Released Today: Radeon RX480 from AMD

Breaking Records Not Banks

AMD's brand new Polaris architecture graphics technology sports boosts in efficiency, performance, value -- especially with VR.

AMD aims to hit breakthrough pricing with the Radeon RX480 - starting at only $199, it meets the demands of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

HardOCP's crowns the RX480 as the new king of 1080p gaming and calls it a "giant generational leap from its R9 380X predecessor".

The Tech Report proves the RX480's performance to be on a par with Nvidia's more expensive GTX 970, boasting that "a performance jump like this hasn't happened around this price point for a long, long time, and it's quite welcome."

AnandTech's advises to spend an extra $40 for the Radeon RX480 with 8GB of VRAM.

The RX480 reference card by AMD is based on a standard 'blower' design and come in 4GB GDDR5, and a more expensive 8GB VRAM varieties.

If you go for the more future-proofed 8GB version, you get more bandwidth: 8gbps vs the 7gbps thats 's the lower capacity card.

Core clocks remain the same on both models though.

Later stock from manufactures like MSI and EVGA will more than likely offer an upgraded design and cooling system - over the stander blower that has emphasis on noise suppression over reduced thermals.

With architecture based on the new Polaris 10 graphics core, this lineup is the first 14nm FinFET product produced by AMD, featuring 36 compute units in total.

Tech Specs

Architecture: GCN 4th Generation
Shaders: 2304
Compute Units: 36
Base Clock: 1120MHz
Boost Clock: 1266MHz
Peak Performance: Up to 5.8TFLOPs
VRAM: 4GB or 8GB GDDR5
Memory Clock: 7gbps or 8gbps (4GB and 8GB models respectively)
Memory Bandwidth: 224 or 256GB/s (4GB and 8GB models respectively)
Process: 14nm FinFET
Connectors: 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI 2.0
Power Connector: 1x 6-pin
TDP: 150W

Until Nvidia's Pascal GTX 1060 clashes with team red later this year, AMD definitely packs a punch with their new RX480, delivering performance at an otherwise unchallengeable price.

Comments

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