Gadgetory

as with all of our recent - video card reviews of reference cards we recommended waiting on the our X 480 until partner models came out from adding board partners like amasai Asus and other folks working on card sapphire so forth and so that's finally come to be we have an MSI twin Fraser 6 cooled version of the rx 480 and it is called the gaming X so it's the same naming scheme as followed for the gtx 960 1070 so forth and the our X 480 reference card when we reviewed it was before the 10-6 came out and so at that time we recommended the 480 as the new go to 200 to $300 card and as a 1060 came out of course there's a lot more competition so now it's a split market between the two and you can check our 1060 review for more discussion on the explicit comparison between the 480 and 1060 but for today we're reviewing the MSI R X 480 gaming X and this one is equipped with that Twin Frozr cooler so it's a bit more advanced in terms of cooling potential it's got a pre overclock applied to it as priced at 265 dollars versus the $250 price of the reference card in this review we'll look at the MSI pre overclocked 480 for thermal frame rate and overclocking performance this is the specs listing of that 480 from MSI the price for the card is $15 more than reference it's still the 8 gigabyte model and the card runs 8 gigabytes of vram clocked at 8 gigabits per second or an actual memory speed of 2000 megahertz and the rest of the specs as you might expect are the same as the reference card the architecture obviously hasn't changed so we're really just looking at a pre overclock and that's about it check out the RX for ad initial review for information on architecture the cooler is where these AIB partners really differentiate themselves in design from each other and from the reference card and this cooler is the Twin Frozr 6 cooler so it's going to be the same that we detailed at Computex this year and also and pretty much every card review since then from MSI it's got dual push fans as you can see they are pretty large fans and that is possible because the PCB is a custom PCB you can see this one is actually a good deal larger than the reference model and so it's not i taller but also wider the height allows msi to fit the dual push fans that are pretty large on there which is really a benefit to noise so now as i can spin them at lower rpms they're larger they just pay more heat per rotation so to speak and that allows a slower fan speed and also better idles because you can leave the fans idle when it's under 60 Celsius load and so that's just a noise consideration the PCB is also wider and that's similar it allows this huge aluminum heatsink to be accommodated and then there are three copper heat pipes which are nickel-plated for the rest of the card and those are two six millimeter pipes and one eight millimeter pipe here the cards heat pipes square out towards the cold plate which helps ensure contact between heat pipes and the aluminum fins that spread the heat greater surface area overall has been the primary push for this generation of AIB partner coolers on both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs and the cooler is two six millimeter and one eight millimeter heat pipe are rounded on the outside but they do square out towards the middle a base plate sits under the cooler making contact to the FETs and helping with vrm dissipation but also providing structural support in conjunction with the flanking backplate and you can actually if you look on the side see some of the chokes sticking up from that base plate let's get to some testing the bench you're looking at on the screen now is our test platform and our full testing methodology is defined in great depth on the website as always you can hit that below if you want to read more you can also search the channel for one-percent lows or for Delta T if you want to learn more about what either of these measurements for FPS and temperature mean the peak average temperature of the msi are X 480 gaming X using MSI's updated Twin Frozr six cooler post a load output of 46.1 six Celsius with an idle of 7.5 for Celsius and that's sustained entirely with passive cooling when doing idle most ABI partners including EVGA ACX gigabyte msi and most of the others at this point we'll spin down to zero rpm when under minimal load that's resorting to passive heatsink cooling this is versus the reference cooler for the AR X 480 the MSI rx 40 gaming X posts about 10 degrees Celsius cooler performance overall versus the rx 40 reference from Andy and that performance improvement is in line with our previous tests of AIB partner coolers versus the reference designs here's the overtime chart this shows temperature versus time so it's the same data as the previous chart but presented differently for full over time charts fan RPMs things like that check the link in the description below as for our endurance tests we saw nearly perfectly flat frequency output and that's what we want to see the frequency is able to maintain its defined setting by MSI that pre overclocked with greater stability then even the reference card was able to maintain a lower clock rate and that's because of the improved thermal solution compared to the endurance of the our X 480 reference card the MSI gaming X rendition of the product is greatly improved in clock rate stability and in temperatures and as always for more thermal analysis check the link of the description below before getting into FPS for this card a quick important note we posted a video about 16.7 dot 3 the new AMD updates to its Radeon settings and driver package for the rx 480 and other cards and we were having a lot of issues with that driver set when we were actually tasking this card which of course whittier rolls out slightly addressed so things may change by the time you see the video but the relevant point here is that we didn't use 16.7 dot 3 for benchmarking because it was just not stable for what we were doing with the RX 480 and so we ended up just using the same driver packages we've been using for the last few reviews which will be updated as soon as something stable comes out so we're on 16 72 which is equivalent to 16 to 7 1 except there was a internal version 16.7 dot 2 for GTA 5 and for doom which supports the Vulcan update and are on the original launch drivers which I believe were 16.6 dot 2 for every other game on the bench and as always will update once the drivers are updated properly let's start with GTA 5 at 1080p the msi RX for you gaming XP overclocked to 1303 megahertz manage the frame rate of 88 FPS average with 1% lows at 63 and 0.1% low is not far behind looking at the reference our X 480 clocked at 12 66 megahertz a boost we see an 80 5.3 FPS average so not a huge gain but it does at least post a difference of 3.1 percent for reference the reference gtx 1060 rest set around 95 FPS average with 67 FPS 1% lows and that's a difference of 7.6 percent from the msi RX 4 80 we haven't fully tested our suite at 1440p with GTA 5 but just as a quick note here we were heading 64 FPS average 45 FPS 1% low and 39 0.1% Louis with the msi version of the RX for 80 lakh ops 3 tends to show more favorable performance on AMD hardware which makes it an interesting benchmark title the game is also exceptionally well optimized for its graphics quality and routinely exceeds 100 FPS at 1080p at high at 1080p again hide the msi our X 480 hits 144 FPS average with a 117 fps 1% low and 111 FPS 0.1% low and that's a good gain over the reference our X 480 which is at 132 FPS average so 132 Brits 144 equating a difference of 8.5% by ops 3 is a fairly clock intensive game which is evident here and in this instance the AIB partner cards are enough of a jump with the pre OC that it differentiates between 144 Hertz gaming and just under that for reference the gtx 1060 founders Edition card runs at 122 FPS average at 1080p at 1440p the msi our X 480 maintains a 91 FPS average still fully playable with lows exceeding 60 FPS and the reference card sits at around 83 FPS average so a bit more than 7 FPS difference between the 2 our 4 gigabyte unit had some 0.1% low frame time issues with black ops 3 at 1440p but was still at 88 FPS average for reference again the gtx 1060 founder's Edition is at 78 FPS average and that's just above the GTX 970 SSC or superclocked or as they might call it super super clocked version of the card for the curious the msi our X 480 was bumping 45 FPS average at 4k high so you'd want to be at 1440p or lower resolution for optimal player you'd have to seriously tank your settings because in black ops 3 with this setup because the Z point one percent losers were suboptimal the RX for 80 even from MSI was choppy and black ops 3 up next doom note that we're hoping to conduct more doom tests in the future with Vulcan and async compute and that will be in the near future but we're backlogged on GP reviews right now in the meantime we're looking at doom with OpenGL and Vulcan to quickly test API scalability within the game at 1080p the MSI R X 480 performs a couple FPS better than the reference card as doom is less clock rate intensive than some of our other titles we've tested and the gaming X 480 is at 87 FPS which is 85 of the reference card lows are comparable the GTX 1060 is the one to keep an eye on here by the way is at ninety eight point three FPS average with OpenGL marking a reasonable lead over the RX 480 let's switch though to the chart with a Vulcan and OpenGL simultaneously with Vulcan this story sort of changes the our X 480 now operates at 111 FPS average with the MSI version of the card at 118 dot 5 FPS average the GTX 1060 F II posts nearly identical performance to its OpenGL output at 97.9 fps and is now behind the RX 4 80s in performance so they've traded 1440p is a similar story looking at our OpenGL only chart we see the MSI rx 480 is a couple FPS faster than the reference card posting about a 5% difference both cards are behind the 1060 EFI is 66 FPS average and higher lo metrics in this chart but looking at Vulcan and OpenGL the MSI are X 480 gaming axis and now at nearly 80 fps with the reference card at almost 74 FPS average the GTX 1060 gaming X from MSI is at almost 70 FPS these new API s are still finding their way into games and still working on optimization so there's a bit of difference between how they perform right now but it'll be interesting to observe performance as game developers to start making the switch over from the last gen AP is to support next gen only built moving on to Mirror's Edge catalyst 1080p ultra has the MSI R X 480 gaming X operating at seventy eight point seven FPS average with poorly time 0.1% lows at thirty five point seven fps and this has the card performance similarly to the EVGA GTX 970 SSC but with significantly worse low frame times and that is detectable to the player for reference the stock our X 480 from AMD runs a few FPS slower at 74 FPS average and the GTX 1060 EFI is a bit faster 82 FPS average at 1440p ultra the msi rx 40 gaming X sits at 51 fps closer now to the GTX 1060 f:e but the EFI card again sustains better low frame rates we tested plenty more games as well so if you want to see ashes of the singularity for DX 12 and 11 comparisons or Metro last light just for some really stable benchmark game the division and Mordor those are all linked in the description below on the full review of the card alright so let's talk about overclock has one of the more interesting points of an AAV Partner card the overclocking process is the same on this card as with the our X 480 reference we're using an these Whatman utility built into the drivers and afterburner will eventually come out but it's not ready yet for the RX 480 so we didn't use it for this test so we're using a wot man and with wot man based on the stepping chart you can see on the screen now we eventually settled on a 13 16 megahertz overclock on the core and 2150 on the memory we pushed 2200 but it was just a little too volatile we saw some flickering on occasion didn't do a hard crash but it did flicker and that's not stable and when we pushed the 13 70 megahertz same thing it would hard crash or would flicker so we settled 13 60 and 2150 note here that the MSI our X 480 can push to 1168 millivolts while the reference card can only do 11 50s that is also useful for stability we measured the maximum GPU draw at 240 Watts when fully overclocked and that's not the card draw that's the GPU draw so with the card you add a bit extra for the memory and things like that 40 or 50 watts more depending on power target memory overclock and all that stuff results are what you see on the screen now in terms of the actual FPS performance you can see we gain a couple of frames in some cases for the most part we're just between where we were hitting with the RX for a dihybrid which we were able to push 13 90 megahertz you can see that in shadow of mordor and the overclocked reference card which we got stuck at 13 40 megahertz so the msi RX 4 80 this card is able to push an additional 20 megahertz or so on the core with this particular card that we have does obviously very somewhat card to card so we get an extra 20 megahertz not a huge deal but overall you're paying more for things like the cooler that's where your extra 15 dollars is going for the most part so with these over clocks and important thing to note is that the extra OC we get the extra 20 megahertz or so is not accompanied by a screaming loud blower fan and get on this thing this we have to keep it around 4,000 rpm the fan is pretty loud of that speed and that was just to keep it cool enough to perform a 13 40 megahertz core clock OC this doesn't have that issue runs out about 30 to 40% fan speed they're bigger fans they spin slower in general so they're much quieter so that is the main trade off here in addition to the extra 20 megahertz in terms of the conclusion here the change between the reference card and this board partner card is not huge in most games with FPS but in a couple games like more clock sensitive like black ops 3 you do see a pretty reasonable difference in fact it's enough to go from 130 ish FPS on this 244 on this which if you're 144 Hertz monitor owner you're playing competitive FPS that's a decent enough change where you would certainly want in a heavy partner card if you didn't already and by the way we really don't recommend these you don't recommend the founders edition cards either it's just the board partners do a better job with cooling and that impacts more than cooling as you've seen here at impacts the frequency stability as well and you also get some pre Oasys applied if you're not going to overclock on your own so in general this was never really the core recommendation even though we said the RX 480 is the new sort of 200 to $300 titleholder as stated in that video we're indicating more for the partner models now here's the thing this is $265 so at 265 you're encroaching on territory of a lot of the gtx 1060 market and that's a pretty powerful performer as well they are very tightly tie in some games the 1060 tends to outperform the RX 480 and a good deal of games rx 40 times outperform the 1060 and a good deal of games it just depends on what you're looking at for an example with black ops and doom doom on Vulcan not OpenGL we see the 480 times I'll perform the 1060 with other games GT a shadow of mordor we see the opposite 1060 outperforms the 480 so if you're playing one game very heavily I would suggest that you look for benchmarks of that specific game we might have them linked below and pick the card that looks the best for that game if you're playing kind of a wide berth of games then just look through all of our charts figure out what kind of looks like it matches the most of what you're playing and and pick from there in terms of the overall performance though certainly this would be a better choice than reference I would recommend it and feel comfortable recommending it at the $265 price point $15 extra not terrible it's certainly within the oh it's only $15 extra sort of margin where you feel like you're pushing the budget a bit but for the better cooler much greater silence and slight better overclocking potential there not a huge amount it is worth it and in my opinion and in the opinion of the folks at the site like Mike who helped me test these cards the 1060 is your most immediate option to look at in consideration we would recommend looking at the EVGA 1060 SC review on that coming and hopefully soon and of course the RX 470 is coming out very soon we already published the release date on that as August 4th so if you are trying to tighten the budget a bit wait for our review of that see what you think and then pick between the three cards based on how much money you have available for GPU so as always I'm not going to tell you which card to buy between the 1060 and the 480 I will tell you avoid this and go for a partner model if you can because they are a lot better unless you really want the blower fan for some reason maybe an SFF box where the push fans don't work well so that's all I will tell you in terms of 1060 and 480 just look through the numbers we've given them all to you pick based on the numbers because that's that's all you need to make a choice so thank you for watching as always patreon link post all video if you like our type coverage and comment below subscribe all that stuff I'll see you all next time there's another video card out you