AMD RX 4xx Discussion Thread

Slutmonkey57b

Eternal demagogue Charlie over at semiaccurate.com is saying the 1060 doesn't actually exist in any volume and will just be a phantom card for marketing purposes because it's a cut down 1070, which Nvidia already can't supply enough of.

Makes sense as its launch, like the 1080, was brought forward (in this case abruptly) and we saw how availability went with that.

I'd like to believe that the 480's issues will be sorted by aib partners, and that the 1060 will launch in volume but I'm not confident on either; both companies aren't playing to known strengths there!

MarkAnthony

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Eternal demagogue Charlie over at semiaccurate.com is saying the 1060 doesn't actually exist in any volume and will just be a phantom card for marketing purposes because it's a cut down 1070, which Nvidia already can't supply enough of.

Makes sense as its launch, like the 1080, was brought forward (in this case abruptly) and we saw how availability went with that.

I'd like to believe that the 480's issues will be sorted by aib partners, and that the 1060 will launch in volume but I'm not confident on either; both companies aren't playing to known strengths there!

I thought it was different silicon?

To be fair to AMD there's an awful lot of mountain out of mole hill about the 480's 'issues'.

Redfox25

In fairness to Amd, the 480 is not built to take on the 1070 or the 1080 and the sli campaign may have been a poor choice of showing off what the card can do as opposed to what it can't do as yet.
It's not as good as it will be after the partners work their magic on it. It's a pity they set out a reference card at all and didn't just let their partners at the cards first.

Richard tea

Anyone order from Amazon? I did. At the moment its lost in post:(
Yodel say they delivered it and Parcel wizard say it didnt arrive.

B00MSTICK

Makes sense for Nvidia to have a paper launch and try to sway the would be 480 buyers to hold on for a gtx1060.

I'm thinking a gtx970 will suit my ancient rig just fine and I can go all out with a new build early next year

satguy

An RX480 is on the way,,with some little friends for an extended sleepover !!



They can keep a 1060 warm for me until after Xmas..

BloodBath

MarkAnthony wrote: »

I'm not entirely convinced there! :pac:

This is a prime example of the tinkering being at least as much fun as the games you play on the thing!

Why not? Did you not see the massive 32c improvement with the installed cooler? Those coolers perform quite similar to high end air coolers so I'd expect at least a 20c drop in temps.

Look at the **** quality of the reference blower cooler as well.

Amd's old line up started with clocks at 920mhz. The AIB's pushed that up to 1100mhz+.

I see the exact same thing happening here. AIB's will stick an 8 pin on there and a good cooler, set clocks to 1300-1400 with overclocking potential in the 1500-1600+ range.

MarkAnthony

I'm not convinced on a 30C drop. If you're talking about water cooling, IMHO high end air coolers are no where near as good as a custom loop.

I'd expect to see cards sit at the maximum boost with audible fans and around 80C.

Skerries

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Hf1fxZPLg

BloodBath

MarkAnthony wrote: »

I'm not convinced on a 30C drop. If you're talking about water cooling, IMHO high end air coolers are no where near as good as a custom loop.

I'd expect to see cards sit at the maximum boost with audible fans and around 80C.

It's not a custom loop though. It's a closed loop and from the tests I've seen high end air coolers are pretty much on par with 120/140mm closed loop cooler. At least on CPU's.

That's what the reference cooler does. A high quality air cooler will knock at least 20c off of that and many decibels with higher clock speeds.

Amd have been using a similar design on their reference coolers for over a decade now. It's a ****e design albeit I'd expect it to perform better with a card that is supposed to use only 150w max. It probably has something to do with the more compact 14nm die which is harder to cool.

We'll wait and see I guess.

MarkAnthony

BloodBath wrote: »

It's not a custom loop though. It's a closed loop and from the tests I've seen high end air coolers are pretty much on par with 120/140mm closed loop cooler. At least on CPU's.

That's what the reference cooler does. A high quality air cooler will knock at least 20c off of that and many decibels with higher clock speeds.

Amd have been using a similar design on their reference coolers for over a decade now. It's a ****e design albeit I'd expect it to perform better with a card that is supposed to use only 150w max. It probably has something to do with the more compact 14nm die which is harder to cool.

We'll wait and see I guess.

Sorry from your original post I though you referring to the 30-40C reduction I personally got on a reference R9-290 on a custom loop. I expect we'll see better all round performance from AiB cards I just don't want people to think 85C is some how damaging and 55C (both for example) is what they should be aiming for.

I never seem to get the temps people get on forums, oddly though I do get similar temps to reviewers! I'm not refering to boards there as I generally trust you lot... to a point! :pac:

2ndcoming

So got my RX480 fitted and tested this evening, very happy with everything so far. Got the Sapphire 8gb model.

Firestrike 3DMark score up from 6800 with my R9 285 to 9100. These scores are down a bit on the benchmark ones online because the physics score always gets hampered by my Skylake i3, those tests are usually done with i7-6700 minimum. The graphics score was 12,200.

Most importantly I was cruising at 60fps on Ultra in Doom, most graphically intense game I own to test it with, I'd imagine GTA5 etc would show similar.

No issues with heat or noise either. I'm fussy about fan noise but I guess these issues only come up when you're trying to overclock or whatnot.

I'd imagine running games at 1080 is bread and butter to this card so I'm not really pushing it, but that's all I was after.

Serephucus

MarkAnthony wrote: »

I thought it was different silicon?

To be fair to AMD there's an awful lot of mountain out of mole hill about the 480's 'issues'.

Agreed. People yelling about the power going out of spec for the PCI bus, never mind the fact that it's supposed to do this - for short time periods. It's only the long-term buildup of heat that's an issue, and that's not something that happens here.

And then everyone on OCN is going nuts about it exceeding its TDP.

Exceeding its TDP.

OCN.

Overclocking.


**** sake. People are dumb.

Cuddlesworth

Serephucus wrote: »

Agreed. People yelling about the power going out of spec for the PCI bus, never mind the fact that it's supposed to do this - for short time periods. It's only the long-term buildup of heat that's an issue, and that's not something that happens here.

And then everyone on OCN is going nuts about it exceeding its TDP.

Exceeding its TDP.

OCN.

Overclocking.


**** sake. People are dumb.

Amd are dumb. People love to find flaws and AMD let them. They could have released the card slightly below what it was now with a lower thermal profile and power draw and it would have been a hit. Its a good card for the 1080p segment, in fact is a amazing card for that. And its price is amazing, especially the 4gig model. But they done goofed up.

MarkAnthony

While I can understand going to one power connector, it was symbolic more than anything else, why AMD went to a 6 pin is beyond me. The reduction to one was enough, they could have easily spun the 8 pin as 'look we don't need it but we're the end user champions so we included it and wattman - have fun'.

Again fine not to do that from an RMA standpoint if AiB are available but they're lagging behind.

B00MSTICK

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-nvidia-unveils-gtx-1060-at-249-dollars

6GB for 250 offering ~gtx980 performance or so they say

TerrorFirmer

If they can get the card out in decent volume it would probably handily beat the 480 in sales. Not because it's overly superior, but because AMD need to decisively beat Nvidia at price points to reverse the conditioning of the past few years, it's not enough to simply be on-par or close.

B00MSTICK

I think the decent volume part is crucial, interested to see how it performs in real world gaming too.

MarkAnthony

I doubt nVidia will have the stock tbh.

Jo Satan

AIB RX 480 €300 @Overclockers, clocks TBC ........ETA 22/7

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-oc-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-37b-sp.html

Eoinmc97

Jo Satan wrote: »

AIB RX 480 €300 @Overclockers, clocks TBC ........ETA 22/7

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-oc-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-37b-sp.html

2 weeks....why Sapphire....WHYYYYY

MarkAnthony

Eoinmc97 wrote: »

2 weeks....why Sapphire....WHYYYYY

Takes a while to get that Disco...

Serephucus

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Amd are dumb. People love to find flaws and AMD let them. They could have released the card slightly below what it was now with a lower thermal profile and power draw and it would have been a hit. Its a good card for the 1080p segment, in fact is a amazing card for that. And its price is amazing, especially the 4gig model. But they done goofed up.

It's not a flaw though, that's the thing.

The power draw from the PCI slot goes out of spec for brief periods, yes. The thing is that that spec is extremely conservative. The board can handle an awful lot more power than that going through the traces. What would hurt it is heat build up over time. Once this isn't an issue - which it isn't with the 480 - then who cares? This is just the internet finding something to blow out of proportion as per usual.

The 480 isn't the first card to do this either. The... 960, I think, did this as well, and almost no-one batted an eye.

Cuddlesworth

Serephucus wrote: »

It's not a flaw though, that's the thing.

The power draw from the PCI slot goes out of spec for brief periods, yes. The thing is that that spec is extremely conservative. The board can handle an awful lot more power than that going through the traces. What would hurt it is heat build up over time. Once this isn't an issue - which it isn't with the 480 - then who cares? This is just the internet finding something to blow out of proportion as per usual.

The 480 isn't the first card to do this either. The... 960, I think, did this as well, and almost no-one batted an eye.

Not sure, but toms hardware were very specific that while other cards go past the spec, they do so in bursts and the average wattage is never past 75 until this card.

Venom

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Not sure, but toms hardware were very specific that while other cards go past the spec, they do so in bursts and the average wattage is never past 75 until this card.

This ^^

The issue is the 480 pulls more from the PCI-E slot on average which may cause damage over time unlike other cards which just do so in now and again.

Jo Satan

The issue which toms hardware said was not really an issue

"The AMD Radeon RX 480’s power supply configuration exceeds the limit defined by the PCI-SIG’s specifications. It doesn’t exceed them by a massive amount, but it does do so reliably. Norms should be respected, especially if they already have a very generous built-in tolerance range. We never implied in our launch article that a system made up of solid components might be directly damaged by an AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card running at stock clock frequencies.
There shouldn’t be any problems unless cheap, dirty or outdated components are used, the card isn’t installed correctly, or the amount of power drawn is increased by overclocking the card."


Is no longer an issue

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-power-fix,4668.html

I cant wait to play Metro Last light @ 4k on an RX 480

Pushtrak

Jo Satan wrote: »

I cant wait to play Metro Last light @ 4k on an RX 480

I think you need to adjust expectations.

Jo Satan

Sorry twas an oblique reference to the Metro Last Light 4K loop power consumption test by Toms Hardware which started the whole debacle.

I dont have a 4K screen and cannot afford a 4K card if one comes out this year

wotzgoingon

Jo Satan wrote: »

Sorry twas an oblique reference to the Metro Last Light 4K loop power consumption test by Toms Hardware which started the whole debacle.

I dont have a 4K screen and cannot afford a 4K card if one comes out this year

Can't afford a 4K screen or card.

What did you do with the 17K you saved from not smoking.:pac:

BloodBath

Jo Satan wrote: »

AIB RX 480 €300 @Overclockers, clocks TBC ........ETA 22/7

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-oc-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-37b-sp.html

Clocks are supposed to be 1350Mhz on that.