GPU Buying Guide - (Read first post)

Robert Rodriguez2 said:Tech of Tomorrow already has it, and I actually dig it quite a bit.

He just claims the overclocking potential is garbage.

It’s because he broke his NDA. He’s arguing that his contract only listed the date, not the specific time, and that AMD slapped the timestamp in later, which supposedly "doesn't affect him."

Also, it looks like that review is "slightly" biased with a few red flags... they used all those Nvidia-specific gimmicks in the benchmark settings, they compared it against an EXOC 970 instead of a standard version, the RX 480 hits 83.5 fps in Doom, yet a recent leaked video showed 95-100 fps on the exact same settings (though he played the "maybe it's just the drivers" card), plus he's complaining about losing stability at a tiny 1.5% overclock when an XFX reference model can push way past that... maybe everything is exactly how he presented it, we'll find out soon enough (45 min). 🍿

Let’s breathe some life back into this thread; it deserves it.

Basically, the guy completely whiffed it. He claimed in the comments that regular users wouldn't have access to these specific drivers—that he was likely using engineering samples. On top of that, his chart scales are just bizarre. It’s mathematically impossible for the 290X to be performing better than the 390 across 25 different games, yet in several instances, it looks significantly worse. That simply doesn't add up. Honestly, it's exactly why I don't subscribe to these channels. He didn't even bother measuring power consumption. I'm holding out for some proper reviews; hopefully, they aren't all just recycling footage from weeks ago using outdated drivers.

So you actually moved the posts over? 😬

It’s happening. MSI and Sapphire just added the RX series to their sites. 🍿

EDIT: Honestly, just the base models for now.

AdoredTV RX 480 Review

Indeed

Here is the link you requested:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphic...olaris-Promise

The RX 480 is king for 1080p gaming. Honestly, until RDNA drops or I decide to jump to a higher resolution, I won't need anything else.🎉

EDIT: though according to Tom's Hardware, there are major issues with power draw (spikes pulling over 90W through the PCIe slot)... hoping AiB handles this much better.

Timothy Kim60 said:Yep

Here's the link

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphic...olaris-Promise

Something is seriously off here—either with this specific sample, the drivers, or something else entirely (maybe just the architecture itself)

PC Gamer measured power draw directly at the card using specialized gear, and it turns out the thing is pulling 150W the whole time.
As far as I know, the reference card only has a single 6-pin connector, so we're looking at some aggressive power throttling here. (The GTX 970 in the test doesn't have this issue, presumably because it has at least an 8-pin, whereas this thing draws power similar to an AMD RX 480)

Also, trying to overclock a card that’s already power-throttling at stock boost frequencies is insane. No wonder the OC results are pathetic. Honestly, it's a miracle they even hit nearly 200W with just one 6-pin connector; that flies in the face of all standard specs.

Bottom line: something is wrong with this card. Either the scaling is abysmal, or Polaris has efficiency levels similar to Maxwell, which I find hard (read: refuse) to believe.
After all the massive hype surrounding Polaris's performance-per-watt and the speculation that the card would only pull 90W, it turns out the reference model starts power-throttling right out of the gate.
http://www.pcper.com/image/view/7091...de%2F65643

http://www.pcper.com/image/view/7091...n=node%2F65643

Found an XFX RX 480 at Best Buy for $833, though that’s specifically if you pay cash and take a 12% discount (otherwise it's $299.00)... those scammers are taking way too much of a markup 😠...(could be the store or the distributor, doesn't matter to me)

EDIT: granted, it's the XFX OC reference model, but the price is still completely insane

analogtiger19 said:I saw an XFX RX 480 over at Best Buy for $833, though that’s assuming you pay cash and grab a 12% discount (otherwise it's $2,999.00)... those guys are taking a massive markup 😠...(whether it's the retailer or the distributor, I don't really care)

EDIT: Mind you, it's the XFX OC reference model, but even then, the price is just ridiculous.

Best Buy tends to be pretty pricey in general. Honestly, if you're paying cash at a more reasonable shop, a model like this should be closer to $0.67

swiftfalcon89 said:I suppose Best Buy can be quite pricey sometimes. So, I imagine a similar model might cost about the expected $0.67
if you look at some more affordable retailers.

So, for the GTX 1050 Ti, I should probably expect $500, which sounds quite 🤦

I have to admit, I was hoping for slightly better efficiency myself. It’s not that the design is subpar, but it does exceed that 150W target—drawing more than 75W from the motherboard. Still, this represents a massive leap forward for AMD in terms of power management (though we know that's largely thanks to the manufacturing process itself).







Regarding raw performance: check out the TPU summary, the HU summary compared to the 390, how it stacks up against the 970, and the Guru3D review here
.
Overall, I'm satisfied. It aligns perfectly with what was promised and my own expectations (roughly on par with the R9 390). This is a new architecture, so we can reasonably expect AMD to keep squeezing out more performance through driver updates. As expected, the stock cooler isn't anything special, and there's practically zero room for overclocking due to the power limits (just like we suspected from the news leaks). However, once custom cards with better cooling solutions and extra power connectors hit the market, we'll see much better overclocking headroom and lower temps.

Prices over in Europe are looking fantastic for the 4GB model, and even here in the States, everything is getting progressively more affordable.

We just need to wait a little longer, but things are looking good.

So you think this 4GB version could hit around $2100 if I slap some kind of aftermarket cooler on it?

Alright, so all that efficiency talk was total bullshit. At best, this is just a die shrink of the previous architecture, and we can't even see any real overclocking potential yet.
Turns out the efficiency is miles worse than Pascal, so we're stuck hoping for some decent custom OC models. Honestly, it’s fucking unbelievable they released a reference card that power-throttles.
If things stay this way, a used GTX 970—specifically from people jumping over to Pascal—is going to be a hell of a bargain.

AMD still holds the edge in DirectX 12, but let's be real, most users won't care.

Robert Rodriguez2 said:So, you think the 4GB version could hit around $2100 with some kind of aftermarket cooler?

I’m hoping for even less, honestly. Prices still need to drop further.

wiredotter14

I wouldn't call it total bullshit. If I were expecting a difference of dozens of watts, then sure—but this is still a 1.7x improvement over the previous generation (according to PC Gamer). At this point, it all just comes down to what the final price tag looks like.

Crossfire reviews - click, click

Look, saying a die shrink from 28nm down to 14nm yields a 1.7x improvement over the power-hungry pigs from the last generation is total bullshit. Especially since they kept hyping up that performance-per-watt metric, only for it to turn out that the GTX 1070 still hits those power limits without even throttling.

Look, it might not live up to all the hype from the trailers, but they actually packed more actual "hardware" into this architecture than Nvidia did. For instance, on top of the async compute engines found in previous GCN designs, they’ve added dedicated hardware schedulers specifically for those async compute engines. Nvidia doesn't really have anything comparable to that here.

Also, calling 14nm "twice as good" as 28nm is just a label; what we're actually seeing is a 20nm shrink utilizing FinFET technology.
Take the AMD RX 480, for example: it has 5.7 billion transistors compared to the 6.2 billion on the R9 390, plus you've got the 256-bit vs 512-bit bus and 32 ROPs vs 64. This means a massive chunk of the performance gains comes directly from architectural improvements. I'll admit, it's not exactly what was promised—I was expecting even better efficiency—but I'm not incredibly disappointed. It's still a very efficient card. Naturally, if you start adding extra connectors and pushing the clock speeds, power consumption is going to climb.

Alright, back to the old AMD playbook. They're pulling way more power than Nvidia relative to what you actually get in performance, OC headroom is pretty weak, and power draw just spikes once you start pushing it. But hey, you get similar performance for less cash, slightly better consistency, and better DirectX 12 support.
Basically the same drama we saw with the 290/290 x cards vs the GTX 970, etc. It’s fine—people get decent value for their money.

Except AMD spent the whole time bragging about efficiency, yet this card's performance/watt is basically on par with a Maxwell GTX 750Ti, and it's closer to a GTX 980 than any Pascal card (Linus Tech Tips).

So they leaned hard into marketing and made promises they couldn't keep. Reminds me of some shady maneuvering in the US Congress—not trying to be political here, but they essentially tried to sell us a bill of goods. I'm not exactly disappointed in the hardware itself; at the end of the day, the stock performance is there, but their marketing hinted at something else entirely.

What worries me more is how these cards will work in mobile devices. The RX 460 and GTX 1050 Ti were supposed to be amazing for laptops, but they won't come close to what was promised. If the RX 460 uses half the power of this thing, it’s still nothing special.

I wouldn't bother commenting on weak overclocking potential here, especially since you can barely squeeze anything out of the reference model. Honestly, the bottleneck is the cooler, not the chip itself.

Teaser: Pushing the AMD Radeon RX 480 past 1.4GHz using a Cooler 3rd party evo

Here is a compilation of various reviewer impressions for you all to look over:

Performance summary:
1- Tom's hardware places this card just below the GTX 970 and R9 390, though the gap is minimal.
2- TechPowerUp, AnandTech, PC Perspective, Engadget, Linus Tech Tips, and KitGuru rank the card slightly ahead of the GTX 970 and R9 390.
3- Legit Review, GamerNexus, and HardOCP place the card right on par with the GTX 970 and R9 390.

Details:
1- Every review highlights that the card performs significantly better on DirectX 12, where it actually manages to outperform the GTX 980.
2- Reviewers generally praise the card's power efficiency, though they point out it pulls more than the standard limit (86W from PCIe rather than the usual 75W).
3- The primary complaint across the board is the temperature of the reference cooler.
4- Most testers noted that while the reference cooler isn't quite as quiet as Nvidia's offerings, it’s still decent—especially when you consider how much the reference coolers on AMD's 290/290 x cards sounded like literal jet engines.
5- Overclocking headroom is hit-or-miss; some reviewers saw gains up to 10%, while others struggled to get even 2%.

Overall:
This is a solid launch for AMD. The card sits slightly above the GTX 970/R9 390 while remaining the cheaper option. Once the custom partner cards hit the market with improved cooling, this will be an easy recommendation.

Robert Rodriguez2 said:So, you think the 4GB version could go for around $2100 with a decent aftermarket cooler?

That's what I'm thinking too. 😬

Prices are just insane right now. 😢

analogtiger19 said:That’s where my head is at too. 😬

Besides, prices are totally insane right now. 😢

For about 200 bucks, an AMD RX 480—especially an aftermarket one—is a killer buy... especially once things settle down after all this hype. 👍