AMD Radeon RX480 officially announced, will be priced at $199, shows Crossfire surpassing GTX 1080

DSOGaming writes: "AMD’s senior vice president and chief architect, Raja Koduri, has officially announced the Radeon RX480. The AMD Radeon RX480 will be priced at $199, will sport almost 5TFLOPS, features 36 CUs, offers 256GB/sec memory bandwidth, will come in two models (4GB and 8GB) and will be at 150W TDP."

[crazychris4124]

Expect modified versions of this GPU in the upgraded consoles. I'm sure it's less than $100 per card for Sony and Microsoft, add in a Zen APU and the new consoles will be much more powerful but affordable, I would guess around $500.

[FlameBaitGod]

Zen is still months off release so I doubt they'll have zen cpu's.

[crazychris4124]

Sorry I meant their Bristol Ridge APU

[dcbronco]

It wouldn't be the first time something came out on a console first. Remember the current generation consoles contain Jaguar cores. They hadn't been released yet either.

[NewMonday]

seems like its the same rumored PS4Neo GPU with a higher clock

RX480=1266mhz
PS4Neo=910mhz

so about 39% faster

4TFLOPs(PS4Neo) increased by 39%= 5.5TFLOPs(RX480)

[Kleptic]

^yeah, I was thinking the same thing...

Eurogamer/DF suggested an apu 'ceiling' for roughly 280x like performance...and AMD was rumored to be putting desktop 280x/7970 like performance into their upcoming apu's...for reference, the desktop 280x is a card from the current PS4's gpu generation, but over twice as powerful...

but CU wise, and gcn update wise, this lines up...the 480 isn't a rebranded tahiti gpu, but seems to target roughly that amount of performance...the 280x's are still ok for most modern games at 1080/60fps on PC, but requires some tweaking to keep frames up there all the time. The clock speed reduction for the 'neo' apu, as well as possible differences with memory configuration due to the Ps4's shared architecture...I think 4.0 to 4.5 TFLOPs in the new PS4's gpu is realistic, right in line with a 280x, and down a bit from the desktop 480's 5.5...

DCBronco: The current PS4 and Xbox One SoC's are semi-custom...When announced, they were the first devices slated to use Jaguar core'd apu's...but by release they were commercially available, at least for desktops (as part of the A4 line, but with far less powerful gpus)...the main thing is that, other than the PS4 and XBO, the jaguar/kabini line was a complete flop...only the cheapest of OEM PC's offered them, and they were side stepped even in notebooks by the updated Kaveri A8's that arrived early the next year...Kabini just didn't have what was needed to run windows all that well...

Just pointing all this out because this is why there are new console updates coming...the jaguar line is empty except for the two consoles...and while the new versions of each will have the same base core structure, the SoC's are getting completely overhauled w/ new die sizes. Had the current Soc's held a better market share in budget computing, Sony and MS may not have been forced into this so quickly...

[ShadowKnight]

@Crazychris $500? Still expensive for a console lol. If you add in Vr that's still around $800 to $1000 dollars. And how much is the 8GB version? The 4G is $200 dollars. AMD is not using GDDR5X memory either? That's interesting. I'll wait for the benchmarks. I know my brother will be excited for this card since he's a AMD fan. I'm more of an intel/Nvidia guy.

@343 What does this have to do with Playstation fans and the Scorpio? Lol this is a PC article about a GPU that's design for PC's. Let's stay on topic.

@Eonjay You still need a good CPU

[MrSec84]

That's not expensive for a console part, if it's $199 at retail, then the cost of the actual GPU chip is about 1/3rd of that, so that AMD can make money on the part.

This means a 6TFlop console right now would only end up costing about the same as the launch PS4 back in 2013. VR is an optional extra, a console with 6 Tflops and way more CPU performance is likely not going to cost more than $399, that's at break even point too.

[dcbronco]

Thank you MrSec. I can't believe so many don't understand simply retail. It's like they believe everything sold cost exactly that much to make. Who do they think makes these things, elves overnight?

BTW, the 8 GB model is $229. Still an easy fit for a console.

[Hold_It]

There's really not that big of difference between GDDR5 and GDDR5X. HBM on the other hand outperforms GDDR5X and GDDR5 which Nvidia isn't using.

[kevnb]

based on what?

[Eonjay]

Everything seems to match up. The 36 CU AMD card was quoted as being in the Neo and rumored to be in the new Xbox.

[Zeldafan64]

No one would get that big of a discount off the retail price.

[2pacalypsenow]

A $500 console is not affordable look what happened to the PS3 when it was $499 and $599

[starchild]

Well, these new consoles would be existing alongside the more affordable PS4 and XB1, and would be targeted at more of a hardcore or enthusiast segment. Such people are normally willing to pay more for better quality.

[2pacalypsenow]

Those people are on PC

[mike32UK]

It outsold the XBOX 360 Worldwide every month since it released... What is your point?

[Ysmir6723]

Extreme bottleneck with the almighty tablet cpu.If they are 500,expect extremely bad built quality and cheap 3 years old stock parts.

[Tsar4ever01]

According to the CU specs of 36, this RX 480 is the same gpu that's in the Ps4 Neo. Just clocked way higher.

[JunMei]

The consoles you speak of use APUs. They're basically powerful mobile architecture. Nothing like that will be in those consoles. this is a REAL dedicated GPU. There is a mile of differences between dedicated and APU based gpus.

[conanlifts]

I expect this or equivelant in the nx.

[NohansenBoy]

What did you base this information off of?

[FlameBaitGod]

This card is a beast, $200 for an RX 480 and dual for less than $500 bucks and dual RX 480's perform better than a GTX 1080 which cost over $700 + the card was running at 51% capacity, which leaves A LOT of headroom for performance. Glad I saved my money till their presentations, buying dual RX 480's ;)

[NovusTerminus]

GTX 1080 is $599.

[FlameBaitGod]

If you browse the web on any PC hardware store you would see a $700 dollar tag.

https://gyazo.com/6a8d45f77...
https://gyazo.com/be1ae72e1...
https://gyazo.com/888cdae25...

Theres no $600 dollar version available right now.

[Miss_Vixen]

Not here in Australia, it's priced $1179.

https://www.pccasegear.com/...

[2pacalypsenow]

lol dumb people think the founders edition is the retail price, the 1080's MSRP is $599.

[starchild]

@FlameBaitGod

Those are Founder's Edition 1080s. The AIB versions will start at $600.

I'm no fanboy of Nvidia nor AMD, but I do prefer single card solutions over dual card setups. There are simply too many issues and a lack of support in many games using two cards in Crossfire or SLI configuration.

You're going to want the 8gb variant in any case because I've already seen plenty of examples where VRAM usage goes beyond 4gb in some games, especially at higher resolutions or when using DSR or VSR.

So by the time you buy two 8gb RX 480s you're already looking at spending $460. Personally I would rather spend $140 more for the single card solution, which will offer more consistent performance across the full range of games.

[iloveallgames]

@flamebait
By that same logic the RX480 doesn't exist at any price. You can't say "Theres no $600 dollar version available right now." then go on to compare a $700 version of the 1080 with the 480 because by your logic, there's no 480 right now.

And everyone knows performance comes at a price premium. The GTX 1050 or 1060 will likely be the real competitor to the 480 and how will it compare in price. How will AMD's performance products compare in price to nVidia's? You can't build an AMD based computer that can compete with a computer running 2 1080's in sli... or 2 1070's for that matter.

[freshslicepizza]

very misleading, the 1080 is $599

[ShadowKnight]

How many people uses Crossfire configurations though? I bet the percent is small lol.

@Move It's none of your business ha

[Movefasta1993]

WHy do you care?There are people out there that use crossfire,that's all you need to know.

[green]

I do

[ShadowKnight]

Yeah but you need two of them to outperform the GTX1080 :/ I want to see the benchmarks to confirm this.

[dcbronco]

But two would still be less than a 1080. So big deal.

[2pacalypsenow]

Not every game supports SLI or Crossfire very well

[darthv72]

@2pac, unless you are looking at older Pc games then yeah... not many. Newer games know that multi card setups are becoming more common and are supporting the feature.

Hell I remember the days of 3dfx and their use of SLI to bridge dual Voodoo2's together to increase graphical performance. the good ole days

[dcbronco]

Your attempts to hold technology back will fail 2packs of Chains.

[kevnb]

according to amd benchmarks it does, lets wait and see.

[ShadowKnight]

They're going to compare this with a Crossfire configuration lol REALLY. Some gamers don't like to use Crossfire and some of them don't have the right motherboard or power supply or even have the option to do that. So with one card you can't even compare it. Did amd overclock it in Crossfire lol.

[ONESHOTV2]

the 480 was on low settings dont get tricked

[Volkama]

It's an impressive card, and a big step up for the mid-range. I'm looking forwards to seeing what AMD have to offer with Vega.

[Qdog]

Pretty cool the performance of the new midrange cards. I'm already at 12+ Teraflops with my R9 295x2 @ 1150/6500 though. Maybe I'll just hold off until Vega hits the shelves.

[FlameBaitGod]

@2pacalypsenow

I can see you have a hard time reading, try reading again "Theres no $600 dollar version available right now". I know its hard since you couldn't even write a formal name.

[mochachino]

My question is why reveal a card and only show what it can do at 51%. Why not show that a $200 can compete at a high level.

It's like revealing a sports cars claiming it can do 0-60mph in 4 seconds and only showing it go from 0-20mph

[ninsigma]

"dual RX 480's perform better than a GTX 1080"

4 frames advantage while playing at lower settings.

I don't know why you're comparing the 480 to the 1080 or even the 1070 for that matter. Both of those cards target higher specs than the AMD card and outperform it easily. Comparing the 480 to the 390x or 980 is much more apt.

Edit:
Right. And why not show 100%??
The demo wasn't impressive so I don't understand how that was beneficial at all for them. I mean seriously, 2 cards to barely beat 1 but having to drop to lower settings than the single card. It doesn't make sense.

[FlameBaitGod]

@ninsigma

While running at 51% GPU capacity

[Ysmir6723]

450 for me(evga 1080),sold my 980 ti for 600.

[dolfa]

Just so you know crossfire doesn't exactly work 1+1=2 but more like 1+1=1.6 ect I owned in past both AMD and Nvidia cards and my most recent GPU is R9 290 but to be honest i was regreting not buying nvidia, for some reason fathers lower budget nvidia gtx 760 had most of the time the same FPS +/- 5 and in some games ( for example Dying light) worked better while i had many problems/errors due to games that were optimized better for Nvidia. Just sharing my experience. :)

[VJGenova]

Multi-gpu setups are always a crap shoot as far as how each game will respond them. I once had 2 6990s which was essentially quad 6970s. Games like crysis 3 sung whereas others ran like dogshit.

I am a high end gpu enthusiast, so i will be taking a pass on these. Got 2 980tis at the moment, which when sli works, also beat the 1080. Too bad so many games don't support it.

[Timesplitter14]

As the owner of dual GTX 970s, I can say a dual-gpu setup is very often a mistake. Many games or applications don't make good use of it. General rule of thumb is that a similarly-priced single GPU is always a better idea

[TXIDarkAvenger]

Would recommend to hold off until there are reviews/benchmarks as always.

[ShadowKnight]

Nvidia will counter this with the GTX 1060 ☺

[Gasian]

Hopefully with more competitive pricing. We need competition in the PC space. This is why people root for AMD's success ,because it can force Nvidia to drop prices

[Shubhendu_Singh]

For 200$, this looks absolutely amazing.

This is the Mainstream King Card.

[starchild]

There's no disputing that. It's a pretty exciting card for the mainstream PC gamer.

[ONESHOTV2]

amd showing AOS on low settings but claims it has higher frames than a GTX 1080 lol GTFO. remember this AMD not all games run on DX12

[ocelot07]

Not sure what to do now. I have a 970 at the moment. But I do want to upgrade. Do I got for 2 of these 480s or wait and get a 1080. How much are the none founder edition's of the 1080 in the UK?

[Gridknac]

Not everything supports cross fire though. I don't think VR at the moment supports it. So yeah you could go that route, but there may be some things that only run on one of them. Just look at the short list of supported titles here,
http://amdcrossfire.wikia.c...

[ocelot07]

I won't be using VR with PC so am ok with that. Thanks for the link. I have about a month to decide what to go with.

[Psychotica]

Unless you are using 4K or VR do you actually need anything more powerful? I just bought a GTX 980 Classified last year which is just hair less powerful than a 980Ti and I won't be buying a new card until the next generation of Oculus Rift or Vive.

[ocelot07]

My PC is connect to a 48" 4K TV. I would like to game at 4K if possible. But 1080p is fine for me.

[2pacalypsenow]

1080

[ninsigma]

If budget is your worry I'd say go for the 1070 instead. As powerful as a titan for very little more than the 480. 480 is good though if you're really tight on budget, it wouldn't be a bad purchase by any means, I just think if you can stratch the budget a bit, you're better off getting a titan comparable card than a mid ranged card.

[hells_supernova]

You wait for Nvidia to announce the 1060 to compare it to this card.

Wait for custom cooling solutions as well. My stock cooler R9 290 is a hair dryer in noise when fully loaded

[GameBoyColor]

at this moment I would say the 480 is a better cost per performance card and that it actually works with dx12. Crossfire situations aside, the card itself is great. And right now AMD has the upper hand in aynthing dx12/vulkan related. Personally I'd wait for vega though.

[corroios]

This amazing GPU is perfect for consoles (price/performance), but without a good CPU and not that crapy average mobile CPU it wont really solve much...

[Pancit_Canton]

Add a $100 you can buy a console.

*runs*

[Psychotica]

For worse looks and performance? No thanks..

[Pancit_Canton]

LMAO. A lot of console port games didn't look and perform well on your superior PC.

[Psychotica]

You are talking about a scant few games which are the fault of the developers not the platform. The vast majority of games runs and looks better on PC.

[starchild]

@Pancit_Canton

Every single game I've played on my PC has looked and performed better than the console versions.

[2pacalypsenow]

lmao *runs*

[MyDietEqualsGames]

Spam dude. You know what that kind of crap ignites here.

[MagicBeanz]

LOL, it must be so hard to be a PC elitist these days, they announce the most powerful card ever and within days another card shows up that's better, give it a week and there will be something better then this. All you get for being a PC elitist is constant obsolescence.

[Pandamobile]

By that logic, If a GPU became obsolete the moment something slightly faster/better priced comes out, then consoles are obsolete before they hit the market.

Who's dumb enough to actually think that way?

[MagicBeanz]

Elitists tell us all the time consoles are obsolete we've already established that, now we know PC's are too and way more frequently. PC's are a money pit, enjoy spending.

[Omnislashver36]

You should be happy about the r480 release. This is the card that will ensure the console revisions are powerful for a cheap price.

[starchild]

No, PC gamers generally aren't that ignorant. Just because something better comes along doesn't mean the previous thing is obsolete or suddenly incapable of providing a good experience.

I think most PC gamers love that things continue to evolve at a rapid pace and give more options for greater performance and fidelity.

[MagicBeanz]

Cool if you like having what you spent your money made obsolete over and over again then you go ahead and enjoy.

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

Not really its been like 1.5 years since nividia's last offering, and a year before amds. This line for amd is their regular line, and nividia is showing off their enthusiast line.

Most people only update either gpus every 2-3 years.

[ninsigma]

This isn't more powerful than either card announced by nvidia. The 480 is a mid range gpu while 1070 and 1080 are high end.

[specialguest]

Only a small percentage of PC gamers get the latest and greatest. A lot of us don't need to upgrade for several years. I still have a GTX 770 from 2013 that runs games on max(depends on the game) or high settings at 1080p/60fps. Your semi-next gen consoles like the PS Neo if the rumored specs are correct will finally run those settings when it's released in 2018.... a full generation behind aka the Nintendo WiiU of console power.

[MyDietEqualsGames]

"give it a week and there will be something better then this. All you get for being a PC elitist is constant obsolescence."

Cynical, uninformed at very best. All things tech are constantly outdated from purchase, even brand new.
Hell, when you drive a new car off the lot, value is depreciated.

Don't come in an article discussion about PC hardware if you're going to start flame wars with people who will bite your damned bait, and end up derailing the discussion.

[MagicBeanz]

Cause you dont like the truth doesn't mean its uniformed.

[Seafort]

PC gamers are a bit more savvy about price/performance ratio than you'e making them out to be.

I won't be jumping in to buy a new card till I know all the facts and prices of each card.

Only PC enthusiasts or people with more money than sense will buy the top end cards but they are in the minority. Most will stick to mid range gfx cards like the 480 or 1060 and 1070 at a push.

I've still got a GTX 760 and it runs most games on high at 40-60 fps but I'm just a PC gamer that plays games :)

[MagicBeanz]

Not savvy really, I find most PC gamers to be full of themselves elitists who think they're better then everyone else.

[Tzuno]

I still wait for their new card without extra power connector at all.

[Destiny1080]

I'm not feeling the love for the 1070, the 970 is 350 euro the 1070 is 600 euro, that's a 250 euro increase

[starchild]

Hmm if true that's too bad. For me the price isn't that different. I spent $340 on my gtx 970 and I'll spend $380 on my gtx 1070. That's not too bad considering it offers around a 60% jump in performance.

[ninsigma]

The euro zones are getting shafted (not really, it's just the crappy euro value). Gonna cost me 850 euro for the 1080.

[NotEvenMyFinalForm]

With crossfire it might surpass the 1080 on theory but at what cost? Using twice the energy, causing twice the heat and not to mention that most games out there have issues with dual card performance.

As a single card for a pretty decent $600 PC with a skylake i3 is more than perfect tho.

[FPSFox]

Crossfire / SLI is a waste of time. Did it once back in the 600 series of cards and never again. Many games not implementing it well, some not supporting it at all, stuttering... Not worth it. Just buy the single most powerful GPU you can afford. I don't know why they had to make a 1080 comparison. This thing competing with the 1070 for way less money is more impressive than having to whip out Crossfire stats.

[meche334]

Thats a very attractive price for 5 tflops

[jay2]

so what do i buy 2 of these not a 1080?

[ocelot07]

wait for benchmarks.

[Lon3wolf]

Not interested in CF, I would like to see the 480 against a 1070 as that is my baseline for an upgrade.

[fatneal]

intels jig is almost up

[WelkinCole]

Umm might have to move back to a desktop for work (image processing) with this bad boy. Not going to buy a new MSi laptop for another 1.5 years. Loving my Apache pro for now.

[jmc8888]

Not a bad card on paper, but has some limits.

$199 price is for 4GB which would be the equivalent of say 3GB in an Nvidia card. Nvidia has better compression, and Pascal upped it again. Remember a 4GB Maxwell 970 was like a 5GB from Kepler because of the compression. Maxwell was 19-30% better over Kepler, and Pascal is 11-28% over Maxwell. So an 8GB Pascal GPU can fit as much data inside it as an 11GB Kepler GPU. So Nvidia has an edge over the RX480 despite an 8GB RX480 flavor.

Take that into account when you are comparing it to a GTX 1080

They cherry picked the price and used the $100 premium founder's edition. Take that into account when you are comparing it to a GTX 1080.

They also cherry picked a DX12 benchmark to highlight their best advantage that likely won't carry over to real world performance on DX11 games which is and will be the majority going forward for the next couple of years.

So if you buy two 8GB RX480's and crossfire them, you will likely get less performance than a 1080 in most games, have less EFFECTIVE memory capacity then a 8GB 1080 (the 1080 might effectively have 40% more space with the same GB's), be using more power, more heat, take up more space, and have issues with a good portion of games due the nature of crossfire, and likely only save about $100.

A good single card, but wait for real world gaming benchmarks to be sure. Definitely a nice 1080p card, but not so good going forward for beyond that. It should be powerful enough to run some games nicely at 1440p and modest settings, and 4k/30 on low settings. Just people need to know what they are looking for. Without a doubt you'll need the 8GB version if you want to go above 1080p.

[filchron]

if NX doesnt have at least a moderately more powerful GPU than bone and ps4 people are gonna write nintendo off completely

[jmc8888]

That's the fear now. If they launch something between an X1 and PS4 power wise, and aren't using X86 (as the rumors are), they will have problems.

They could probably get some decent ports because X86 code is easy to get running on ARM, but they'll still need console numbers to be decent to bring publishers on board. At worst they'll get X1 ports that might run a bit more stable, but that's not a good place to start with as a selling point for a new console.

Developers will make games for Nintendo if they are easy to port to, and it doesn't take much money so they can profit off that version. X86 is ideal, ARM is less so. But eventually they also need an install base. They might not see it, but they are in worse position than they were with Wii U when it comes to devs. Devs actually made from the ground up games for Wii U, until they realized that it wasn't selling and they wouldn't recoup their money. That's when dev support disappeared.

So they will get initial support because it should be easy to port to (as opposed to games from the ground up like Wii U got), but eventually they WILL NEED an install base worth it. Devs will give them 6 months - 1 year to see if it materializes. If it doesn't, they'll likely lose most support again, but some of the bigger guys *might* continue throwing a bone or two.

It also matters on what the price is. A $299 Nintendo with X1 power in 2017 when the X1 will likely cost less (at $299 NOW) and people will have PS4 Neo and Xbox Scorpio option available (Neo) and on the Horizon (Xbox Scorpio) will not be a good position. More expensive lowish end console, but a quite a bit better one with known support for not much more. That would be a kind of middling position that might make it tough to push units.

If it comes out at $349 or above with perhaps a gimmick that raises cost, it's going to harm them big time.

The problem with Nintendo is that people are now in 'Prove-It' mode. Nintendo needs to prove it to consumers before they'll buy. Generations of selling low powered consoles has put them there. If you gave them the benefit of the doubt and bought a Wii U, or you wanted too until you saw what was unfolded, that thought that was already widely suspected before Wii U, is much more ingrained now.

Even if the NX is much closer to the big boys then Wii U ever was, the general public likely wouldn't see it as such. They need to wow with power that is on par with Neo or Scorpio or they won't change impressions much.

...and if they do launch in a bad situation, with everyone giving them plenty of time to change course to avoid another disaster, it will truly showcase incredibly bad leadership at Nintendo. They have all the time, and failure experience to not screw this up. Neo and Scorpio are likely to be announced 6 months before NX goes into production, and we've been hearing rumors for months now.

[metalgod88]

I'll stick with my Nvidia GTX 790, no thanks.

[SonyWarrior]

yay good job amd $200 for a new graphics card that benches lower then a gtx970 midrange card that came out almost 2 years ago.......

[Locknuts]

It's on a 14nm process....how the hell did they manage to make it less energy efficient than the Nvidia cards that are on 16nm?

[bmf7364]

Crossfire, much like SLI, only works with games that are compatible with multi-gpu processing. GTAV, Ashes of Singularity(which actually supports cross-brand multi-GPU support thanks to DX12) and a small handful of games support it.