First Aftermarket RX480 review is out! (OC3D/Asus)

[ForsakenLive]

OC3D (Tiny Tom Logan) has just uploaded their Asus Strix RX 480 review. It's the first Aftermarket RX 480 review I've seen out there.

Results include synthetics and games in both DX11 and DX12 using both Single RX 480 and two of them in Crossfire.

 

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_displays/asus_rx480_strix_crossfire_review/1

 

There is also a Youtube video review:

 

 

The results as well as the conclusion show that the RX 480 has pretty much no overclocking potential, despite many people claiming the card was "power starved". The Strix card holds an 8 pin as well as a custom PCB with improved power delivery, yet the OC results are just a couple few fps over the reference model.

IMO anyone buying the aftermarket RX 480 should do it for the better temps and quiet operation, they shouldn't really expect noticeable performance gains.

 

Edit:

 

This is another review for the RX 480 strix, we can see much better OC results, looks like OC3D didn't really pushed this GPU that much.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/94945-asus-rog-strix-radeon-rx-480-oc/

 

These are other custom RX 480 reviews if you are interested:

http://www.eteknix.com/sapphire-nitro-rx-480-oc-8gb-graphics-card-review/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/sapphire-rx-480-nitro-oc-4gb-8gb-review/

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/94969-sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-4gb-8gb-oc/
https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-radeon-rx-480-gaming-x-review,1.html

Edited August 1, 2016 by ForsakenLive
Added info provided by the comments.

[kappakali]

"RX480 Crossfire; GTX 1060 Killer?"

 

I just think it's funny... I mean, they are pretty much similar enough cards.. two crossfire 480's will beat one 1060 in most cases.

 

EDIT: I have now learned that this says GTX1080 Beater... not 1060 killer... beater is a stupid word. I recommend you avert your eyes from this post.

 

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, ForsakenLive said:

snip

Hexus disagrees.... Also this review was posed 5 days ago...

 

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/94945-asus-rog-strix-radeon-rx-480-oc/

 

5-10% over the already massively improved stock speeds when overclocked. Not Maxwell-level overclocking, but better than Fiji by far, and arguably better than Pascal (which boosts up to 99% of the max oc anyways)

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 minute ago, kappakali said:

"RX480 Crossfire; GTX 1060 Killer?"

 

I just think it's funny... I mean, they are pretty much similar enough cards.. two crossfire 480's will beat one 1060 in most cases.

It says 1080 killer. Not 1060.

[Misanthrope]

Eww Strix

 

If what you say about overclocking holds water, then as usual, Sapphire is the only sensible choice here. Maybe XFX though, maybe.

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Eww Strix

 

If what you say about overclocking holds water, then as usual, Sapphire is the only sensible choice here. Maybe XFX though, maybe.

Sapphire really dropped the ball on "300" series overclocking (absolutely pitiful even compared to their 200 series equivalents). MSI and XFX were by far the best overclocking models, with MSI being marginally better and significantly more consistent than XFX.

 

Too bad you have to deal with the non-neutral color schemes.

[samcool55]

Just an FYI this isn't the first review of an aftermarket rx 480.

4-5 days ago a lot of sapphire nitro reviews got posted.

http://www.eteknix.com/sapphire-nitro-rx-480-oc-8gb-graphics-card-review/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/sapphire-rx-480-nitro-oc-4gb-8gb-review/

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/94969-sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-4gb-8gb-oc/

Guru3D also have one of the custom msi card.

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-radeon-rx-480-gaming-x-review,1.html

 

Sooo yea there are a lot of them out there, might be the first one from asus tho, they are late to the party with the rx 480.

Also the prices of the asus cards are completely stupid

 

I think there are also some reviews of the rx 480 red devil... Not sure about that.

[kappakali]

4 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

It says 1080 killer. Not 1060.

ah jeez.

[Misanthrope]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

Sapphire really dropped the ball on "300" series overclocking. MSI and XFX were by far the best overclocking models, with MSI being marginally better and significantly more consistent than XFX.

 

Too bad you have to deal with the non-neutral color schemes.

Yeah i'm not a fan of their later "Nitro" line up their aesthetic was much better with the Tri X and Vapor X designs. But considering that

 

1) They flat out outperform almost every single cooler out there (For AMD vendors mind you) and

2) 99% of builds will actually just show the top of the card (seriously wtf are the vertically mounted cases? So far only Termaltake sells one and I think I saw anotherone at a trade show but we should be getting more vertical mount raiser cases not just for ITX but to truly show off cards on desktop builds) looks aren't as important as long as it looks nice from the top.

[Curufinwe_wins]

6 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Yeah i'm not a fan of their later "Nitro" line up their aesthetic was much better with the Tri X and Vapor X designs. But considering that

 

1) They flat out outperform almost every single cooler out there (For AMD vendors mind you) and

2) 99% of builds will actually just show the top of the card (seriously wtf are the vertically mounted cases? So far only Termaltake sells one and I think I saw anotherone at a trade show but we should be getting more vertical mount raiser cases not just for ITX but to truly show off cards on desktop builds) looks aren't as important as long as it looks nice from the top.

Ehh, again I'd argue the 2.5 slot MSI 390x cooler was better than the 390x Nitro cooler. Even if less compatible for CF or ITX cases.

 

I'm not a huge fan of vertically mounting gpu's in large cases personally, but then again I watercool so the sleekness is the same either way. Small cases are a different story in my mind. That said, I do agree with the look from the top, but come on.... what cooler top looks better than this?

 

[Misanthrope]

7 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Ehh, again I'd argue the 2.5 slot MSI 390x cooler was better than the 390x Nitro cooler. Even if less compatible for CF or ITX cases.

 

I'm not a huge fan of vertically mounting gpu's in large cases personally, but then again I watercool so the sleekness is the same either way. Small cases are a different story in my mind. That said, I do agree with the look from the top, but come on.... what cooler top looks better than this?

 

That's the back though not the top. It's a nice backplate but I meant looking from the very top.

[Curufinwe_wins]

15 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

That's the back though not the top. It's a nice backplate but I meant looking from the very top.

Oh, I consider top down to be top. You mean a side view? or the cooler bottom up view?

[ForsakenLive]

36 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

5-10% over the already massively improved stock speeds when overclocked. Not Maxwell-level overclocking, but better than Fiji by far, and arguably better than Pascal (which boosts up to 99% of the max oc anyways)

Looks like OC3D didn't do their homework well Interesting results.

 

34 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Just an FYI this isn't the first review of an aftermarket rx 480.

4-5 days ago a lot of sapphire nitro reviews got posted.

http://www.eteknix.com/sapphire-nitro-rx-480-oc-8gb-graphics-card-review/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/sapphire-rx-480-nitro-oc-4gb-8gb-review/

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/94969-sapphire-radeon-rx-480-nitro-4gb-8gb-oc/

Haven't seen those yet, on my regular daily visited websites and youtube feed this is the first one I saw.

LTT News forums have been pretty unactive lately, I used to get most of my tech news from here. Good old topwargamer posting days.

[Misanthrope]

7 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Oh, I consider top down to be top. You mean a side view? or the cooler bottom up view?

What you'd consider "sideways" i.e. the thin part on top that you see on most horizontally mounted cases.

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 minute ago, Misanthrope said:

What you'd consider "sideways" i.e. the thin part on top that you see on most horizontally mounted cases.

Ahh. Makes sense I guess. Waterblocks are boring, the strix looks nice, the MSI cards are kinda meh (depending on your preference).

[ivan134]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Sapphire really dropped the ball on "300" series overclocking (absolutely pitiful even compared to their 200 series equivalents). MSI and XFX were by far the best overclocking models, with MSI being marginally better and significantly more consistent than XFX.

 

Too bad you have to deal with the non-neutral color schemes.

Yup. And while they didn't drop the ball on the 480 overclocking, they dropped the ball on acoustics. People need to stop singing their praises just by going off history and not actually looking at their current offerings. The nitro 480 is easily the worst AIB 480 so far.

[Xsilent(X)]

That review is so horrible done the RX480 CF beats every 1070 out there.

[handymanshandle]

Don't be so negative OP.

The 480 seems to be just fine, now I'm not sure about the Strix 480 but the Nitro+ 480 seems to hold its own even though you can't really go past the speeds that Sapphire presets it to.

[Doobeedoo]

Interesting, differs from others so variations make it seem that OC potential can't be pin pointed well enough for this GPU hmm.
None the less it's a well performing card. Would be nice to see binned chip and how much it can be pushed.

[LAwLz]

TechPowerUp's review of the MSI Gaming X model is up too.

 

 

Summary:

Costs about 265 dollars (assuming you can find them in stock). So about the same as one of the cheaper GTX 1060 (again, assuming you can find one).

 

Power consumption is much higher than the reference 480 (and waaay higher than the 1060). This is probably because the power consumption skyrockets with even a small overclock. Seems like the 480 GPU is way past the sweet spot even on the reference card.

 

It's only half as the reference 480 when under load (10dB = twice the perceived volume) and 3 dB more silent than the 1060. 3 dB is not something to brush under the rug, but it's not ground breaking either.

 

Performance is decent. It's 4% faster than the reference 480, but the 1060 is still 7% faster (at 1080p).

 

TechPowerUp managed a 5% overclock on the core, and 13% overclock on the memory. That is quite a bit worse than the 1060 which managed  8% on the core and 22% on the memory. The performance gain ended up being 8.6% on the 480 (for comparison, the 1060 got a 15.1% performance increase from the overclock).

It would have been interesting to see what power consumption was like when overclocked.

 

Temperatures are a lot better than the stock card. At half the loudness the temperatures went from 84 degrees on the reference card, to 73 degrees on the MSI card.

Something I found interesting was that the card did not get any hotter when overclocked. Both factory OC and extra OC stayed at 73 degrees.

 

 

 

I will still recommend the GTX 1060 over this, but if pricing is weird or you for some reason refuse to buy an Nvidia card then I'd say this seems worth the extra ~25 dollars over the reference card.

[That Norwegian Guy]

8 hours ago, ForsakenLive said:

The results as well as the conclusion show that the RX 480 has pretty much no overclocking potential, despite many people claiming the card was "power starved". The Strix card holds an 8 pin

An 8-pin delivers no more power than a  6-pin. The two extra pins are ground.

[ForsakenLive]

5 minutes ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

An 8-pin delivers no more power than a  6-pin. The two extra pins are ground.

That is incorrect. 6 pin have 3 yellow + 3 black (12v x3, 3 ground). 8 pin have 4 yellow+4black (12v x4, 4 ground). Average 6 pin draw is 75W, 8 pin average draw is 150W.

 

This is a pin layout of all ATX PSUs

[That Norwegian Guy]

2 minutes ago, ForsakenLive said:

That is incorrect. 6 pin have 3 yellow + 3 black (12v x3, 3 ground). 8 pin have 4 yellow+4black (12v x4, 4 ground). Average 6 pin draw is 75W, 8 pin average draw is 150W.

 

This is a pin layout of all ATX PSUs

 

Did the spec change since 2012? Because all the comparisons I've seen show 3 yellow 12v on both.

 

Edit: Found it, 6+2 pin connectors are the source of the confusion. A true 8-pin (no breakaway 2 pins) has four 12v, but a 6+2 pin configuration only has 3.

[ForsakenLive]

1 minute ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

 

Did the spec change since 2012? Because all the comparisons I've seen show 3 yellow 12v on both.

For 8 ping GPU it's always the same

I can give you pics of my PSU or links to the manual.

I learn this while doing custom sleeving. 8 pin connectos give you more power, twice actually, this is why some GPUs offer you a dual 6 pin to 8 pin converter.

[Dresta]

1 minute ago, ForsakenLive said:

For 8 ping GPU it's always the same

Really? PSU's have that low of a latency ! holy shit didn't know