Chipmaker AMD recently unveiled the Radeon RX 480 graphics card at the Computex 2016 in Taiwan. The graphics card is touted as the first from AMD to use its latest Polaris design, which will offer more power efficiency and better performance.
The Radeon RX 480 is priced at $200 for the 4 GB model and $240 for the 8 GB one and launched on June 29. Can it deliver similar performance to current-gen rival graphics card such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 that offer the same power but for a steeper price? Can it better its own Radeon R9 390X?
The early reviews are already in and we take a look at whether the AMD Radeon RX 480 lives up to the hype.
PCWorld's Brad Chacos tested out the 8 GB model of the Radeon RX 480 and seemed quite impressed with the graphics card.
"The Radeon RX 480 is an awfully attractive card that screams quality — not something you'd expect to find in the $200 price range. It's a big change from AMD's previous R200 series. But hardware is only half of the equation," says Chacos, giving it a four and half star rating out of a maximum of five.
The folks at Digital Trends are too waxed eloquent on the graphics card's capabilities, which seems to be a better buy when compared to Nvidia's GTX 960. The Radeon RX 480 thrashed the GTX 960 in the performance tests conducted by the publication
"AMD's Radeon RX 480 is awesome. This new card is more than just the new champion of midrange PC gaming. It proves that affordable cards can be exciting, even groundbreaking. It soundly thrashes the GTX 960, as well as AMD's Radeon R9 380X, the previous title holders in this segment. In doing so, it pushes midrange gaming beyond 1080p resolution. Gamers on a modest budget can, for the first time, afford to play on a 1440p monitor — or a VR headset," notes the site.
The Radeon RX 480 is the "new king of budget video cards" according to Engadget, which was impressed by its solid VR performance.
"AMD has successfully delivered on its promise of making a VR-ready card that everyone can afford. And what's most intriguing is that Nvidia doesn't yet have a viable budget competitor. The door is wide open for AMD to redefine what a low-end GPU can do," states the site.
Ars Techina's Mark Walton feels that while the new AMD graphics card is a solid one, the Radeon RX 480 is at best good and not great. It is not groundbreaking.
"If the RX 480 was significantly faster than an R9 390, perhaps even challenging a 390X or a GTX 980, it would be a fantastic graphics card. With greater efficiency, it might even be a groundbreaking one. Instead, the RX 480 maintains the status quo, filling a gap in AMD's product stack without disrupting it. Only the R9 380 and 380X are rendered redundant, and even then only for new buyers," reviews Walton.
Techspot is all praises for the graphics card's size and light weight, but skeptical about overheating issues.
"The RX 480 reference card is surprisingly light thanks to the use of a very small heatsink. So small that we'd only expected to see this on the lowest end gaming graphics cards. It will be interesting to see how hot the RX 480 runs. We're also curious to see how well the RX 480 overclocks. Considering AMD's recent history, we're not expecting great things, but I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised," notes the publication.
