AMD RX470 - ASUS Strix and Sapphire Nitro Review

[AngryGoldfish]

AMD has improved their efficiency immensely, but it's still behind the competition. That's all I'm trying to remember. The Fury X was more powerful than the 290X, but it was still behind the competition. I'm not going to praise AMD without restraint when we know they don't stand alone. But then again, neither am I going to give them too much stick. I'm interpreting the hype and the end product, which is just my personal view. It's not definitive or anything.

 

[NeverBackDown]

AMD has improved their efficiency immensely, but it's still behind the competition. That's all I'm trying to remember. The Fury X was more powerful than the 290X, but it was still behind the competition. I'm not going to praise AMD without restraint when we know they don't stand alone. But then again, neither am I going to give them too much stick. I'm interpreting the hype and the end product, which is just my personal view. It's not definitive or anything.

The hype was delivered with Polaris. Ok maybe not entirely the reference, but with custom cards it definitely was. And this proven by how many people are buying them. Before Amazon stopped preorders, the 480x(nitro OC) was the #1 seller on Amz for i think it was 3 days with the reference 8GB version being at #8. That's a lot of hype delivered. In fact I think every new card out besides the 1060, has delivered on it's hype so far.

And also, what exactly is the 480 behind in competition with? They consume more power sure, but it's still very little. You're taking it out of context. Yes they are behind but even then it's not that much more. Now looking at performance between it and the 1060, yes in DX11 more often than not the 480 is slower, but in many games it's about a 5% difference. A 5% difference but at the cost of the 1060 costing anywhere from $30-70 more(in the US). That is not worth a 5% performance benefit. And once you get into Vulkan/DX12, you get way more out of the 480 and it leaves the 1060 in the dust. So in context for what it is, I think they are actually ahead of the competition and especially for the long term. I'm not blindly praising AMD here, as I know they are behind in power consumption and slight DX11 performance, but looking at how it is right now, the 480 is a better buy.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

The hype was delivered with Polaris. Ok maybe not entirely the reference, but with custom cards it definitely was. And this proven by how many people are buying them. Before Amazon stopped preorders, the 480x(nitro OC) was the #1 seller on Amz for i think it was 3 days with the reference 8GB version being at #8. That's a lot of hype delivered. In fact I think every new card out besides the 1060, has delivered on it's hype so far.

And also, what exactly is the 480 behind in competition with? They consume more power sure, but it's still very little. You're taking it out of context. Yes they are behind but even then it's not that much more. Now looking at performance between it and the 1060, yes in DX11 more often than not the 480 is slower, but in many games it's about a 5% difference. A 5% difference but at the cost of the 1060 costing anywhere from $30-70 more(in the US). That is not worth a 5% performance benefit. And once you get into Vulkan/DX12, you get way more out of the 480 and it leaves the 1060 in the dust. So in context for what it is, I think they are actually ahead of the competition and especially for the long term. I'm not blindly praising AMD here, as I know they are behind in power consumption and slight DX11 performance, but looking at how it is right now, the 480 is a better buy.

The hype has delivered... except in power consumption and temperatures. I kind of expected poor overclocking and superb DX12 performance, but I didn't expect the 1070 to draw the same amount of power as the RX480, and I didn't expect the MSI 1060 to have significantly lower temperatures than the MSI RX480 at the same dB levels. From the hype I saw, it did not deliver in those areas. They delivered a great GPU, but they didn't deliver parity power consumption/cooling, according Guru3D's review at least. A 970 from two years ago draws the same amount of power and is actually cooler, from what I remember. Obviously the 480 is more powerful, but not by a wide margin. So AMD is only slightly ahead of a 2-year-old GPU. The card is still great at what it does, which is not the same thing as nVidia and shouldn't be, but in terms of what I interpreted from the AMD hype train, in two key areas AMD did not quite deliver. It wasn't a failure by any means, but it wasn't quite what I had hoped for.

Again, like I said, that's just one persons interpretation and perspective. It isn't definitive, and really neither are Amazon shoppers. The numbers from hands-on testing can speak just as loud as a retail site's sales figures. Loads of people bought the 970 even after the 3.5GB problem was unearthed. Just because it still sold well doesn't mean it didn't have drawbacks.

 

[ImprovizoR]

This card is a bit unexpected. Really close to the 480 and in Vulkan it beats the 1060. Strange little beast. I like it.

 

[BERN_1]

How to build a better benchmark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RRgs51J5FY

 

[Daiyus]

This card is a bit unexpected. Really close to the 480 and in Vulkan it beats the 1060. Strange little beast. I like it.

Definitely. If I was planning on staying with air-cooling the Sapphire NITRO+ would be my choice no question. As it stands though I want to do a custom loop project, more for the experience than the performance, and there's no after-market RX 480 waterblocks.

I wonder if there will be. I know EKWB aren't planning it (check their configurator).