AMD Radeon RX 480 Review – Excellent performance at 1920×1080 and 2560×1440
A surplus of GPUs is being brought on by the rainy season. After the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070’s successful launches by Nvidia, AMD has now followed suit. The two businesses, however, are approaching things differently this year. AMD is taking it easy, whereas Nvidia has unveiled a premium GPU to top its previous generation flagship. An older model will coexist with the new Radeon RX 480, a moderately priced mid-range GPU. Although AMD isn’t aiming to set any records, it should deliver excellent performance for its cost, which feels like a step back.
The X in the model number indicates that it is a gaming GPU, the 4 denotes a fourth-generation part, and the 80 denotes that this card is designed for gaming at resolutions higher than full-HD, according to AMD’s simplified naming convention. The Radeon RX 470 and RX 460 models, which are anticipated to be positioned below the RX 480, have already received some information from AMD. While Nvidia currently holds the crown for absolute performance, there is a vast opportunity for AMD to capture cost-conscious buyers who don’t have an unlimited budget – a significantly larger market. Discover what the red team brings to the table by reading on.
The same graphics cards with customized circuit boards and coolers are typically released by Nvidia’s partners at the same time, but AMD’s vendors are more likely to stick with the reference design. For a while, companies like Asus, Sapphire, Powercolor, XFX, MSI, and others will only sell the reference design. You can be certain that there are no differences between the sample we have and the products sold by other brands, aside from a tiny sticker, even though it is a direct sample from AMD without partner branding. The product with the more attractive packaging or the lower street price should be chosen.
The graphics card is square in shape and has a cooler that extends over the edge to maximize the short PCB and draw air in from the front and back. AMD has chosen an understated design this time around; the red Radeon branding is not illuminated, and the shroud has a light, evenly distributed texture. There aren’t any gaudy red or silver highlights like there were on Nvidia’s Founders’ Edition cards or AMD’s earlier designs. Three DisplayPort outputs and one HDMI port are located on the card’s back. AMD claims that it decided to abandon DVI output, but there isn’t any. This may have been done to make room for a large air vent, but some users might be inconvenienced and need adapters or new cables for their monitors.
The single 6-pin PCIe power connector for the new Radeon RX480 is situated awkwardly halfway up the card’s length, where the circuit board ends. When it comes to cable routing, the connector’s placement could present some difficulties. We’ll also discuss the controversy surrounding the 6-pin PCIe connector in this review. The Polaris-10 GPU, also known as the Radeon RX480, is hidden beneath the shroud. With 2,304 programmable execution units arranged into 36 clusters, it has the most processing power of the two 14nm Polaris chips that are currently on the market. The base speed is 1,120 MHz, and under heavy workloads, it can be increased to 1,266 MHz. When using common GDDR5 chips, the 256-bit memory bus can deliver a memory bandwidth of 7 Gbps. It is a step backward for AMD, especially after the Radeon R9 Fury series, that the card does not support 3D-stacked HBM or HBM2 memory. The high-end Vega architecture won’t be visible until the following year.
