Official AMD Polaris Review Thread: Radeon RX 480, RX 470, and RX 460

[ElFenix]

Man that noise and power consumption is not good. Performance is solid for the price, but again, nothing that really wants me to suggest this card to anyone. Hopefully it gets better with non-reference coolers.

Underwhelming, something that AMD seems to excel at these days. Sigh.

Tom's was ok with the blower's sound level. :shrug:

Aftermarket coolers can help with the power usage. A cooler running chip will leak less.

That too.

 

[agfkfhahddhdn]

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[boozzer]

https://youtu.be/-y6Ky_pCawQ?t=476

I simply don't understand why his posts aren't considered to be trolling? it is so obvious.

 

[escrow4]

The media block is more impressive than Maxwell:

http://www.pcgamer.com/radeon-rx-480-review/

"It can handle up to 4K60 Main-10 HEVC decode, 4K VP9, 4K30 MJPEG, and 4K120 H.264 decoding. That's pretty impressive, but AMD's not done yet. On the encoding side, the hardware supports H.264 at 1080p120, 1440p60, and 4K30, and for HEVC (H.265) Polaris can do 1080p240, 1440p120, and 4K60. Polaris also supports 2-pass encoding, . . . "

That would this an ideal HTPC card with some balls.

 

[agfkfhahddhdn]

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[Mopetar]

The media block is more impressive than Maxwell:

http://www.pcgamer.com/radeon-rx-480-review/

"It can handle up to 4K60 Main-10 HEVC decode, 4K VP9, 4K30 MJPEG, and 4K120 H.264 decoding. That's pretty impressive, but AMD's not done yet. On the encoding side, the hardware supports H.264 at 1080p120, 1440p60, and 4K30, and for HEVC (H.265) Polaris can do 1080p240, 1440p120, and 4K60. Polaris also supports 2-pass encoding, . . . "

That would this an ideal HTPC card with some balls.

Honestly I'd wait on the 470 and 460 to see if they also have the same capabilities. If so, it's a cheaper option and presumably uses lower juice and there may even be a P11 card that works fanless.

 

[Zstream]

https://youtu.be/-y6Ky_pCawQ?t=476

I like his reviews - 10 minutes and I get all the information I need.

Thanks for showing!:thumbsup:

 

[IEC]

Edit: Never mind. Added Paul's Hardware video review link.

 

[poofyhairguy]

So it turns out the listed specs on the 4GB model Newegg sold today had 8ghz RAM instead of the 7GHz Anandtech's review listed. Can't wait to see who is right.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

Apparently Sapphire showed off their Nitro card, or at least a render of it.

The colander's black now. It's a little less ugly.

 

[PeckingOrder]

They have failed on literally one level, and so far that failure is limited only to the reference cards, which are barebones cards meant to appeal to people who don't care about OC headroom or power consumption figures. You are being called an Nvidia shill because you are trying so very hard to hate this card. Every single review I've read has recommended it.

There are caveats, duh. It's a $200 card. If you expected perfection then sorry?

I tried my best to like this card. I wanted to buy it for 1080p 60 Hz gaming, but I just can't buy it - there's way too many issues with it - at least with the reference design (a PR nightmare for AMD imo).

A lot of these issues COULD be fixed by AIB cards (8 pin power connector, a decent cooler), but unless the GTX 1060's availability is bad/non-existent when the AIB cards come out, I have no reason to buy the RX 480. Even if I saved 40$, it's not worth the potential headache.

I've been running off my iGPU for 2 weeks. Sure, I got other things to do than playing PC games in the meantime, but still, it's pretty disappointing.

Let's hope AMD didn't mess up the driver/software side, too.

 

[agfkfhahddhdn]

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[PeckingOrder]

Please list the many issues.

I listed most of them in my post 15 minutes ago

if they're not a big deal to you, that's fine, but trivializing them is wrong imo

 

[krumme]

This is not "good" value.
Its a new benchmark. Its stellar value.
And my guess is unless 470 gets top spot it will take 3 years and a new process node for that to change. Value like that dont come every year.

 

[agfkfhahddhdn]

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[dark zero]

This is not good value.
Its a new benchmark.
And my guess is unless 470 gets top spot it will take 3 years and a new process node for that to change.

INBF the ugly duckling will be the 460 which some custom AIBs will make them look like a tiger.

And what do you expect guys? That 480 stomps the 1070?
It gives battle to the 970 with less resources. Also take in care something: the 1060 will have same difficulties to enter on that market... kill me guys, but nVIDIA and AMD screwed up BIG time: both will leave a BIG performance hole between 1060/480 and 1070/490...

 

[PeckingOrder]

It is a reference card that can't overclock meant for people who don't overclock. This isn't an issue. This is misunderstanding a market. If you simply plug the thing in your computer it will work, it will not break, and it will play games at a pretty dang high level for $200. If you are person who wants to do more than that, congrats, this card isn't meant for you. In fact, guess what happened earlier today? I read the reviews, I decided it wasn't for me, and I bought a different card. Gasp!

can't be sure it won't fry (low-quality) mobos with the pci-e power issue being under investigation

I'm happy for you. The GTX 1070 is a perfect card for > 1080p 60 Hz gaming


Threadcrapping and trolling are not allowed
Markfw900

 

[agfkfhahddhdn]

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[iiiankiii]

Everyone is saying the sky is falling because of Tom's Hardware's discovery that the card might draw more power than the PCI-E spec allows. But did you also read their conclusion?



And I'm seeing similar conclusions from most reviewers, and most of them also noticed power consumption is quite high. Isn't it odd that you are taking their information and using it to come to wildly different conclusions than they did?

I really think AMD had a turd in there hands but needed to push something out into the market. Nvidia is right behind them with the GP106. I don't know if the RX480 can hold them off if Nvidia is willing to engage in a price war. Nvidia can easily price the smaller die sized GP106 at $199 and would probably have better performance/watt and comparable performance.

Having said that, AMD did a great job of pricing their card. At $199, you won't find a better video card. Based on this merit, it is a win. But, AMD really needed a slam dunk. It needed something so disruptive, Nvidia will have nothing it can do but engage in a price war.

In my opinion, AMD is in big trouble moving forward. The performance per watt is utterly abysmal. It really is pretty bad. I don't think AMD has had this bad of a node shrink. It really is bad.

The engineering failure is already/going to have huge repercussions on their entire GPU stack this generation. Vega isn't looking too hot (or is it? jokes for days ). There goes the chances of dominating mobile. You can forget about that. Not with that kind of power draw.

The only saving grace here is getting GloFo all to themselves and thus, eliminating supply shortages. The same can't be said about Nvidia with TSMC. I don't think Nvidia would be able to meet all of the demands out there. That's a big plus for AMD right now.

 

[IEC]

OCUK probably sold over 1000 units today. Pending verification of final numbers on Friday by Gibbo (he's traveling right now):
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=29716162&postcount=107

May be able to hear more info about AIB custom cards by then also.

 

[Zstream]

can't be sure it won't fry (low-quality) mobos with the pci-e power issue being under investigation

I'm happy for you. The GTX 1070 is a perfect card for > 1080p 60 Hz gaming

Yes, we're all sure you wanted to buy tons and tons of these video cards...

Threadcrapping and trolling are not allowed
Markfw900

 

[IEC]

Ladies and gentlemen,

Please refrain from engaging the trolls directly, and simply report them for moderation. I'd rather we cut down on the hyperbolic garbage from both extremes (utter failure / all-aboard-the-hype-train!) by simply refusing to engage with serial trolls. They'll get bored when they're ignored and/or taken out with the trash when mods come by.

Thank you.

 

[Olecki]

For any budget gamers - I found review showing scaling RX 480 with different processors compared to GTX 970. Not many people targeting $200 GPU have i7k so this type of results could be very interesting
This is only quick test, but this website promised much bigger test soon.
http://www.purepc.pl/karty_graficzne/premiera_amd_radeon_rx_480_polaris_test_karty_graficznej?page=0,16

 

[escrow4]

can't be sure it won't fry (low-quality) mobos with the pci-e power issue being under investigation

I'm happy for you. The GTX 1070 is a perfect card for > 1080p 60 Hz gaming

Its a reference card which always suck. They are not designed to be overclocked at all. If something breaks, blame yourself.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

Ladies and gentlemen,

Please refrain from engaging the trolls directly, and simply report them for moderation. I'd rather we cut down on the hyperbolic garbage from both extremes (utter failure / all-aboard-the-hype-train!) by simply refusing to engage with serial trolls. They'll get bored when they're ignored and/or taken out with the trash when mods come by.

Thank you.

Listen to this man. :thumbsup: