that quieted the fans down a lot.

I did some overclocking as well. I was able to overclock to 1340 on stock voltage (1150mV). I can also run it at stock clocks (1290) while undervolting to 1075mV. I'm not sure which way I'll go yet. I was also able to overclock the memory to 2200. Running Heaven benchmarks, I get about a 6% performance increase by running at 1340/2200 rather than 1290/2000.

OP, I hope this helps with your decision.

 

[Vegasus]

Thanks for the info kalrith. I haven't purchased yet and am still looking things over. How necessary do you think the user-replacible fans will be, especially if I stick to stock clocks and don't work the fans as hard?

I haven't done overclocking before, so I'm wondering how heat and power scale with performance. In general don't overclocks need a big increase in power and heat for a small gain in performance, or am I too quick to dismiss it?

 

[kalrith]

There is a point of diminishing returns for overclocking. To reach 1340/2200, I only had to bump up the power limit by 10% while keeping the voltage stock. While this gave me a 6% performance boost over stock clocks, this card was already running at 1288 compared to 1120 MHz of a reference 480.

I was able to bump up the voltage and hit 1390, but I don't think it's worth it. I'll either run it at 1290 at 1075 mV or 1340 at 1150 mV.

I don't know that the user-replaceable fans really matter. I like the 3-year warranty on the card compared to 2 years by most (or maybe all) other vendors.

 

[npoe1]

I did a little bit of testing with my XFX GTR 480 last night. I let it idle for an hour, and the card was 31° with the fans off. So, I'd say the heatsink is quite impressive. At stock, I think the fan profile is too aggressive. The fans were running at 74% to keep the card at 65° under load. I changed the fan profile to target 70° with 80° as the max, and that quieted the fans down a lot.

I did some overclocking as well. I was able to overclock to 1340 on stock voltage (1150mV). I can also run it at stock clocks (1290) while undervolting to 1075mV. I'm not sure which way I'll go yet. I was also able to overclock the memory to 2200. Running Heaven benchmarks, I get about a 6% performance increase by running at 1340/2200 rather than 1290/2000.

Mine came with profiles max set to 80 °C and objective to 70 °C (I'm not sure about this one). I never saw the fans going over 35 % and changed the fan speeds and temp thresholds to keep it cooler. Regardless at stock I was able to see some peaks of 69 °C while having an average of 59 °C; I haven't paid attention to the temps with the more aggressive profile.

Additionally I was planning on lowering the voltaje because I see a lot of energy spikes while monitoring with GPU-Z/HWinfo but I don't see them in MSI Afterburner. At this point I'm not sure if it is a reading error but the card goes from 30-45 watts to 140-153 watts for a moment to fall back to 30-45 watts.

I can't speak for other brands since several years ago I buy XFX for AMD and EVGA for Nvidia.

 

[EXCellR8]

I have not purchased an XFX card since before they started their line of HD series Radeon cards, but I did like them very much. Their tech support was pretty good too. I did come across a used 5970 black edition by XFX, but I sold it off before actually using it.

As for the RX 480, I got that DOA sapphire nitro that I returned and got the MSI model. Very happy with the exchange.

 

[GaiaHunter]

I'm fairly happy with the powercolor red devil (even though there is some overblown concerns about the pcb build quality for extreme OC that I'm not going to get into anyway).

It is quiet and with the unlocked bios boosts to 1330 MHz and stays there.

 

[Headfoot]

User replaceable fan is a really nice touch, since that is by far the most common failure point on a graphics card

 

[William Gaatjes]

I am still planning for the gigabyte G1 model, but i keep a sharp eye as well on the MSI. Although i had decided (and add the bios update solution for a more aggressive fan profile) for the gigabyte G1. The MSI has 2 hdmi ports and a dvi-d port. That is an advantage for me. I have come back from my decision. Prices are similar as well. I do not care for the nonsense smps story of the G1 that is on youtube. No designer would push components to their limits. It is good practice to keep some (SOA) margin for product and design tolerances.

 

[thesmokingman]

XFX GTR version seems to be the major winner these days.

I dunno, Onglar's died real fast. I think any of the custom 480s is good as long as you stay clear of the Gigafail. That and pray for a high arse asic.

 

[bbhaag]

I got the MSI 4gig version a couple weeks back and so far I've been happy with it. Admittedly I'm not a huge gamer anymore but my son played NMS for several hours after I got it and it didn't miss a beat. I also played the latest alpha of Star Citizen for several hours and it was solid. We only played on medium to high settings though and my monitor res is only 2560x1440.

 

[fleshconsumed]

I have MSI Gaming X model. I've never seen fans spin more than 1200rpm, most of the time they spin at around 900rpm while keeping temps at 72 degrees. Very very quiet. Don't have any first hand experience with XFX, but I haven't seen anyone on the web with better temps/fan speeds.

 

[zinfamous]

I dunno, Onglar's died real fast. I think any of the custom 480s is good as long as you stay clear of the Gigafail. That and pray for a high arse asic.

Who's Onglar? That sucks--but hey--good thing for that 3 year+2 warranty, no? New things die in tech, lemons exist. It's an expected reality in manufacturing. Assuming this Onglar didn't intentionally stress the board and void the warranty (like using Furmark or whatever it is), then an RMA would be in order.

 

[Dave2150]

I have MSI Gaming X model. I've never seen fans spin more than 1200rpm, most of the time they spin at around 900rpm while keeping temps at 72 degrees. Very very quiet. Don't have any first hand experience with XFX, but I haven't seen anyone on the web with better temps/fan speeds.

What case do you have it installed in? Also how many case fans and what RPM's are they running at?

Also what resolution and refresh rate are you running at? This greatly affects heat and noise. For example someone running 1080p/60hz(fps) cannot be compared to someone running 1440P/144Hz, as the card will be running 100% most of the time etc.

Thanks.

 

[fleshconsumed]

What case do you have it installed in? Also how many case fans and what RPM's are they running at?

Also what resolution and refresh rate are you running at? This greatly affects heat and noise. For example someone running 1080p/60hz(fps) cannot be compared to someone running 1440P/144Hz, as the card will be running 100% most of the time etc.

I have Anrec P280 case. Three case fans, Nexus 120mm fan on exhaust at around 7v so it's spinning about 700RPM, and two Scythe 800RPM fans 7v'olted to run around 500 I'm guessing. So 3 120mm fans, one at 700rpm and two at 500rpm, decent airflow, but not a ton of it. The entire case is almost silent.

I don't cap my refresh rate. I found that capping refresh rate using AMD Radeon Controls and MSI Riva Statistics Server both introduce input lag that is very similar to vsync, so I do not cap refresh rate. The input lag is not worth the benefits.