AMD RX 480 Offers Best-in-Class Performance For $199/$239

Reader Vigile writes: It's been a terribly long news cycle, but today is finally the day reviews and sales start of the new AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card based on the company's latest Polaris architecture and built on 14nm FinFET process technology. With a starting price tag of $199 for the 4GB model and $239 for the 8GB, the RX 480 has some interesting performance characteristics. Compared to the GeForce GTX 970, currently selling for around $280, the RX 480 performs +/- 5-10% in DX11 games but PC Perspective found that the RX 480 was as much as 40% faster in DX12 titles like Gears of War, Hitman and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Compared to previous AMD products, the RX 480 is as fast as a Radeon R9 390 but uses just 150 watts compared to 275 watts for the previous generation. Chances are that NVIDIA will have a competing product based on Pascal available sometime in July, so AMD's advantage may be short-lived; but in the meantime, the Radeon RX 480 is clearly the best GPU for $200.AnandTech has more details.

Comments

How much was this advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much did they pay you to put this ad here?

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

So a tech site posts an article with a review about a new piece of tech and it's an ad? As a gamer I find it personally quite interesting to see that AMD has managed to top my current card for significantly less money.

People, reviews about tech products on a tech centered site != ads. If they post an 'article' about budweiser beating out coors in a taste test on this site, that's an ad.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been all ads today. Non-stop sponsored content.

They're trying to turn this shithole into Engadget.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[ravenshrike]

The only way you'd need to replace the card in 1-2 years is if you're pushing out 4k. More like 4-5 for 1080p As 66+% of people running games on Steam are still at 1080p with one or two monitors, with the vast majority of the rest being below that that it is a perfect price point to sell a shitload of cards.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anubis IV]

So a tech site posts an article with a review about a new piece of tech and it's an ad?

No, but when they're obviously cherry picking facts to suit a pro-AMD narrative, people are justified in calling it an ad. I'm not even a video card enthusiast (I'm rockin' a Mac mini as my primary machine, so I have no horse in this race), but these immediately stood out as red flags to me:
- Boasting about just-launched products beating a two year-old products (GTX 970 was launched in September 2014) without making it clear that that's what the comparison was.

- Conveniently forgetting to mention that the competing product is already obsolete (the GTX 1070 launched three weeks ago).

- Trying to leave the impression that NVIDIA doesn't have a Pascal-based product on the market, even though they've had them out for almost two months now.

- Phrases like "as much as X% faster" when talking about performance.

- Switching the comparison to using previous-gen AMD cards (i.e. major energy hogs) rather than the competition when bragging about energy efficiency gains.

- Carefully selecting price points that let them pretend there's no elephant in the room: that AMD lacks a proper response to the 1070 and 1080.

I genuinely want AMD to do well, since I want a competitive ecosystem where they're all being pushed to do better, but this whole summary is so clearly one-sided that it's no surprise people view it as an ad.

Re: How much was this advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

even if it was an unbiased review - as you say, this is a tech site: imho from a tech standpoint the headline "best in class performance" is misleading, even more so, as the article only talks about gaming. not sure if /. or vigile saw any money, but pc perspective clearly got a thing with amd running, to promote their 480 card, and then that review probably got sent out by amd pr-guys as well.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

The P100 launches in 2017. You don't get to count HPC modules when you're talking about video cards.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

- Carefully selecting price points that let them pretend there's no elephant in the room: that AMD lacks a proper response to the 1070 and 1080.

I genuinely want AMD to do well, since I want a competitive ecosystem where they're all being pushed to do better, but this whole summary is so clearly one-sided that it's no surprise people view it as an ad.

Funny - the cheapest 1070 is $120 more than the AMD card. That's over 50% more cost for a modest (20% ish) performance improvement. Considering that less than 5% (wheee lots of percentages here) of gamers buy a card that costs over 200 bucks (source: steam) I think you are being dishonest. Nvidia is the one that doesn't have a product to compare.

For someone who isn't a 'video card enthusiast' you sure did regurgitate the entirety of the Nvidia talking points against the competition though!

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, where you can find a 1070 for $300? The cheapest one in Newegg is $450, or 2 times the MSRP of the RX480... and thats almost one month after launch.

Not to mention that the 480 is NOT in the same price class as the 970, as the name implies, is the successor of the 380/380X and goes directly against the 960 and 1060. The fact that performance-wise is between the 970 and 980 (or 390/390X) at the same MRSP as the 380 is great news for everyone, specially for NVidia users that right now are being gouged left and right with those overinflated prices and the FE scam.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Kjella]

- Conveniently forgetting to mention that the competing product is already obsolete (the GTX 1070 launched three weeks ago).
- Carefully selecting price points that let them pretend there's no elephant in the room: that AMD lacks a proper response to the 1070 and 1080.

At $379/$449 it's a big step up in price from the $329 the GTX 970 launched at and way, way beyond the $199/$239 that AMD is charging. The GTX 970 now retails for ~$250 so in one sentence you lambast them for comparing to the closest competitor in price and then in the next sentence you complain about not comparing to a card that you yourself admit belongs in a completely different league? You're trolling for team green, comparing this card to the 1070 would be ridiculous. And if you wonder why they don't give hints or spoilers about the GTX 1060, it's because they're under NDA and that's exactly the sort of thing that's supposed to prevent. Until the NDA lifts it doesn't just have unknown price and performance, officially it doesn't exist. It's a review of the RX 480, not all the cards AMD chose not to make. Those who consider buying this card doesn't give a rat's ass about whether AMD has a 1070/1080 competitor or not, it's off-topic.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[alvinrod]

The 1070 costs ~$200 more an by your logic it's also obsolete because you could buy a 1080 instead (never mind you'll need to spend another ~$200 on top of that) which had launched prior to the 1070. Also, the 1080 launched at the end of May so I don't know where you're getting 2 months from.

Your comment is almost equally as misinformed so should we assume that it's an Nvidia ad?

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anubis IV]

My post was intended to fill in some gaps in the summary. If you read it as a standalone piece, you're quite right that it's just pro-NVIDIA trolling. And that's not something I want, because NVIDIA absolutely has some glaring holes in their lineup too. Not to mention that I'm not a fan of the price hikes with the 1000 series. It feels like they're coasting because they know they're ahead, whereas AMD really is making some significant strides, but is unfortunately also having to play catch up.

But I feel as if the reviewer did a disservice to AMD by comparing against the 970. If you're going to pick a competing product at that price point, pick the 960 and nail NVIDIA to the wall! AMD would blow it out of the water, and it's a better comparison, given that NVIDIA has yet to update that part of their lineup, meaning it would actually be a comparison between two current products intended to compete on price, rather than current vs. obsolete from different tiers of the market.

AMD definitely has the advantage at these price points right now, and I definitely want that information to get posted here, but the information in the summary is being presented in a disingenuous way that appears to be designed to mischaracterize the competition.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anubis IV]

The 1070 costs ~$200 more an by your logic it's also obsolete because you could buy a 1080 instead

If that's your understanding of my logic, then it appears I did a very poor job of explaining myself.

By your understanding of my logic, the Mac Pro renders the Mac mini obsolete, but that's not the case, of course, because they're aimed at different price points in the market, in much the same way that the GTX 960, 970, and 980 are aimed at different types of users at different price points. The latter two have been obsolesced by the launch of their successors, the 1070 and 1080, respectively. The 960, however, is the one that's supposed to compete at this price point, yet there's no mention of it anywhere in the summary. And given that it has yet to be replaced in NVIDIA's lineup, it absolutely gets slaughtered by these new cards from AMD.

Why not talk about that instead of making a disingenuous comparison against the 970? Rake NVIDIA over the coals for THAT glaring hole in their lineup while providing at least some form of acknowledgement that AMD has a similar one too.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhhh dude? Yeah you don't compare Ford Mustangs to Ferraris, you compare them to Comaros. The 970 is the only Nvidia card at the 480s price point so they are comparing like to like. The 1070 is nearly $130 more than the 480 so its not in the same category, so sorry your rant makes no sense.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Carewolf]

- Carefully selecting price points that let them pretend there's no elephant in the room: that AMD lacks a proper response to the 1070 and 1080.

I genuinely want AMD to do well, since I want a competitive ecosystem where they're all being pushed to do better, but this whole summary is so clearly one-sided that it's no surprise people view it as an ad.

Funny - the cheapest 1070 is $120 more than the AMD card.

And you can not buy it at that price. GTX 1070s are missing in action, especially at official prices. If you want a 1070 you either need to wait for months, or pay an additional 50% markup on eBay or Amazon.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anubis IV]

The 970 is the only Nvidia card at the 480s price point

Which is true if you ignore the 960. If the 480 is a Mustang, the 970 wouldnt be a Camaro: it'd be a BMW from a few years back. The 960 is the Camaro, and, as you'd expect, the 480 blows it out of the water, but at least it's a like-to-like comparison between two current models, given that NVIDIA hasn't updated that part of their lineup yet.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, of course, you would never post this same response if it were Nvidia or Intel being lauded. You simply can't stand the fact that AMD released a superior product.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Guspaz]

Not to mention that the 480 is NOT in the same price class as the 970

The 8GB 480 is $239, while the 970 starts at $259. I'd say that's the same price class.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Anubis IV]

I presume you missed my other posts in this thread where I praised AMD for beating NVIDIA at this price point and wholeheartedly agreed that NVIDIA has a gaping hole in their product line right now?

You're welcome to read a fanboy motivation into what I wrote, but you'd be incorrect in doing so. I have no interest in the 1000 series so far (they fall on the wrong side of the "bang for the buck" proposition for me), and while the 970 is likely what I would have gone for last year, I agree that it's beginning to be outclassed by newer products from AMD, and I also agree that Intel's integrated graphics have come a LONG way. So much so, in fact, that as I've been considering a build for myself (which would be my first...as I said, I'm not an enthusiast, though getting married kinda put a kink in my plans to do a build last year :P), I've been thinking of forgoing a dedicated card at first and then adding it in a few years. After all, I've been making due with a 2011 Mac mini for my PC gaming needs, so anything at all will feel like a major step up.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[EndlessNameless]

I found the review quite reasonable overall.

Boasting about just-launched products beating a two year-old products (GTX 970 was launched in September 2014)

The GTX 970 was one of the price/performance darlings of the market prior to the RX 480 launch. For people who were looking at something in that performance bracket, the introduction of the RX 480 is huge. It offers comparable performance for 2/3 the cost (until nVidia adjusts their MSRPs, anyway).

The GTX 970 is a previous generation card from a higher performance segment than the RX 480, and comparisons like that are fairly common.

Trying to leave the impression that NVIDIA doesn't have a Pascal-based product on the market

Not sure where you're getting this.

If it's because there's no benchmarks comparing RX 480 to GTX 1080/1070, it's because they're not competing products. The RX 480 will compete with the future 1060, and the GTX 1080/1070 will compete with the future Vega-based products.

And they actually mention the impending GTX 1060 release in the summary, which is the reasonable thing to do since it is the intended competition.

Phrases like "as much as X% faster" when talking about performance.

I dislike that, but it is not uncommon among tech reviewers. Still, the graphs display the actual data, and the per-application commentary is solid.

comparison to... previous-gen AMD cards... rather than the competition when bragging about energy efficiency gains

Generation-to-generation comparisons are always part of a review. They also discuss the performance delta between current and previous AMD cards.

Everyone knows AMD's cards have been less power efficient than nVidia's for years, and nVidia made a huge leap forward with Maxwell. Everyone has been waiting to see what 14nm brings and if AMD could catch up. Sadly, they have not. But they are closer, and that is noteworthy.

Carefully selecting price points that let them pretend there's no elephant in the room: that AMD lacks a proper response to the 1070 and 1080

That isn't really relevant to the RX 480 review. We've known for months that AMD is introducing their mid-tier parts now and high-end parts later.

this whole summary is so clearly one-sided

It's not, really.

Everything you've mentioned has been covered exhaustively in the tech news already. There is simply no point in repeating it in an article focused on the RX 480.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[ChaoticLimbs]

It's actually NVIDIA that doesn't have something in the 200 dollar price point that's even remotely new. It's completely inappropriate to compare a 200 dollar card to a 325 to 350 dollar card. Most consumers don't buy 400 to 800 dollar cards. AMD knows VR cannot succeed without a mid-range mainstream card that is capable of VR, and without capability, people won't experience VR, and if they don't experience it, they won't demand better hardware, and AMD won't have business. But- If both vendors make VR capable cards at the 200 dollar price point, then there WILL be demand for VR, and after that, demand for even better hardware to run VR with, and then both AMD and NVIDIA make money. Nobody demanded video games on computers until computers with video games capabilities hit an accessible price point, and VR is no different. It is NVIDIA that decided to launch their 700 dollar card and 450 dollar card first, and delay the MAINSTREAM card. AMD instead launched the mainstream card FIRST, with the 400 dollar cards coming later.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Shirley Marquez]

Yes, same price class. But that's only because of the recent price reduction of the 970 to clear them out before the 1060 (which will probably offer comparable performance) is released. And that $259 card doesn't have 8GB of RAM; it's more directly comparable to the $199 version of AMD's card.

So, I agree with the posters who say that it is great news, and it is certainly relevant to the Slashdot audience. Is it the right card for you, or would you do better to buy a 1070 (if you can get one), wait for the 1060, or buy one of the previous generation NVidia cards at a discount? I can't answer that, but perhaps the data in the reviews can help people choose. What is clear is that this new card has pretty much obsoleted any previous AMD video card that sells for $200 or more; there is no longer any reason to buy any of those. High-end AMD fans will have to decide whether to buy a Crossfire pair of 480s or wait for the higher end models.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Shirley Marquez]

It is true that AMD does not yet have a proper response to the 1070 and 1080. It is equally true that NVidia does not yet have a proper response to the 480, though the 1060 is expected to launch soon. AMD made the unusual choice of launching its new generation of technology with a mid-range card rather than a flagship. But they are known to have higher end cards in the works.

Re:How much was this advertisement?

[Shirley Marquez]

Bringing down the cost of entry to VR by $100 or so won't make a big difference so long as the headsets continue to sell for $600 and up. It will be a much bigger factor in a year or two when the price of VR headsets drops substantially. Meanwhile, this has also dropped the price of entry level 4K gaming by the same amount and that will have more immediate impact; many people already have 4K TVs. Yes, a small fraction of the total installed base of TVs, but still enough to be a useful market segment to target.

Raw power was never the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as ATI drivers continue to be sketchy, my first choice will be Nvidia.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[drinkypoo]

As long as ATI drivers continue to be sketchy, my first choice will be Nvidia.

Well, that's the question, isn't it? I just watched a video on this card and I find the price-performance proposition promising, but I'm also extremely leery of any video card that comes from AMD. The system I'm typing this on right now has an octocore AMD processor and an nVidia 750 Ti, and it could use some more GPU, so I am actually in the market for a new card. I'm more tempted to just sit back and wait to see if nVidia offers a further price drop or a new card, though, for just the reason you describe.

On the other hand, from the same video it appeared that they've substantially overhauled the driver interface, which is an encouraging sign. Catalyst Control Center has always made me angry. Not confused, aside from how anyone could think it was an acceptable effort, but angry.

I keep hearing that AMD (and formerly, ATI) video drivers have improved, and then I try one of their cards... about every third or fourth card. And I always regret it. Is there any reason to suspect this time might be the charm?

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[blackomegax]

"ATI" turned into AMD years back yo. Their drivers have been flawless for the last year or so and they're the only major brand offering open source support on performance hardware.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Not really, no. I'm sure they work quite good in benchmarks though.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

For values of "performance" that don't mean "the absolute best" perhaps.

For AAA gaming, I don't give a shit if there's ANY open source support. I stopped dicking around with trying to get the games I want to play working on Linux YEARS ago.

I'm not going to eat carob instead of chocolate just to make a point that manufacturers and publishers won't even notice is being made.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[retchdog]

there's no reason to think that this will be significantly better than an nVidia GTX 970, which you can get now for just ~$50 more. or you can wait for the GTX 1070 to be commonly available and then either get that (~$380), or a further-discounted GTX 970. if you suspect AMD will suck, why risk it? wait a month or two, read some real-world reviews, and then buy. the market is only going to get better for this range of card.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[retchdog]

nVidia offers plenty of support for open source systems. their support just happens to take the form of a proprietary driver for their already proprietary card, to which i can only say "who gives a shit?"

Re: Raw power was never the issue

[dunkelfalke]

I keep reading this, but have experienced a problem with ATI drivers only twice: radeon hd 5770 with fallout 3, which was quickly fixed, and early rage fury drivers, but this was around 1999.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia's drivers have been flawless for a lot more than 1 year running, and good linux support doesn't mean dick until developers start making games with good Linux support. Like 3 days ago there was an article where they benchmarked a ton of games on Linux and Windows, using Nvidia and AMD cards, and the one very clear conclusion was that pretty much every game performed substantially worse on Linux, with only a select few even being in the same neighborhood of the Windows numbers. Driver support doesn't mean much if there's no software.

Putting race tires on your economy car does not make it a race car.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[epine]

their support just happens to take the form of a proprietary driver for their already proprietary card, to which i can only say "who gives a shit?"

When Snowden finally gets his fair trial (ha ha ha ha ha ha), the first witness called by the defense will be one Doctor Puffystein.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Debian with the proprietary nVidia driver. I want to use the grsecurity kernel package. Unfortunately, the kernel deb has a bug preventing the nvidia kernel module (or any external module?) from working.
When I still had an AMD GPU, I was happy with the OSS driver, and never had such problems.
Then I got nVidia and had to switch to proprietary just to get rid of the crashes and to get decent power management support. But that driver now plays a part in this problem.
You can argue that is not the proprietary driver's fault, and I agree, but shifting the blame wherever doesn't magically make my desired setup work of course. While shifting to AMD OSS drivers, does.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[hairyfeet]

I've been using AMD exclusively since the HD4850 and drivers haven't been an issue, just stay away from the beta drivers but that is true of pretty much every company. The new UI is quite nice, easy to set up custom profiles for specific games if you like (it makes a default profile the first time you launch a game so you simply pick the game you want under game settings, even loads the icon for each individual game which I thought was a nice touch) and all of the controls are well thought out and pretty self explanatory.

So if you want one of these cards I'd say go for it, the drivers are quite stable and I can't remember the last time I had an AMD driver issue, sadly now any issues are due to MSFT shitting out buggy patches for Windows 7. I'd get one for myself but frankly my R9 280 cranks out over 60fps (and in some cases over 100) in my games with so much purty I have to not gawk at the effects or I'll get myself killed while sitting there oohing and aahing at the particles and fire effects.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[alvinrod]

Actually there is a power issue with this card. A few of the reviews have pointed out that this thing is drawing power above spec through the PCI bus. No idea if it's a driver issue, but there's clearly an issue with some of the cards that have been released.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[jedidiah]

That article was a piece of shit. Go to the source and look at the original reviews. They're actually quite positive. There's a wide gap between genuine "rubbish" and "not as fast as Windows".

Even on Linux, those games make you understand why people would bother with PC gaming.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amusing to see the effect NVIDIA's continuous FUD campaign for the past decade has managed to achieve.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[Tough Love]

As long as ATI drivers continue to be sketchy, my first choice will be Nvidia.

Well, that's the question, isn't it? ...

I don't see reviewers complaining about driver issues or rendering artifacts, I do see them commenting on the high performance for low price.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[drinkypoo]

It's amusing to see the effect NVIDIA's continuous FUD campaign for the past decade has managed to achieve.

I've been watching ATI drivers blow up Windows since the Mach32 in Windows 3.1, and as stated, my own personal ongoing experience is that they can't code their way out of a nutsack. I logged in and associated this anecdotal information with a login, which is more than you've done, shill.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[retchdog]

it's open source; why don't you fix the kernel "bug" (possibly intentionally ideological crippling) yourself? that's the strength of it, right?

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[retchdog]

Blobs can be 'de-supported' by vendors at any time.

That's okay; it works fine as is. I can use an old kernel if I have to. It's well worth it for the CUDA libraries and performance. The rest of the computer is mostly there to feed the GPU, honestly.

Blobs cannot be audited.

That's not really true. You can rev eng the shit out of them, as the accompanying folk song points out. The card itself is a much harder target, and that's true whether or not the glorified API is open source or not.

Blobs are specific to an architecture, thus less portable.

So is the graphics card...

Blobs are quite often massively bloated.

I just bought 32 gigs of RAM for less than an hour's pay.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

most likely AMD had to overclock the card to get the perf numbers they wanted for reviewers. almost certainly they'll quietly drop the clocks (and voltage) back down to get within the PCIe spec'd limits. clearly there are issues with the GF process, and AMD is not getting the perf jump one might expect. how much of that is on GF, and how much on AMD... hard to say. but AMD is not without blame, this sort of stuff doesn't "just happen".

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[mrfaithful]

I might be completely wrong, but I think this is a case of reviewers in a rush. PCIe spec is 75W draw max, 6 pin connector is 75W max therefore 150W max draw for this card, right? Well, the one graph that seems to be copied everywhere showed 164W draw. First, assuming that the review site knows what they are doing and that their measurement tool isn't mistaken, then this requires that either the mobo or the 6pin connector is able to SUPPLY out of spec power. Now, this IS a feature on high end gaming motherboards which nVidia partners used to good effect on the 980ti to boost the card past the power limit ceiling. You had to configure your system to ignore the specs. Makes me think that they simply whacked this card in and hit go on a mobo designed to feed a 980ti overclocked and the 480 got the same benefit.

I'm wondering if I stick this in my machine which can't do this I'd wind up with lower scores.

Or quite probably MSI afterburner will get a patch soon that fixes the bad read.

Re: Raw power was never the issue

[codemaster2b]

I'm happy that your experience is good with AMD drivers. Let me tell you mine. When I upgraded by Phenom II x3 / 2 Crossfired 7790 system to Windows 10, I decided to play some older games. First, I ran 3DMark, and couldn't do it with Crossfire enabled. Mass Efffect 1 kept crashing on me, and when it did crash, I could not access the Task Manager to close it. It was as if some overlay was stealing focus. I had to log off to fix things. Mass Effect 2 crashed on me. I can't remember what else right now.

So I talked with my friends, and decided to move to NVidia, just for the graphics. I picked up a gtx 960, and all those problems went away.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the NV drivers in that time that literally bricked their own GPU's? How about the drivers that deactivated heat protections? How about the driver that turned off the fans?

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[drinkypoo]

Like the NV drivers in that time that literally bricked their own GPU's? How about the drivers that deactivated heat protections? How about the driver that turned off the fans?

Yeah, and I had the G71 die bonding problem too. nVidia ain't perfect. They're just less imperfect than AMD.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[cyberchondriac]

Bingo. I've tried AMD Radeons twice in the past, never again. IIRC, at one point anyway, the Catalyst drivers required the .NET framework.. wtf?

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[cyberchondriac]

I don't even know what issues you're referring to, so they can't have been that prolific. I'm sure it affected far less customers than the shit Catalyst drivers AMD fumbles/fumbled out. I also had one of their cards die on me with a hardware issue.
I'm not "rooting" for AMD to fail, or for nvidia to "rule", because I'd much rather have good stiff competition to keep prices low.. but I've never had a problem with nvidia outside of compatibility with an older motherboard; AMD has given me nothing but problems, both times I tried them. Intel graphics are okay but they just aren't keeping up with the other two.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed the strength of open source is that people can choose to fix it themselves, and overall I'm happy with the quality it brings.
I choose not to, because I prefer to spend my time and energy on other things.
Looking at the bug report, I don't see any signs it's deliberately crippled.
But the (technical and political) reasons don't matter anyway, the end result is simply that the AMD OSS driver had less problems for me as an end user.

Re:Raw power was never the issue

[retchdog]

yup, the GTX 970 is already down to $270 on amazon. it will probably be down to $240 within a month or two.

Rx480

[thoper]

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads for Nerd that Don't Matter!

"like Hitman and Rise of the Tomb Raider"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well yeah, those games have deals with AMD to run faster on their cards. It's bullshit.

Vigile Clearly Works for pcper.com

[SlashdotOgre]

A quick glance at the Vigile's submission history shows that every one of his or her post links to pcper.com. Never heard of the site, and definitely not going to check them out now. If you're going to submit posts like this, at least making your conflict of interest be clear.

Re:Vigile Clearly Works for pcper.com

[Kjella]

A quick glance at the Vigile's submission history shows that every one of his or her post links to pcper.com. Never heard of the site, and definitely not going to check them out now. If you're going to submit posts like this, at least making your conflict of interest be clear.

Well before this it used to be hothardware.com's shill, so at least they're doing some variation.

Re:Vigile Clearly Works for pcper.com

[thegarbz]

So?

It's just another hardware review site and it wrote about a topic of interest to the /. crowd.

I'd like to remind you that /. is a news aggregator. That means someone submits stories. Whether we accept them is ultimately up to the firehose and the people here.

Re:Vigile Clearly Works for pcper.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what the point is you're trying to make. People promote the blogs they work for, big deal. MojoKid works for Hot Hardware and itwbennett works for IT World/CSOO Online, and we see gobs of posts from them, sometimes once or twice a day.

Re:Vigile Clearly Works for pcper.com

[Not-a-Neg]

If you have never heard of PCPer than you shouldn't be reading articles about enthusiast PC hardware components at all. You will find MacRumors or 9to5mac.com more to your liking. Don't bother watching This Week In Computer Hardware on Twit.tv either, you will see some guy named Ryan Shrout that you never heard of before and remain befuddled by the audacity of Twit to have someone host a show you don't know personally.

$199/$239 or $250/$295 (£190/£220) for

[Anonymous Coward]

And paying $6 a gallon of gas too.

On topic - It's nice to see the red team finally bring out a brand new card (not a rebadge) to complete with nvidia. We need real competition in the graphics card market or innovation with stagnate and prices will escalate.

Going to let this one simmer

[wjcofkc]

The person who reported this story is a known AMD shill. Don't get me wrong, I am actually a big AMD fan and am excited about their upcoming new CPU architecture, but this should be taken with a grain of salt. Let the real reviews come in. Maybe the card really will be this great, but I am not going to consider one based on this biased review.

Re:Going to let this one simmer

[Anonymous Coward]

AnandTech, website with this story, is website i trust more than any other to do real TECH journalism and really detailed high quality benchmarks (i also read toms hardware but i trust them much less), as far as i see this is real article

Not better....on passmark scores...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure how you are getting same price for a 390X, those are going for $300-$400. A 290X has better passmark scores, but worse in gaming benchmarks (from multiple site reviews). A 290X is going for ~$260, which is $60 more then the $200 price point for the RX-480.
From all the benchmarks I have seen (as stated above): +/- 10% in either direction (depending on game) compared to a GTX 970.
If all you care about is passmark scores, then yeah, go for a 290X. If you care about gaming performance and DX12 support, the RX480 is hard to beat for the price.(until the non-existant 1060 comes out... if it ever does.... )

Re:Not better

[Anonymous Coward]

GTX 1060 is coming next week for $250 which will widen the gap even further. Oh AMD ad ATI, I once loved you so much, I dont even understand how you are still in business, if it wasnt for the fabois that dont understand what they buy you would be dead a few years ago.

Dunno Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno why everyone is bitching about this being an "ad."

You've got 2 choices when it comes to discrete video cards. You know, that component you're using to read what I'm writing. (This is /. apologies to anyone who is reading this without a gpu.)

One of those companies just released a new architecture, with a 2 generation die shrink. Some douche links to his review and the editors link in anandtech. And you morons bitch about it being an ad. What would you rather have on this site? More SJW articles about women in STEM? Or Political BS so you can bitch about Trump or Hilary?

Now as for the RX 480. I had high hopes for it. But it came in a bit meh. It overshot its watt usage. And undershot performance. It's a side grade for 970s, 290s, 390s, 390x'ers. But if you had one of those video cards, a 480 isn't really for you. You want the RX 490 coming out at the end of the year. (Or 1070 in a couple of months.)

The exception to this is DX12 and Vulkan. It does pretty well at that, but it'll be a few years before that matters. In short I think the RX 480 will age better than any of the aforementioned video cards. (They're all pretty old anyway, 2013 architectures.)

At $200, this is more targeted to someone like me, who has an HD 7770. Of course I'm not planning on building anything new till next year, and I won't be using DX12, only Vulkan. By then the 1060 will be out to give competition and the RX 470 will also be out. Interesting times it will be. Until then RX 480 is king of the poor man DX12 cards and forgettable for anything else.

Re:Not better

[Anonymous Coward]

GTX 1060 coming out next week..
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*inhales*
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA.

That's funny as hell. There has been NO official announcement regarding the release date of the 1060's or even any "official" specs from NVIDIA at all. Everything I have read is pure speculation as to specs and date.

Best business move AMD has done in a long time

[Kjella]

It goes toe to toe with the GTX970 for $199/239, with the lesser card already having 0.5GB more memory in practice. If the GTX1060 pricing rumors of $249/299 for the 3/6GB version are true, they'll enjoy a substantial time alone at the $200 price point and that $50 difference really matters. They'll move a lot of "boring" value cards, it's maybe not exciting for enthusiasts that want to see them push the envelope, but this looks like the best business move AMD has done in a long time.

I don't think their technology quite competes with Pascal but the leap from their last generation to this is huge, it's around Maxwell 2 class efficiency. Still it's in the realm of performance where I think nVidia will cash in on their advantage rather than try for the killing blow by reducing prices.

Re:Best business move AMD has done in a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it’s very often not as fast as the GTX970.

Re:Best business move AMD has done in a long time

[Nemyst]

Nvidia has no interest in killing AMD off since they'd get regulated to hell and back. They'd have no competition at that point (no, Intel doesn't count). It's much better to keep AMD around in a roughly stable but weak state (which they will probably manage to do because Nvidia still carries a better reputation as a brand, and in part for good reasons) so they can't be a concern, but keep the regulators off their backs. It's the same logic Intel is following, at a guess.

Re:Best business move AMD has done in a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems the words "often" and "fast" don't mean what you think they do...

Re:Best business move AMD has done in a long time

[jedidiah]

A quick perusal of the benchmark sites seems to show that this varies by benchmark and game. So it may ultimately come down to which particular games you own.

Re:Not better

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Seriously?
Which reviews are you reading (I have read multiple from various sites).
All have said the same thing:
- Faster then a 960 by quite a margin.
- Faster and slower then a 970. (+/- 10% in either direction)
- $150+, for a slower gtx 960 2GB card (3gb seems to be the sweet spot for most consumption of games)
- 1440p is acceptable.. but not great (but a 970 is only +/- 1-2fps off, so not much)
Basically it's GTX 970 performance (and lower power consumption, for those who care) for $60 less.
It's no GTX 1070 by any means, but for us who need an upgrade, but can't afford a 1070, it's a good alternative.

Strange power consumption numbers

[Ecuador]

I am all for AMD making a comeback (would especially like one in CPUs though) in order to drive competition, but this particular product seems a bit weaker than I'd expect in power consumption, which worries me. At 150W it has about the same power consumption as the much larger and faster nVidia GTX 1070. Unless GloFo's 14nm node has some sort of disadvantage (over the 16nm process nVidia is using), it would seem that AMD's design is not as good, which might mean they will not be competitive enough this round either once their competition releases their mid-range lineup. Which would be quite bad, nVidia, like Intel, tend to keep prices high when they don't have strong competition (and in general I don't like them much - but that might just be me).

Re:Strange power consumption numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Weirder still, it supposedly draws most of its power off of the PCI-E slot, violating the PCI-E spec. Average draw is well above 75 watts.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-10,4616-9.html
http://www.pcinvasion.com/amd-looking-rx480-pcie-compliance-failure-reports

Re:$199/$239 or $250/$295 (£190/£220)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well maybe you idiots should have voted on fixing that instead of on Brexit.

comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the RX 400 series be compared to the GTX 1000 series, not the 900?

Re:comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a mid-range card at best, and once they patch to meet PCI-E power draw requirements, not even the best performing mid-range card. I've been buying AMD video cards for a long time, and they've served me well, but I think my next upgrade is going to be an Nvidia GTX 1070 or 1080, once (and assuming) the price gouging and supply issues come to a close.

RX 480 draws more power than PCIe spec

[Misagon]

Tom's Hardware tested the power consumption of AMD's reference card and saw that could draw more power from both the motherboard and the 6-pin power connector than the PCI Express specification allows for either of them.

I would wait a while before this issue is resolved. Maybe the issue could be fixed with a driver update, in which case only benchmarks done after the driver update would matter.
Maybe a non-reference card will be released with an 8-pin power connector and better power distribution.

Re:$199/$239 or $250/$295 (£190/£220)

[Z80a]

UK will totally regret it when EU becomes a full fledged country with an unified army and start to attack all the countries they want included in.

Hell yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

These cards seem to work great with open source drivers on Linux. Check out the comparison between open source driver and Pro driver here: http://openbenchmarking.org/prospect/1606281-HA-RX480LINU80/54caad64cb9009a3376fea79c64da84e01d7e108

And two of these will blow away GTX 1080 at 1/4 of the price! And for 1/2 of the price of 1070!

On top of that, with the two cards, I can setup KVM with VGA passthrough and play games in KVM without ever rebooting into windows!

I am sick of having to install the damned proprietary driver and/or wait for the stupid new driver to get released when the kernel driver ABI or Xorg ABI changes.

I've been buying Nvidia cards for years, and I gotta say that this card is excellent. Anyone that is not a complete idiot will realize this.

Lets see:
- Open source drivers which means that I never have to worry about stupid proprietary crap again
- High performance per dollar
- You can buy 4 of them for price of 1 GTX 1080
- You can buy 2 of them for price of 1 GTX 1070
- With two cards I can setup KVM with VGA passthrough and play games in Linux
- Finally able to say "fuck nvidia"

Conclusion: I am buying 2 of these. Fuck Nvidia.

Best fanless video card?

[wonkavader]

OK, I'm off-topic, but what's the best fanless video card? I want to run a 4k screen on my Linux box but don't care much about performance (no games) and want my machine to be quiet/silent.

Re:Best fanless video card?

[wonkavader]

Oh, and I want to drive the 4k screen at 60Hz, so displayport is a requirement.

Re:Best fanless video card?

[Anonymous Coward]

With a new CPU? It's inbuilt GPU. If you're doing no gaming whatsoever with browsing as your most graphics intensive application it's the same as running four 1080P screens, not really a big deal by itself.

Re:Best fanless video card?

[Blaskowicz]

Yes but motherboards with the Displayport out are a rarity, especially with AMD motherboards for APU.
Low end graphics cards get no love either : the semi-current AMD low end is R7 240, and has no Displayport. It's not even low end enough for fanless. You could get an R7 360 : it's way overpowered (similar to Xbox One) but with a big fan and modern power manamagement it would be quiet ; it supports the "AMDGPU" driver on Ubuntu 16 and such. It has the same tech revision as an APU like AMD A8-7600.
There is nvidia GTX 750 if you consider it as a proprietary-driver-only card.

Nvidia has much better presence on the low end (e.g. GT710 is two gens old whereas R5 230 is renamed Radeon HD 5000/6000 tech, and is still sold despite driver development being halted) but no Displayport for you and the GT710 is not new enough for full HDMI 2.0 yet.

Basically : a big fuck you to low end users and low end upgraders.

Re:Best fanless video card?

[Anonymous Coward]

Powercolor releases fanless cards The last one was a R9 270.
I hope they do the same with the RX480, since the TDP is similar.

Re:Best fanless video card?

[cdrudge]

Yes but motherboards with the Displayport out are a rarity, especially with AMD motherboards for APU.

Newegg lists at least 77 motherboards that support displayport and Intel 6th generation (skylake) CPUs that will do 4K. I beleive 5th generation Broadwell-H CPUs will also do 4K over displayport. Why are you stuck on just using AMD motherboards with APUs?

Re:Best fanless video card?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the MSI GeForce GTX960 4GB Gaming, it has two fans but if you consider they never start even in games unless the temp goes over 60 degrees Celsius you can say it's fanless.

Re:Best fanless video card?

[Anonymous Coward]

I drive a 4K shttps://slashdot.org/story/16/06/29/2038223/amd-rx-480-offers-best-in-class-performance-for-199239#creen with a GTX 960, which has a fan, but I don't think the fan ever turns on unless I fire up a game.

uhhh...

[SuperDre]

what nonsense is this? All reviews I saw is that the RX480 doesn't even outperform the 2 year old 970 in most games, it does have a slight increase on DX12 games, but marginal.. The RX480 cannot make it's promises true in real benchmarks (as in actual games etc).. Yes it's cheaper than the 970, but the 970 is a little bit faster on a lot of games. And especially on powerconsumption the RX480 is a real let down, for a GPU which was manufactured on a much smaller size..
I certainly would wait before buying this card until nvidia has released the 1060, but you certainly would not replace your 970 with an RX480..

Re:uhhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

GTX 970 average selling price is $279 vs $199 for the RX480. For that extra $80 all you will get from the 970 is an extra 2 frames per second. Is 2FPS worth $80 to you? Anyone buying a 970 over a 480 is throwing money away. If Nvidia wants to compete they will need to drop the price of the 970 to at least $229 to get their fanbois to stick with them.

Re:uhhh...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

for a GPU which was manufactured on a much smaller size..

Unfortunately, we don't live in that kind of technology advancement period anymore. You can't hope for the kind of efficiency jumps that we had in the past.

Re:$199/$239 or $250/$295 (£190/£220)

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany(Wilhelm II, Hitler) and France(Napoleon) have already done that on different occasions, perhaps Rome(Claudius) but that is literally ancient history.
There is a long history between the British Isles and Europe not getting along, and I can forgive Brits for telling continental Europe to fuck off.