480: Maybe the Issue is Us

[Embattled]

Honestly I think we have all been thinking about the 480 the wrong way. From nearly the beginning it was said that the 480 was supposed to be a ~$200 budget performance card and in that sense they didn't lie at all. As a Swedish user here repeatedly said the 970 is cheaper in Europe than the 480 but I won't be focusing on that as I am an American and don't know anything about the European market. So for the sake of argument lets use a price of $230 dollars because the average enthusiast is not going to ever buy/recommend a blower stock cooling solution. Lets also use $270 dollars for the 970 as that is the price of a Asus Strix on Newegg.

 

The mistake is that we were expecting a earth-shattering performance improvement when video cards, especially the lower end cards from both vendors, rarely have such an increment. Usually you see just a modest or small improvement in this area between generations. In this sense the 480 is JUST SIMPLY BETTER than any other card in its price bracket. For some reason we were expecting a card in the ~$200 to not only run with cards in an entirely different price bracket BUT BEAT THEM buy a good margin as well. Really guys? Most of us have been here long enough to know what a typical performance change is from generation to generation and this is the first time I have witnessed this level of stupidity in expectations. I think part of it can be chalked up to the 480 being viewed as what was supposed to be AMDs "IT" card since we haven't seen the actual midrange (970 price point) and enthusiast cards so we started jumping up and down to start comparing this little BUDGET card to the bigger boys to statisfy ourselves. 

 

Also anyone who sold their midrange graphics cards expecting to UPGRADE to a new generation budget card has none of my sympathy. Nevermind the fact you were selling to buy a card that isn't out yet. I think that this is where the problem is. People were looking toward it as AMDs card they could upgrade their existing card too when in fact it was never aimed at us that already have 290xs/390s/970s it is simple just a very reasonably priced option to instantly jump into high quality PC gaming. Never mind the fact that you almost never upgrade from the same price bracket card to the same price bracket in an adjacent generation. Recent history has proved time and time again that the performance difference simply is not worth it for that kind of "upgrading". Despite this, people were taking the flawed expectations one step further and wanting to upgrade from one generations midrange card to an adjacent generations budget card????? Really guys?? This things competitor is a 960 which it eviscerates. If you were looking for your midrange card's competitor from team Red you are just going to have to wait a while. Plain and simple. 

 

/rant before I waste more of my time 

[spartaman64]

yea the people expecting 980/fury level performance for 200 are probably asking for too much

[imreloadin]

This is the internet, what did you really expect?

[Embattled]

1 minute ago, spartaman64 said:

yea the people expecting 980/fury level performance for 200 are probably asking for too much

Yeah, for a 200 dollar card the performance jump from the previous generation is not at all disappointing. This card was never supposed to compete at those levels. 

 

Cards are made to be better and better at their price points, not to provide a sudden upgrade jump to existing users. ESPECIALLY not at a a freaking price point below the last generations cards. 

[ChrisCross]

well if you compare the launch prices its quite an improvement. of course the prices change over time.

also if you look at the frame time consistency the rx 480 is actually a massive improvement over the old generations. this means you will get less stutter.

[Embattled]

2 minutes ago, imreloadin said:

This is the internet, what did you really expect?

It was the sheer amount of older and more prolific users that were caught up in the hype bs that is what shocked me. The normal voices of reason jumping on one of the worst tech hype trains I have ever seen. My hype was fulfilled, I honestly don't know how others jumped all the things I laid out and came to those expectations. 

[EUD]

suppose gtx 1060 with its OC capability will be the 480 everyone is hoping for

[ChrisCross]

Just now, Embattled said:

 

to be honest going from 28nm to 14nm i excpected a little more too. i thought its going to be like going from ivy bridge to skylake. but i forgot that there are 3 generations between that.

[Bouzoo]

2 minutes ago, EUD said:

suppose gtx 1060 with its OC capability will be the 480 everyone is hoping for

Maybe it will, maybe it won't, considering that the AIB partners are saying that their 480 versions run at 1480-1600 MHz. Let's wait a week and see all.

[imreloadin]

7 minutes ago, Embattled said:

It was the sheer amount of older and more prolific users that were caught up in the hype bs that is what shocked me. The normal voices of reason jumping on one of the worst tech hype trains I have ever seen. My hype was fulfilled, I honestly don't know how others jumped all the things I laid out and came to those expectations. 

I know, I'm completely on your side that the people thinking this would beat the 980 were borderline delusional.

 

If it had the ability to beat the 980 they'd be undercutting their own products at that price point and that makes 0 business sense.

[Nineshadow]

I think AMD's pretty odd marketing department is at fault here. They pretty much relied on their "fury"-ous fanbase to do their work for them. And when the rumours about insane levels of performance for the RX 480 appeared, they did nothing to dispel them, encouraging the AMD fanboys even more. I wonder if we'll see the same pattern with Zen?

 

Oh well...I was expecting this whole situation. Nevertheless, the 480 is still a beast of a budget card. Good job RTG.

[othertomperson]

I haven't seen any of the benchmarks yet (too busy doing my own benchmarks with my own toys that arrived today!!) however, I see where both sides were coming from.

 

What you are saying is what I and every sane person was expecting tbh. However, this is the most high end, performance part we could be seeing from AMD for some time. People were really hoping for this to be game-changing because the alternative is something really quite dull. I've been called an Nvidia fanboy for pointing out that this is only the replacement for the 380, and 280 before that several times on this forum, and well the attitude of those people expecting it to rival the 1070 comes from hope. And a little fanboyism, but mainly hope.

[Deli]

1 hour ago, Nineshadow said:

I think AMD's pretty odd marketing department is at fault here. They pretty much relied on their "fury"-ous fanbase to do their work for them. And when the rumours about insane levels of performance for the RX 480 appeared, they did nothing to dispel them, encouraging the AMD fanboys even more. I wonder if we'll see the same pattern with Zen?

 

Oh well...I was expecting this whole situation. Nevertheless, the 480 is still a beast of a budget card. Good job RTG.

It's the same for both red and green teams. Remember the 67C underload with 2.1Ghz clockspeed. There was even myth that 2.5GHz with watercooling.

[deviant88]

23 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

yea the people expecting 980/fury level performance for 200 are probably asking for too much

no thats how it should be, but the reason people expected that is because thats what the fake benchmarks advertised and there quite a few of them, if i were a mod of this forum i would ban any videocardz /wccftech from now on it just serves no good and creates shitstorms like these

[Deli]

1 hour ago, Deli said:

 

 

[Unhelpful]

26 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

 

@don_svetlio

 

I see no issue with the card. 390-ish performance for $200 (unless I've read things incorrectly)? Sounds great to me! And perfectly expected.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

480 is a flop and not because it is not as fast as a 980 or Fury but rather the horrible TDP, temps/noise, and poor overclocking. You can get a custom 970 for $225, overclock it and beat the 480 no problem. 

[spartaman64]

4 minutes ago, JoeyDM said:

@don_svetlio

 

I see no issue with the card. 390-ish performance for $200 (unless I've read things incorrectly)? Sounds great to me! And perfectly expected.

yes its a good card but people are saying its bad because they expected 980 level performance and that is expecting too much

[ChrisCross]

Just now, JoeyDM said:

@don_svetlio

 

I see no issue with the card. 390-ish performance for $200 (unless I've read things incorrectly)? Sounds great to me! And perfectly expected.

well the actual prices are around the same as the 970's (at least for the first days) and some benchmarks are infected with gameworks, tesselation and HBAO+

[spartaman64]

4 minutes ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

480 is a flop and not because it is not as fast as a 980 or Fury but rather the horrible TDP, temps/noise, and poor overclocking. You can get a custom 970 for $225, overclock it and beat the 480 no problem. 

of course that the story for all reference cards

[Deli]

1 hour ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

480 is a flop and not because it is not as fast as a 980 or Fury but rather the horrible TDP, temps/noise, and poor overclocking. You can get a custom 970 for $225, overclock it and beat the 480 no problem. 

But 970 only has 3.5+0.5GB vram.

 

I fail to see the problem with TDP, noise and temp when the aftermarket cards come out.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

2 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

of course that the story for all reference cards

Drawl power has nothing to do with custom pcb

[spartaman64]

5 minutes ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

Drawl power has nothing to do with custom pcb

btw TDP is temperature and power draw imo isnt a big deal for desktops as long as it isnt like 600w

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

2 minutes ago, Deli said:

But 970 only has 3.5+0.5GB vram.

Yes but look at it this way, 4 more gigs of ddr5 vram cost less than dollars to add onto a pcb. You won't get a performance gain from the Vram either 3.5 seems to be holding up still in most games. It may seem like a better value to the consumer but in a pure engineering standpoint it is really not impressive.

[Deli]

1 hour ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

Drawl power has nothing to do with custom pcb

Any PC with a decent 400W PSU will do fine with a 150-170w TDP card. What's the big deal here?