rx 480 [Review] Is this worst RX 480 4GB ever? It is not... sadly

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ShampooCA said:

Just picked up this bad boy for my HTPC.

Fun little card for the money so far.

nice

[ShampooCA]

Looks like I can hit 1350/2100 so far stock voltages and power rate.

 

Changed the fan curve, so it's usually at 70% ish at 70C.

 

Clock is not 100% stable, and fluctuates a bit, but benchmark scores are going up. 

 

ASIC score 76.5%

 

Not bad, not bad at all, paid $266 CAD all in, waiting for my MIR so subtract $20.

 

I'm using Afterburner to overclock.  Wattman resets everytime?!?!!!!! ?

 

Wonder if it's better to use wattman BC of the different states. 

 

Hrmm...

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, ShampooCA said:

Looks like I can hit 1350/2100 so far stock voltages and power rate.

 

Changed the fan curve, so it's usually at 70% ish at 70C.

 

Clock is not 100% stable, and fluctuates a bit, but benchmark scores are going up. 

 

ASIC score 76.5%

 

Not bad, not bad at all, paid $266 CAD all in, waiting for my MIR so subtract $20.

 

I'm using Afterburner to overclock.  Wattman resets everytime?!?!!!!! ?

 

Wonder if it's better to use wattman BC of the different states. 

 

Hrmm...

Wait how, mine is at 80-83 on load with stock speed

[ShampooCA]

Fan curve, and much lower ambient temps I'm guessing. Set to go up to 65% after it hits 65C, but gpuz showing 72-74C max with 70% fanspeed.

It's in an aluminum case and by the window that's not well insulated and it's like -10 in Toronto. 

Ambient temp is 23C

 

Edit: Loads using Valley.

 

Edit2: also think more stable clocks give better performance, well at least in Valley so far, but not such a great tool to show improvements. Baseline all stock score is pretty much equal to a 1375/2200 run.  Yeah wtf.  Memory at 2200 stable now, I have Samsung chips on mine. Gonna try firestrike now.

 

Edit3:  forgot to mention this is on an old platform, Core2Quad Q9650 @3.6GHz w/800MHz DDR3 RAM. Bottlenecked for sure, but Valley is GPU dependent. Going to test on my main rig on the weekend.

[Mr.Meerkat]

11 hours ago, ShampooCA said:

1350/2100 so far stock voltages and power

No fair ;-;

My RX470 doesn't even do 1300MHz core without shitting itself (or triggering a protector on my PSU)

[ShampooCA]

There's always someone with a better chip

 

Fortunately for me, I think I got a decent one considering this is a "budget" bargain basement model.

 

So much so that no one has done a PCB analysis, so I mean, I'm happy.  

 

I couldn't take the memory any further in Afterburner, it's maxed out at 2250MHz, and stable in Valley, Firestrike, Timespy, Shadow of Mordor, Grid 2, Dirt 3 benchmarks so far with 1350 core.

 

I don't see the need to push it anymore for daily use, and it seemed to need quite a bit of voltage to even get it to start anything at 1400MHz, so not even gonna try.  I dunno what's considered a lot of voltage on these yet, but +60mV and it still wasn't stable, power limit +5% is the max, so yeah, peak wattage was hitting 170w according to GPUz.

No large improvements in framerates, so whatever.

 

Edit:  Oh, forgot to mention the clockspeed fluctuates, but doesn't seem to fluctuate too much.  Not as stable as being at stock clocks, but still seeing improvements in game and synthetic benchmarks.

[ShampooCA]

Damn it! 

I lied...This card needs more power...It's limited to a 5% vs 50% power limit on other cards.

 

Trying to get 1350 stable without any fluctuation. Grrrr

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, ShampooCA said:

Damn it! 

I lied...This card needs more power...It's limited to a 5% vs 50% power limit on other cards.

 

Trying to get 1350 stable without any fluctuation. Grrrr

Stop it you already make us feel sad @Mr.Meerkat

[ShampooCA]

Haha, my bad!

 

I'm also still getting used to these new GPUs with fluctuating clockspeeds, my GTX1070 included.

 

But I'm discovering it all depends on what's being stressed.  Each benchmark, game, application is drawing on something different.

 

So I just played a couple games, Skyrim Special Edition & Borderlands 2, old games, but those are what I play on my HTPC on the bigscreen.  Both run horribly, but clockspeeds are pegged at 1350, and temps/power draw aren't terrible.  Voltage however peaked to 1.20 according to GPUz, and this is all using Afterburner, so I'm going to guess gpu voltage is on auto, since it decided to ramp up itself.

Anyhoo', I'm really not happy with the performance on older games, Borderlands 2 is literally unplayable with my Q9650@3.6GHz & 800MHz RAM.  Ugh.

[ShampooCA]

Update to this.

 

I spoke too soon.  Those Nvidia Physx titles are really touchy with AMD cards I've learned.  BUT you can turn Physx way down, and have to via the .ini file of Borderlands 2, so i did, and YES much better!  I can play the damned thing now.  Also decided to set a mild overclock with moderate voltage and leave it be in wattman since it has the different states over using a single state tool like Afterburner. 

Since doing so it's solid playing games NO fluctuation @1350MHz/2250MHz (GPU/vRAM) @1.16v.  Benchmarking is one thing, and temps soar, but gaming the max hit according to GPUz is 60C.  <-- WTF?  Yeah weird, fans only ramped up to 1800RPM, but power draw touched 196W!!!!!

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, ShampooCA said:

Update to this.

 

I spoke too soon.  Those Nvidia Physx titles are really touchy with AMD cards I've learned.  BUT you can turn Physx way down, and have to via the .ini file of Borderlands 2, so i did, and YES much better!  I can play the damned thing now.  Also decided to set a mild overclock with moderate voltage and leave it be in wattman since it has the different states over using a single state tool like Afterburner. 

Since doing so it's solid playing games NO fluctuation @1350MHz/2250MHz (GPU/vRAM) @1.16v.  Benchmarking is one thing, and temps soar, but gaming the max hit according to GPUz is 60C.  <-- WTF?  Yeah weird, fans only ramped up to 1800RPM, but power draw touched 196W!!!!!

Ouch, 196W on a 480 without a really high voltage is ow.

 

I had to run mine at 1450MHz / 1.35V in order to hit 200W

[ShampooCA]

Yeah it's weird.

Working fine though so I'm good!

Waiting for others to find this thread after they buy this card which is on sale again and restocked.

[Guest]

Hey it is stable again. Wiith driver 16 so far

[Godlygamer23]

On 1/6/2017 at 3:08 PM, deXxterlab97 said:

Inside of the RX 480. First is the heatsink. 

  Reveal hidden contents

PCB and VRM

  Hide contents

[removed]

Heatpipes

  Reveal hidden contents

@tlink the pads were suppose to attach to the heatpipes so that's why they did not come in contact with the board and make looks like loose. 

The FinFET count refers to the number of the FinFET transistors that are delivering current to the GPU. Though the marketing for it is horrible, and ultimately useless to the average consumer.

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Though the marketing for it is horrible, and ultimately useless to the average consumer.

As well as their customer service and their slow website. But it was cheap at that time for me so I took a gamble. 

[Godlygamer23]

4 minutes ago, deXxterlab97 said:

As well as their customer service and their slow website. But it was cheap at that time for me so I took a gamble. 

How many Powercolor cards have you owned in the past?

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Godlygamer23 said:

How many Powercolor cards have you owned in the past?

Just one, my previous one was an Asus. Tried to RMA but didn't respond to my email

[hojnikb]

Can anyone do a high quality photo of the pcb, so we can see what kind of mosfets and voltage regulator is in there ?

[ShampooCA]

On 2/18/2017 at 8:07 PM, deXxterlab97 said:

Just one, my previous one was an Asus. Tried to RMA but didn't respond to my email

Contact the reseller directly, and let them know you're having issues with Poopycolor.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ShampooCA said:

Contact the reseller directly, and let them know you're having issues with Poopycolor.

Threw away original packaging lol

[Guest]

On 2/20/2017 at 10:52 AM, hojnikb said:

Can anyone do a high quality photo of the pcb, so we can see what kind of mosfets and voltage regulator is in there ?

Guess I can?

[ShampooCA]

5 hours ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Threw away original packaging lol

DDOH!  LOL

 

I'd give you mine, but I don't want to.   #2soon?

[ShampooCA]

4 hours ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Guess I can?

Great, b/c I'm too lazy.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ShampooCA said:

DDOH!  LOL

 

I'd give you mine, but I don't want to.   #2soon?

Don't worry everything looks really nice now

[ShampooCA]

On 2/21/2017 at 4:18 PM, deXxterlab97 said:

Don't worry everything looks really nice now

Why what'd you do to it?

We really need someone to raise the power limit on these to 50%.  5% is just...sad.