Alongside the launch of AMD’s reference design Radeon RX 480, the company’s various AIB (Add-In Board) partners began announcing their own custom versions pairing AMD’s Polaris 10 GPU with custom PCBs and coolers. Asus took the launch to heart and teased its Radeon RX 480 STRIX under it’s ROG lineup. The press release was rather scant with details, but it does look like a promising card that will let users really push Polaris 10 to it’s limits.
Thanks to forum user Eroticus over at VideoCardz, the RX 480 STRIX looks to use a custom PCB and power delivery design that feeds the GPU via two PCI-E power connectors in addition to the PCI-E slot. Asus is not talking clock speeds on the GPU, but they did reveal that they are going with 8GB of GDDR5 memory at 8 GHz. The DirectCU III cooler pairs heatpipes and an aluminum fin stack with three shrouded fans. There is also a backplate (of course, with a LED backlit logo) which should help support the card and provide a bit more cooling.
I would not expect too much of a factory (out of the box) overclock from this card. However, I do expect that users will be able to seriously overclock the Polaris 10 GPU thanks to the extra power connector (allegedly one 6-pin and one 8-pin which seems a bit much but we’ll see!) and beefy air cooler.
For reference, the, well, reference design RX 480 has base and boost clock speeds of 1120 MHz and 1266 MHz respectively. The Polaris 10 GPU has 2,304 cores, 144 texture units, and 32 raster operators. If buyers get a good chip in their RX 480 Strix, it may be possible for them to get to 1400 MHz boost as some of the rumors around the Internet claim though it’s hard to say for sure as that may require quite a bit more voltage (and heat) to reach. I wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility though!
Of course it would not be Republic of Gamers’ material without LEDs, and ASUS delivers with the inclusion of its Aura RGB LEDs on the cooler shroud and backplate which I believe are user configurable in Asus’ software utility.
Beyond that, not much is known about the upcoming RX 480 STRIX graphics card. Stay tuned to PC Perspective for more information as it gets closer to availability!
Also read:
- The AMD Radeon RX 480 Review – The Polaris Promise
- PowerColor Radeon RX 480 Red Devil Leak
- PCPer Live! Radeon RX 480 Live Stream with Raja Koduri!
- Meet ASUS' DirectCU III on the Radeon Fury
no one revile the clocks of
no one revile the clocks of their cards , so I start to think it’s very bad or very good.
I’m hoping for the latter but we can only wait and see.
Really really hoping nVidia did not repeat the FE fiasco with prices with of the 1060 later this month.
But it will be interesting battle ( I hope ) for the mid/entry range.
From experienced over
From experienced over clockers, polaris absolutely peak out at 1.5ghz
So we are most likely looking at a 1.4ghz card that generate ~190w off heat. (and with this model it all goes inside the case)
Not sure custom boards are worth it for so little of a benefit.
$229 for the 8GB reference board might be the sweet spot…
But if we do see decent custom GTX 1060 at $249, this will kill AMD sales and nvidia will get ‘ALL’ market share from from $200 to $800
“… But if we do see decent
“… But if we do see decent custom GTX 1060 at $249…”
Good luck finding ANY 1060 at MSRP.
Yes, and that was a GREAT
Yes, and that was a GREAT video. OP laid some straight knowledge down upon us youtubers.
Only criticism is that they were using the refernce board. The strix has been confirmed to be a MUCH longer variant.
Phase changing and distribution aside, a longer board will allow for better thermal dissapation. Ergo, that internal bleeding issue they had might not be as great an issue as it was on their reference PCB.
Will it clock to 1.6 GHZ? Probably not. Will it enjoy Nvidia-like 30% clock boosts? Unlikely. Will it be a great sub $300 card. Most certainly.
Honestly, if someone told me last yea to wait six-7 months to buy the 480 I surely would have done it. The 380 I bought at Christmas was, well a joke of a card. Really wish AMD was a bit more transparent on their marketing releases as the 480 would’ve been a much better upgrade for me.
Fixed : But if we do see
Fixed : But if we do see decent custom GTX 1060 at $249, this will kill AMD sales and nvidia will get ‘ALL’ market share from from $300 to $800. Oh wait AMD doesn’t have $300 polaris card..
@StephanS
I think I will go
@StephanS
I think I will go for the non reference for the extra cooling and the 8-pin. I live in tropic, sometime it’s hot and humid here, I prefer to use non stock cooler.
I won’t touch 1060, for one simple reason. It does not support SLI. I’ve been using 750ti for 2+ years, and I regret that fact(750ti does not support SLI too) when I change my monitor to Superwide. i don’t want similar experience along the way by choosing 1060.
RX 480 hit the sweet spot on my wallet, and for me 1060 is not a competition.
Yes Nvidia gimped the SLI,
Yes Nvidia gimped the SLI, and the async-compute. And if you are not only gaming but also doing some rendering/other compute workloads on the RX 480 then this AIB/other AIB options with the 8 pin/better cooling will be just what gets the job done. AMD has more compute resources on the RX 480 relative to the GTX 1060, a whole lot more FP compute on the RX 480.
I’d like to see both the RX 480 and the GTX 1060 benchmarked on some weaker CPU configurations on DX11/OpenGL games and Vulkan/DX12 games just to see which of the GPUs is relying on the CPU more when using the various older/newer graphics APIs. With AMD’s async compute enabled GCN GPUs games makers can move more compute onto AMD’s RX 480 and take more of the load off of the CPU. So that extra compute on AMDs GCN/Polaris SKUs will be of some use on systems with lower power CPU SKUs.
The Games makers are just beginning to get at all the features of the DX12/Vulkan graphics APIs and even that explicit multi-adaptor could help the GTX 1060 with dual/more GPUs working under the control of the APIs and the games and not under any driver Cross fire/SLI dependencies. The Games/gaming engine makers will be tweaking their software to get at every bit of the GPUs’ available graphics and compute especially on AMD’s Polaris based GPUs under VR gaming where more of the games non graphics gaming compute will be accelerated on the RX480/other Polaris SKU’s ACE units to reduce VR gaming latency to a minimum.
I switched from a 970 to a
I switched from a 970 to a RX480 (and made money on the exchange) and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve had far fewer issues with the AMD software than I did with the Nvidia software and the games I’m playing now are running the same if not significantly better on my RX480 than they did on my 970. I wouldn’t buy any Nvidia card right now other than the 1070 or 1080 because of the substantial risk that future titles will heavily lean on compute and leave the less powerful NVidia cards in the dust.
I think the performance of Quantum Break (after the early patches) on Maxwell cards should be a real wakeup call for people. My 970 was performing worse (and with highly variable frame times) than my Xbox was. With consoles relying on GCN going forward, I just don’t see developers ignoring the compute capability of modern gpus going forward. (My RX480 gets over double the framerate of my 970 in Quantum Break)
Why can’t we get non-ep33n
Why can’t we get non-ep33n versions that are as small as the PCB?
I am sure they will be coming
I am sure they will be coming at some point!
Maybe one of the Sapphire
Maybe one of the Sapphire variants would be more to your taste.