Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

AMD Radeon RX 480: Overview (Reference card full specs & product tour)

2016-06-29
AMD has been pretty clear about what their mission is with the 14 nanometer pelage GPUs the company's on a mission to reclaim market share and therefore it makes sense to go after the largest market segment this means rather than starting with the big boy is aimed at doing things a bit differently this time around with over eighty percent of the gaming GPU market dominated by 100 to 300 dollah graphics card this is where the bulk of the market share is won and lost that being the case aimed his first strike will be made at a two hundred dollar price range with the RX 480 Radian RX for ad will cost 200 US dollars for the 4 gigabyte model and 240 US dollars for the a cubic model that I tested here like all Polaris GPUs the RX 480 is based on the fourth-generation gcn architecture which AMD claims bros up to fifteen percent more performance / compute unit than GPUs used in the second-generation gcn architecture AMD says that 4th gen gcn delivers improved geometry processing and updated memory controller better memory compression enhanced buffers trueaudio next real-time and prioritization compute among other things for polaris AMD selected samsung and GlobalFoundries 14 nanometer FinFET based process which is the dancers family process available FinFET transistors are crucial to reducing power consumption and enable operating voltages that are 150 millivolts lower than the previous generation thereby cutting active power by thirty percent from a 1 volt baseline in contrast in video is using TSMC's 16 nanometer FinFET based process so it'll be interesting to see how they compare in terms of size and efficiency typically in videos had the upper hand in terms of efficiency if it's some time now with Pascal proving to be their most efficient architecture yet we're banking on big things from AMD AMD has announced two GPUs to be based on the florist and I the biggest of which is a 2304 stream processor enabled Radian RX for 80 which does use the full silicon the die measures just two hundred and thirty two millimeters squared and crams in 5.7 billion transistors this makes the dye incredibly small for a GPU claiming 5.8 teraflops of compute power in terms of physical size this means the RX 480 GPU is similar to the r7 370 a GPU is just 1024 SPU's for just two teraflops of compute power in total there are 36 compute units resulting in 2304 stream processors along with 144 texture mapping units and 32 render output units or raster operation pipelines depending on your name your preference these course specifications place the RX 48 is squarely between the radeon r9 380 x 99 390 when compared to the i-93 90 though the RX 480 does have one major disadvantage memory bandwidth with the 4 gigabyte and a gigabyte models feature gddr5 memory clock to two thousand megahertz using a 256-bit wire memory bus resulting in a three point of 256 gigabytes per second in comparison the r9 390 utilizes a 512-bit memory bus and although it uses lower clocks memory it still achieves a 384 gigabyte per second throughput propping up the RX 480 is the core clock speed which has been set at 1120 megahertz and your boost as high as 1266 megahertz that's a 27-percent boost over the i-93 90s operating frequency and should help account for having ten percent fewer cause truth be told 1266 megahertz isn't a particularly high operating frequency for 40 nanometer part giving a video of pushing more complex GPUs to around 2000 megahertz using their GPU boost three point O technology therefore I'd be expecting the squeeze quite a bit more out of the RX 418 sadly it wasn't to be as you'll see in my overclocking video it is possible my reference card was just a dud I won't know for sure until others post their results which will have happened by the time you view this video speaking of the reference card let's take a look at what AMD is put together here in terms of design we don't have anything radically new the RX 480 essentially borrows its design from the previous generations r9 380 the design is simple and understated yet attractive there aren't any fancy LED lights no back plate and the fan shroud is plastic still it's worth keeping in mind the prices started just two hundred dollars so be unrealistic to expect the kind of features found on the four hundred dollar plus graphics cards as always the reference card makes use of a blower style fan the can draw in air from both sides of the card which can be useful in tight spaces the kind of tight spaces you'll likely encounter when running two cards together for crossfire all up the RX 480 measures 240 millimeters low though the PCB is just 177 millimeters so it'll be very easy for board partners to produce smaller ITX type cards right out of the gate MDS reference card is also surprisingly light and this is down to the fact that AMD has gotten away with using a very small heat sink the heatsink is so small in fact that we would have previously only expected to see this on the lowest end gaming graphics cards so it'll be interesting to see how hot the RX for 80 runs of course we know power consumption is going to be relatively low given not only the TDP rating but also that single six pin power connector even the previous generations are no 380 featured 26 pin connectors and you had to step down to the r7 370 before you found just a single pcie power connector in fact the PCB design and configuration looks more like a geforce gtx 960 on board we find a six plus one phase power design and eight gddr5 memory chips for a total vom capacity of AQ bytes interestingly AMD is rated the RX for 80 to 150 watts for the TDP which is the same figure in video gave two gtx 1070 this rating seems quite high given the specifications and the fact that this is a 14 nanometer part now they have a better understanding of the radiant RX 480 specs and design be sure to check out my in-depth benchmark analysis video here thanks joining me again i'm your host Matt as always and I'll look forward to seeing guys next time youtubers like me depend on your support to continue improving the quality and content of our videos to support the channel directly consider becoming a patron to also get access to a heap of cool rewards and exclusive giveaways also don't forget you can check prices and buy the products I looked at in this video through the Amazon links in the video description below thank you kindly for supporting me and the hardware on box channel it means a lot to me and I really do appreciate it and in return I'll continue to work as hard as I can to keep producing the content you enjoy
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.