Hey guys, so as you all should heard/read/watched, the RX 480 is out and it claimed the throne of the performance per dollar, I'll try to list the positive and negative points of this card.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-10,4616.html
In General:
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Positives:
- Low budget contender, with 199$ for the 4GB model and 239$ for the 8GB model (AMD managed to avoid expensive prices at launch)
- Low power usage (not Pascal wise low) for AMD reputation
- On par with stock GTX970 - performance wise (trade blows on different titles, drivers are immature)
- Short board which allows small form factor implementations for mini builds
Negatives:
- Didn't live up to the hype train (claims to be equal to GTX980)
- 14nm architecture but consumes power more than what this arch should (GTX1070 consumes less, GTX1080 is like 20watt more)
- the inconsistent performance might push customers away
- some units are exceeding the power limit threw PCI-E which is 75W (on Reddit an AMD guy responded that they are investigating the issue)
About the Reference 480:
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It is a good low priced entry for this card, the build quality is ok, for the first time the blower cooler of AMD does not sound like a hairdryer while gaming, the heatsink is small and cheap, I was shocked when I saw it, but even with it the card managed to sustain the target temps around 82C without choking the frequency (like the GTX1080 FE), with a single 6pin power plug with 6 power phases it managed to OC to 1320mhz on 82C but VRAM reached 93C because of low cost cheap cooling. (after ocing it bypassed the 970 by a little bit)
Expectations:
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With custom board/cooled RX 480 I expect it to match the GTX980 (in addition to driver updates), Adding additional power plug, power phases and a good quality heatsink with pipes and big dual or triple fans will enable this card to OC much better, I'm not sure what will be the magic number which it can't bypass but it might be the 1600mhz mark, I also expect the custom 480 to be priced in the 270$~280$ for the 8GB model