Search the Community

I just received a new monitor, the Acer XF270HU. This is a 1440 144hz monitor and I am currently looking for more gpu power. Right now I have an EVGA 780Ti SC, but I am thinking about getting one of the aftermarket RX 480's and then getting a matching one shortly after that for Crossfire. I am just a little confused by benchmarks saying that the 780Ti has better pixel and texel rates. I know this is an old card based on a dated architecture. I was considering a 1070, but then the thought of an AMD card to utilize Freesync that this monitor has. From my research it appears that Crossfire reference 480's have similar performance to one 1070. I have also never ran a dual-GPU setup before. Which leads me to another question. My EVGA PSU has 2 PCI-E connectors, both with 2 6+2 pin connectors on each. Could I run one PCI-E cable and plug in each connector into the two cards? Or is it recommended to run 2 cables with the extra connector just hanging there. The PSU is an EVGA G2 750W. From my experience, people have told me it's best to run 1 powerful card vs 2 weaker cards. Like I said, I'd think it'd be fun to try out a dual GPU setup. However, I wouldn't mind waiting around for a RX 490 to see what that offers, even though rumors state that it will be a dual layer gpu. I don't really mind the 780Ti right now, most of my PC gaming consists of DotA 2 which that and my CPU run at 144 fps anyway. I would like to start chipping away at my backlog, so games like Witcher 3, Doom, DS 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Division (might start playing it again, bleh) I see are harder to run with my old card. Oh and BF1 when it comes out. What do you guys think I should do? Is the Freesync worth it? Even the GTX 1070 and 1080 don't seem to offer enough power to provide 144 fps at 1440p. Save for DotA and Overwatch. Btw, coming from a 1080 60hz IPS display to this Acer is amazing. DotA is much more fluid and mousing around on the desktop is nice too.

Okay, so this is mostly just me putting my thoughts down about the RX 480 launch, and how AMD actually did a decent job of marketing the product this time compared to the competition they were facing. I'm not wearing a red or green hat, so if you are an Nvidia or AMD fanboy, prepare to possibly be offended. People can agree or disagree. I'm not too worried, these are just my thoughts and not some indepth analysis. So even though I didn't care for it at all, the GTX 970 is the most popular discrete graphic card on steam right now (and has been forever it seems). That's amazing considering custom 970's were breaking past the $340 mark at launch, so they weren't cheap, although reference MSRP was $299. Before the 970 was the big seller, the 660 was the most popular card. The 660 was a $229 MSRP card at launch that matched a $350 HD7870. It's a no brainer that the $229 card beat the $350 card in sales. After all, both cards performed the same, despite the 2GB 660 having 1.5GB of fast memory and 0.5GB of slow memory. So how in the world did Nvidia manage to get so many people to buy 970's at the higher price point? It was pretty simple. They beat their 1000 dollar Kepler card from the previous generation for 1/3 the price. Suddenly 300-350 dollars seemed like a steal, and at less power draw too. Oddly enough, even after the 3.5GB fiasco, people still kept buying the 970. What are the odds two cards with 0.5GB of gimped memory are best sellers? Changing my focus to AMD - they marketed the RX 480 as being built like a 500 dollar card, with premium components, and having the performance in VR of a 500 dollar card. What this translated to in peoples minds was: "you are getting a 500 dollar card for 200 dollars." It was brilliant. Even on the LTT forums you had at least one thread with the title that said something like "RX 480 performs like a 500 dollar graphic card." For the first time in ages, AMD actually nailed the marketing and had people really hyped. Slides reading "2.8x Performance/Watt" had people believing. Even though 200 dollars is a lot of money for many people, AMD said "No, its cheap!" We're practically giving these away." But what were AMD up against? Nvidia were playing the same game again with the 1070, offering a card that beats the previous Generations $1000 card for less than half the price. No one can deny it was and still is a tempting offer. It's why I went for it. So AMD took a shot at the 1080 instead, drumming up the capabilities of DX12 multi-adapter, the amazing efficiency of Polaris, and AMD's renewed focus on software and crossfire support. At Computex 2016, AMD pitted two 480's against a single 1080 in a DX12 title, and beat the 1080. Of course, Ashes is an AMD title that is heavily tuned for GCN architecture, but the message still got out. Not only are you getting a "500 dollar card" for 200 dollars, but for 400 dollars you are getting the performance of a 700 dollar card. But looking at the RX 480 without the marketing filters, you can see why AMD had to come out swinging so strongly. The 480's power draw is close to a GTX 1080 and GTX 970. The benchmarks for the 480 are everywhere, and the custom 480's are arriving. What we do know is that the 480 is actually in the ballpark of the 390's performance. At 1080p the 480 is a few % ahead, while at 1440p the 390 edges out the 480. So who cares about the 390? The RX 480 is a 500 dollar card for 200-240 dollars right? Well... not exactly. the 390 at launch had an MSRP of $329, But custom 390's can currently be bought (brand new) for as low as $260 on newegg.com. So what does the 480 offer? well, better power draw than the 390 (but not 2.8x perf/watt). HDMI 2.0 as well. VR performance doesn't improve though. Regardless, there are large groups of people waiting for the custom 480's to launch, eager to get their hands on this 500 dollar card for 240 dollars (or probably more like 250-275 for custom 480's). Why? because AMD have actually done their marketing right this time, and they actually have some proof that DX12 and vulkan are not vaporware. Nvidia on the other hand seem to be sabotaging their own 1060 marketing: no SLI fingers, Founders Edition pricing, not squashing rumors about supply, declaring 980 performance when the math says 480 performance. I'm not saying Nvidia are giving this one to AMD, because you can bet the 1060 will still sell like hotcakes. SLI at that performance tier is not a common practice. But AMD really nailed it this time, despite the 480 not being a 500 dollar performer by any stretch of the imagination, not even close. AMD have cleverly disguised the 480 as being something much better than it actually is, and pulled in a lot of buyers - even many people who were currently using older nvidia cards. The mindshare is strong for the 480, no doubt about it... at least for now.

So first of all, thank you to the guys who helped me the other day with my build. Don't know why, but on later days, i was a 1 click away from purchasing a gtx 970 (Asus Strix), when some guy in the forum suggested to wait until the RX 480 came out. So i waited until the day of release. And i got convinced of the new graphics card. So, i was there again, with my credit card on my hand, i was 1 click away from purchase, when some friend told me: "WAIT!!! There's the NVIDIA 1060 coming out to kick out the RX 480 from the market". And then, i'm on standby again. It's been almost 3 weeks of waiting and planning my first gaming build. I already did some research about it, but you guys are always my best opinion. I have left 350 dollars left from my budget, but i don't want to spent more than 320, i want to have some spare. So here's the question, or questions. Which one will be better (price/performance)? Should i wait? Will the 1060 beat the RX 480 and the gtx 970? Am i going to get a girlfriend soon enough? Thank you.

Now that we got some 1060 numbers to glance at, I was curious what you guys thought would handle editing/rendering better. 1060 or Rx 480? Using premiere pro. PS assuming we have a capable CPU and knowing that editing is, in general, more CPU dependent...

I want to Know which version of the RX 480 I should buy , it has to be a 4GB version ( or extrem Cheap 8GB version) ,I'm buying at Geizhals.de .

Hey guys, so I'm planning on buying the rx 480 and maybe a year later buy another one for crossfire. But I don't want the reference cooler, so I'm currently waiting for the aftermarket coolers.. Any idea when they will hit the market? Thank you in advance. Also, why is it that the RX 480 aftermarkets aren't out yet? Like Nvidia aftermarket cards always hit at same time as the launch.. u feel me fam?

Check out the Sapphire NITRO+ RX480 here! http://bit.ly/2ai1DrD You can also enter their giveaway here! http://bit.ly/2a099I1

So with all the information that the 480 overdraws the 75w limit from the pcie, I would just like to know, when 3rd party coolers come out, is this basically a non issue if they have an 8 pin, or more?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4qfwd4/rx480_fails_pcie_specification/ Well this seems interesting, it's not starting to look good for AMD like this.

Hello people! I plan on building a pc myself with rx 480, but I don't know what motherboard or case or memory and so on I should get. I have never before built a pc myself, so everything helps. I want it to be as small as possible and in 1000€ price range. For cpu I may get I7 6700k, but it depends. I can go over budget for about 300 €. Also i plan getting 16 gigs of ram, 1 or 2tb harddrive and 250 gb ssd. I plan on buying from amazon.de, this is the only store I can buy from. Ok this is my build http://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/tZ3RGf Please review it. Waiting for answers, Almostbauws

will a 700W psu be able to run a 480 + 280x ? also which 480 is the best ? the one i found is the xfx 1328mhz 8gb version. (my 280x is also xfx) i dont know much about crossfire so if somebody could link me to some post about that that would help

Hey there, first time poster. I finally received my xfx Rx 480 in the mail and put it into my pc. After running overwatch for about 10 minutes I started to notice a burning rubber smell from my pc. I checked gpu temperature and the 480 seemed to be running at 80C which seemed fine since I am not using aftermarket cooling. I shut the computer off but still have no clue why this happened. I have had this computer for around a year with a Gtx 960 before. Any help or diagnostics would be appreciated. My build: i5-4460 3.2ghz xfx rx 480 8gb 8 gab crucial ballistix ram 500w evga Psu 1tb western digital hdd 250gb Samsung ssd

Hi, I love linustechtips and watch your videos on a daily basis. Often re watching build logs and challenges multiple times! Great job! I'd like to discuss something else though. We've all heard of the $200 dollar graphics card, the RX 480. That really is a fantastic price for the performance you get. However, I live in the UK. The cheapest RX 480 card is actually £195, if you do a quick 195 GBP to USD conversion on google it will come up with $250+ bucks. India area reportedly paying $450 bucks and poland are having cards shipped over there at inflated prices too. This seems rather horribly unfair to charge 1/4 more, and in the india case more than twice the amount, just because we're not americans. I'm wondering of Linus or anyone else here can shed light onto why the $200 dollar card, isn't really $200 when it comes to the UK, and other countries. It can't all be about shipping surely! P.S. the 195 figure I quoted is tax free, so that's not being included.

Hey! I'am curious about the 480 that AMDhave shown, but since I already use a 970, could it be worth getting an AMD 480 to use along side my GTX 970? Or would it just drop in performance?

So, with Linus being able to see this card before anyone else managed to, he let us see it on YT and that is literally amazing, man o man AMD does not make their cards look special at all! To be honest though I am sort of glad about that, don't need something that fancy looking that you may not even show off to friends or other gaming pals and paying extra for literally no performance gain what so ever doesn't sell it to me really. Anyway, the card looks like a reference 370 at first glance, I am not saying these are the numbers they might provide for it, but I will be basing my thoughts off the 370, so remember this is speculating, a guess what we can maybe expect to see in a "VR" ready video card from AMD's 480. First off for me is memory, the more there is the bigger sized textures that can be handled 6-8gigs of memory would seem fitting for a VR ready card, then there is the frequency of the memory, I think I would speculate from the previous cards it wouldn't hurt to figure around 2000 MHz (8.0Gbps), a core clock of 1250mhz, would guess streaming processors to be around 3000 These numbers are pure speculation and am only guessing about the 480 until the specs are out. What do you guys think, is that too much for a $199 price tag?

It's that time of year again: both AMD and Nvidia have announced their new graphics cards for 2016. My question is simple: is the RX 480 all we're going to see of Polaris 10, or will we see a cut down/fully unlocked version of the card? My gut tells me that AMD is waiting for Nvidia to release the GTX 1060 so they can release the fully unlocked RX 480X to compete. What are your thoughts?

Found this image today, shows an overclocked RX 480 and various test results. To be fair, I don't think that anyone will overclock their card to 3.2 GHZ (except for LN2) and also, I don't really think that at 1400 MHZ it will beat the fury x. But here it is, you can judge for yourselves.

Hi I was wondering if anybody knew where I could possibly purchase an RX 480 on launch day online as well as a strategy to get one.

Hi, I'm planning a water cooled build in a Phanteks Enthoo Primo case. I'll be doing a top 480 in pull and a bottom 480 in push. I'll be cooling an i7 5820K and two 980 Ti's. I'm going for a silent build with low RPM fans, so I was wondering what radiators I should go for. Right now I'm looking at getting a pair of EK-Coolstream PE 480 or Alphacool ST30. Are either of these sufficient? What other radiators could I consider? It needs to have a clean, all black aesthetic as I'm going for an all black build. Thanks in advance. EDIT: I'll be using 4x Noctua NF-F12 at the top and 4x EK-Vardar F1-120 at the bottom.

Long before the 290X graced the enthusiast scene with its loud reference cooler and 95 degree load temps, there was the GTX 480, the original bad boy of the GPU scene. Showing up (fashionably) late to the party in Q1 2010, 6 months behind the ATI Radeon 5000 series, it certainly had a lot to answer for. Fermi being NVidia’s first foray into DX11, it was not without its share of teething issues. After being delayed for so long due to manufacturing problems, it finally released and took a respectable performance lead over the ATI 5870. But at a cost. One fault that NVidia was not able to iron out in time was the heat, and boy did this card run hot. NVidia tried every trick in the book with their reference cooler in order to tame this beast. The most advanced vapor chamber cooler on the market, an external 4 heat pipe design, they even cut holes into the BACK of the PCB in order to feed the fan more air. But alas it was not enough. The card ran at a scorching 95 degrees under load, all while sounding like it was about to take off and join the mothership. And back then there was not boost clock, base clock voodoo temperature profile, power limit nonsense. The Card ran at whatever you set it to (a blistering 701 MHz at stock), and the fan would spin as fast as it needed to in order keep the GPU at or under 95 degrees. And if you happened to live in a particularly hot part of Australia, and it also happened to be summer, the fan spinning at 100% was not always enough to keep it cool. Resulting in random game crashes and graphical errors. At which point your options were as follows: 1. Increase GPU ventilation in the case 2. Invest in air conditioning 3. Move to Antarctica 4. Manually down clock the card to keep temps in check. It was a simpler time. But that’s enough of a history lesson for today, lets get comparing the 480 to its closest modern equivalent the GTX 780. Now the choice to compare the 480 and the 780 may seem a strange one at first, but they are extremely similar in terms of where they stand within their respective families. They are both slightly cut down versions of their architectures flagship GPU. The 480, with 480 Cuda cores, is missing one cluster from a full GF100 core, which has 512 cores. And The 780 has 2304 cores, while a Full GK110 core has 2880. And as far as these two cards are concerned that’s where the similarities end. 4 years is a long time, and the 480 begins to show its age when we take a closer look at the GPU-Z screenshots below. One of the most noticeable differences is the amount of VRAM, a mere 1.5Gb, and the lower number of well…everything. We should all be fairly familiar with what a 780 reference cooler looks like, but some of you reading this would have seen a reference 480 cooler, so here it is. Notice the 4 heat pipes sticking out the top, the extra holes cut into the back of the PCB, and the metal heat sink directly above the GPU. That block of metal is directly attached to the vapor chamber, so don’t go touching it while the card is under load, unless you welcome 3rd degree burns. Also this particular 480 is a Dell OEM card, hence the metal support bracket on the end, retail 480’s don’t have this feature. But the most important question of course is how does it perform in modern games? 4 years is a long time in the pc hardware space, but this card was at one point the best money could buy, and a 1.5Gb frame buffer is more than enough for 1080p gaming. So let’s see how it performs against a 780 in gaming scenarios. Test System (full specs in signature) · I5 3570 · 8gb @ 1600Mhz · Sabertooth Z77 · NVidia 337.50 Drivers Benchmark Settings · Unigine Valley Extreme HD preset · Batman Arkham Origins 1080p, Max settings, 8xMSAA, PhysX off · Tomb Raider 1080p, ultimate · Metro Last light 1080p, Very High, SSAA off, 16xAF, PhysX off · Bioshock Infinite 1080p, Ultra with Alternate Lighting 480 average performance compared to 780 is: 39.8% 4 years is a very long time indeed. With the latest drivers the 480 manages only 40% of the performance on average of the 780. But when you take into account that a 780 will cost you $500 US new, and a 480 can be had on ebay for around the $100-$120 mark, that difference is not so bad. If you eased of the AA and some of the other settings, a 480 can provide a very respectable gaming experience. Standing somewhere performance wise between a 660 and a 760. Which is not too bad at all. If you enjoyed this little blast from the past please say so in the thread below. I also have many older flagship cards from yesteryear (8800 ultra anyone?) if anyone is interested in hearing how the stack up in modern games. Thanks for reading!

Given that they are the same thickness which one performs better?

GTX 480 vs. Radeon HD 7870 Thoughts/ opinions? GO!

Hi guys, Im really new to watercooling, so forgive my mistakes... I was wondering which is the best between those sizes... Ive seen ekwb and xs-pc sites, but really didnt know, because 480 rads are made also 50-60mm thick, and 560 only 35... There is much difference? (560 is bigger, but the overall volume of 480 60mm thick is pratically double...) With Noctua's 2000 PWM fans, is better to go with high fins density or low? If i make the fans stay quiet the low density will perform better, but what if i raise the RPMs? I have all the space i want, so if u guys know a rad that is really worth buying, just say...

Hi, ..weird question.. does any of you know the "best" gaming driver for this card?! (beta or WHQL.. I have tested 301, 310.70, 331.48 and the new R1. In kombustor, the 331.48 beta perform a better score.. but im still not sure which it will perform best. Any experience? pls let me know, thanks.

I am considering the Alphacool NexXxoS Monsta line and need to chose between 120 and 140 fans. With the 80mm thick rad I need a pressure optimized fan. There are a lot of good 120 fan for static pressure, but I have not been able to find to many good 140 fans. Basically I cannot chose between a smaller rad with better fans or a bigger rad with worse fans. Tl;dr 1. 120 quad with great fans VS 140 quad with meh fans? 2. What fans to put on them(NF-F12, Corsair SP120, NF-A14, ect) Also I'm thinking of a weird configuration for my rad's. I'm thinking Fan->rad->fan->rad->fan-> Any thoughts on stacking rads like this? System?(not speced yet still just a thought problem) -Overclocked Haswell -2-way SLI, GTX-770 or above Thanks.