FEATURED AMD RX 480 Review list

I think its power draw through the power connector rather than the slot for Nvidia.

I wonder how tom's hardware measured the amps at the slot when the video card was plugged in?

wingman99 said:

I wonder how tom's hardware measured the amps at the slot when the video card was plugged in?

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Riser with an ammeter.

Thanks just found it in the Power Consumption Results.

WCCFtech reports:

AMD RX 480 Custom Cards Can Hit 1.4-1.6Ghz AIBs Report – Asus Announces RX 480 Strix & MSI RX 480 Gaming Leaks Out

"The Asus Strix RX 480 Gaming also features two PCIe power connectors rather than a single 6-pin like the reference design. The card will undoubtedly feature higher clock speeds than the reference design right out of the box. And with better power delivery and cooling it should also overclock considerably better.

Custom AMD RX 480 Graphics Cards Can Clock To 1480Mhz-1600Mhz Add-In-Board Partners Report:

Kyle Bennet, editor at HardOCP.com revealed earlier today that AMD’s add-in-board partners — AIBs – report that RX 480 graphics cards with “extremely good air coolers” are hitting anywhere from 1480mhz to 1600mhz depending on the silicon lottery. Which is 17% to 26% higher than the stock clock speed of 1266Mhz on the reference RX 480 design.

The reference RX 480 draws an average of 80 watts from the PCIe 6-pin connector. That’s already 5 watts over the limit at stock clock speeds. Leaving absolutely no room for any serious overclocking. An issue that AIB partners are addressing directly with their custom RX 480 designs with the addition of more power connectors. This is very likely why AMD’s AIB partners are reporting clock speeds of up to 1.6Ghz are actually achievable. As so much of the GPU’s overclocking potential simply can’t be tapped with the reference design.

http://rog.asus.com/23792016/gaming...gamers-introduces-strix-rx-480-graphics-card/

ASUS ROG Press Release

The next-generation graphics card from AMD Radeon starts with the RX 480. You can certainly expect ROG Strix to join the party. ROG Strix RX 480 will be featuring the new Polaris 10 XT at the core based on a new 14nm FinFET fabrication node (previously 28nm) to bring you a new level of performance with less heat. The GPU (graphics processing unit) is paired with 8GB of GDDR5 video memory operating at 8GHz on the 256-bit memory bus.

My google-foo must not be as good as I thought it was - I can't find a MSI RX 480 with more than one power connector. MSI website shows:
Power Connectors 6-pin x 1

As of right now, I will pick up 2 on the first and let you guys know how they work I will also bring them to the party to see how they OC under LN2

The rumors were that it was around the 970 in performance, and with each leaked benchmark we saw it being true, so the rumors were correct and quite frankly for $199 that's not too bad, about $100 cheaper than buying a new 970. We'll just have to see what the price will be for the 1060 as well as it's performance.

sobe said:

The rumors were that it was around the 970 in performance, and with each leaked benchmark we saw it being true, so the rumors were correct and quite frankly for $199 that's not too bad, about $100 cheaper than buying a new 970. We'll just have to see what the price will be for the 1060 as well as it's performance.

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I hope AMD still has some time for the custom AIBs to come out before Nvidia releases thier GTX1060s..

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Here is a crossfire benchmark for the RX480.

6 pin connector is about the same as 8 pin ( only 2x ground more but 12V is the same ) and you can make it work as 150W if you force card to use additional power in some way. PCIe slot is 75W so if i's not locked in any way then card should be able to pull ~225W. GTX960 6 pin card with modified rails in BIOS could overclock much higher and had no throttling because of power limits. At least my card could pass 1700MHz on water and it was the cheapest Gigabyte ITX version.
GTX970 in theory was 150W TDP card. In many reviews top wattage was passing 180W. Some non-reference cards could pass 200W.

@M@rk
All EVGA GTX970 were about the same as reference cards. PCB was slightly longer but most components were in nearly the same places and power design wasn't really different. In GTX1070 all cards from EVGA are reference ( or with different cooling ) except FTW which has doubled power section and additional power connector.

Looking at the results RX480 is about the same as GTX970. Looking at current prices in Europe RX480 won't be much cheaper than GTX970 is now on sales. I just feel like it can be good card but again too late for AMD to make any significant changes on the market.

Non-reference cards should be ready in 2-3 weeks. At least my source said that they don't want to send reference cards for reviews as all will show the same while their modified edition is better so it's worth to wait.

M@rk said:

I hope AMD still has some time for the custom AIBs to come out before Nvidia releases thier GTX1060s..

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Here is a crossfire benchmark for the RX480.

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Thank you for crossfire link! +1 to the GTX1060 comment.

Woomack said:

Looking at current prices in Europe RX480 won't be much cheaper than GTX970 is now on sales. I just feel like it can be good card but again too late for AMD to make any significant changes on the market.

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In the UK the 8GB cards are comparable in price to the lower end of 970 prices, with the 480 8GB starting around £219 and discounted 970s from £200. I just saw the first 4GB card offered on pre-order, and that is £174 and arguably more comparable. Insert 3.5GB joke on the 970 here.

I've been looking at more reviews since yesterday, and the 480 might be comparable to 970 at lower resolutions, but seems to start pulling ahead at higher ones. I still have to wonder if future games make more use of the new features in the latest generation cards, might they start pulling away from the previous generation? That applies to both sides.

If you check games from past 1-2 years then they are not much more demanding than games from let's say 5 yeas ago. Many are even using the same engines. It's because most games are designed to work on PC and consoles ( which have specs like a weak PC ). The only exception are 5-6 titles per year ( like Witcher 3) so all depends if you are playing these 5-6 games that require better hardware or not.
I'm not sure if anyone who buys high resolution display will be saving on graphics card. All those probably already decided on GTX1070 or stick to GTX980+. I just think that with single exceptions RX480 will be used on 1080p displays and how it's performing at 2k or 4k isn't really important. 1080p is the most popular screen resolution and I doubt it will change soon.

I wonder if RX 480 on modified PCB will overclock much better. So far GTX1070/1080 reference and non-reference are overclocking about the same but probably because of voltage limits.

Woomack said:

I just think that with single exceptions RX480 will be used on 1080p displays and how it's performing at 2k or 4k isn't really important. 1080p is the most popular screen resolution and I doubt it will change soon.

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But 1920x1080 IS 2k.

Honestly though, while 2560x1440 is becoming more the norm in the monitor space, most people do play at 1920x1080 or... dare I say it lower. So realistically, does someone NEED more? Again it depends, there are quite a few 144Hz and higher options available now for 1080p and people want to try to push their FPS as high as possible, but I feel the market for that is a niche one and that the RX480 will have a high selling point in prebuilt systems. I could be wrong about that, but I feel the prebuilt space is where the RX480 will likely shine the most.

1920x1080 is 1080p. 2048x1080 is "2k". They are NOT interchangeable. 2k is also NOT 2560x1440. That is WQHD.

Just as 3840x2160 is UHD-1 and 4k is actually 4096x2160. "4k" TVs usually say UHD 4k so as not to be misleading with the number of pixels. Though 4k is more synonymous with 3840x2160 than 2k ever was with 1080p or 2560x1440. Perhaps im too literal, but when i see 2k, i think the actual res i listed for it, not 1080p and certainly not 2560x1440.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution

mackerel said:

In the UK the 8GB cards are comparable in price to the lower end of 970 prices, with the 480 8GB starting around £219 and discounted 970s from £200. I just saw the first 4GB card offered on pre-order, and that is £174 and arguably more comparable. Insert 3.5GB joke on the 970 here.

I've been looking at more reviews since yesterday, and the 480 might be comparable to 970 at lower resolutions, but seems to start pulling ahead at higher ones. I still have to wonder if future games make more use of the new features in the latest generation cards, might they start pulling away from the previous generation? That applies to both sides.

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Same here!

Here is a pic with RX480(8GB) GTX 970s and R9 390 CURRENT prices:

EarthDog said:

1920x1080 is 1080p. 2048x1080 is "2k". They are NOT interchangeable. 2k is also NOT 2560x1440. That is WQHD.

Just as 3840x2160 is UHD-1 and 4k is actually 4096x2160. "4k" TVs usually say UHD 4k so as not to be misleading with the number of pixels. Though 4k is more synonymous with 3840x2160 than 2k ever was with 1080p or 2560x1440. Perhaps im too literal, but when i see 2k, i think the actual res i listed for it, not 1080p and certainly not 2560x1440.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution

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You wizard you :O I've just been calling 1920 the same thing as 2048x1080 for short as 2k, lol.

Hey thats an important massage for people with old and cheap mobos who want to buy a RX480!

Relevant to my PCIe 2.0 mobo, which wasn't cheap but is apparently old, even though they are still available new.

It's not related to PCIe version but power design of motherboard. On the other hand previous AMD cards had often issues with PCIe 3.0 slots. On X79 and some other chipsets I had to use PCIe 2.0 slot or force 2.0 mode in BIOS or card wouldn't run at all. I mean R5/R7 series and some of the HD4000/5000.
In theory slot should handle +/-10% higher wattage but cheap mobos can have problems with that. Maybe because of these issues non-reference cards are delayed. Releasing non-reference cards about 3 weeks after gpu premiere is just unusual for AMD.

Some reports of RX 480s killing motherboard PCI-e slots.