It appears that MSI will be one of the first AIB partners to get a reference version of the AMD RX 480 graphics card out. Available as soon as next week, the MSI Radeon RX 480 8G pairs AMD’s Polaris-based GPU with 8GB of GDDR5 memory on a reference platform and cooler.
The MSI card uses the AMD reference cooler with a blower style fan and measures 9.45” in length. It is a dual slot design with a red and black aesthetic. Rear IO includes three DisplayPort and one HDMI ports. It is powered by a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector.
There is not much to say with regards to clocks on this GCN4-based card as there are no factory overclocks to speak of. The base clock sits at 1120 MHz (which is an average expected clock, not necessarily the minimum) and the GPU can boost up to a maximum of 1266 MHz out of the box. MSI is clocking the memory at the full 8 GHz though, which is good (AMD stated that partners could clock memory anywhere from seven to eight GHz).
Looking around various retailers, it appears that you will be able to get your hands on it as soon as July 9th from Newegg for $240.
Watch out for pricing before clicking that buy button though, because some sites that allow third party sellers have jacked up the prices quite a bit! If you are looking for a reference design, this card should be as good as the rest. Personally, I am looking forward to MSI and other AIB partner’s custom RX 480 cards which should have much higher overclocking potential and a better power phase setup that should alleviate any power consumption concerns of the reference design’s VRM setup. That is not to say that the reference MSI is going to blow up your PC or anything, but from a buyer's perspective I would rather wait for the custom boards with better coolers that I can push further and faster for only a fairly slight premium. If you need a blower style cooler, this card should work.
Also read:
Am I missing something? The
Am I missing something? The RX 480 launched a week ago, with MSI already listed and subsequently sold out on Newegg, along with XFX and Diamond for the 8G, and Sapphire, Powercolor, and Asus with the 4G.
i assume those were AMD
i assume those were AMD reference cards/boards with aib stickers on them.
Ah, makes sense.
Ah, makes sense.
Sorry, my wording was bad. It
Sorry, my wording was bad. It is already out, but when I was looking around last night it was sold out everywhere for the $240 price with stock supposedly returning July 9th for Newegg and I think July 16th for B&H for example. There were some on other sites wit it but at way jacked up prices :/.
And actually the reference cards were out of stock for all the partners currently, unless you want to pay 300+ for it which I definitely would not advise– wait for new stock or wait for custom versions if you have that amount budgeted :).
Sorry for the confusion everyone! By coming soon I meant new stock is coming in hehe.
Slow news day.
Slow news day.
hehe. If you have any inside
hehe. If you have any inside scoops feel free to shoot us an email! 🙂
More and more 8GB RX 480s
More and more 8GB RX 480s being announced with less and less focus on the 4GB models. 8GB is basically AMDs version of “founder’s edition”. At least nVidia admits there isn’t a performance advantage to FE cards, but instead talks up its quality parts. Since AMD can’t argue quality with its cheapo heatsink and basic shroud the only option they had it to pull the classic marketing of bigger numbers = better.
AMD talked up the $200 price point big time, and yet emphasize the 8Gb card for 20% more $. The only test results that I have seen is that there is almost no difference in performance on cards that have had two different VRAM SKUs in the past and haven’t seen any new data showing any difference with the 480.
I would really like to see a 4GB card with an aftermarket non-blower cooler for $200-210 so I can recommend one to my brother and a friend.
Yea thats what I would like
Yea thats what I would like to see as well. I’m only going to on gaming on a 1080p monitor so there seems little point for 8gb – but I don’t like the sound of that reference cooler.
Or the 6-pin power connector.. but lets see what today’s news brings on that front.
Developers already working on
Developers already working on games that will have shitty texures on 4GB cards @1080p,every time vram doubles,this kind of things happens.
Founders Edition: Reference
Founders Edition: Reference card with a different name.
Customer pays $100 for a different name on the box.
RX 480 8GB. 4GB of extra memory.
Customer pays $40 more, for 4GB of extra GDDR5 memory.
NamelessTed thinks this two cases are the same. Well in fact he things Nvidia is more honest. F logic.
And not to forget that not all people buy a graphics card to replace it in 6 months. Many will keep the card for 2-4 years. Those extra 4GBs can become very useful in the next couple of years in some games.
I agree completely. I’d pay
I agree completely. I’d pay $40 to double the ram of just about anything I buy. What card does Nvidia sell with 8GB for under $500????
The 4GB cards being sold
The 4GB cards being sold right now are literally identical to the 8GB cards and people are already updating vbios to unlock the full 8GB. The card only has extra usable vRAM but physically contains the same amount.
And I am not excusing nVidia for their FE pricing. Its still a bullshit marketing move. I wouldn’t recommend overpaying for a 1070 just as much I wouldn’t want to overpay for the RX 480.
Based on previous tests, and the tests that gamernexus released today I still think the advantages of 8 vs 4 is limited. If a person is planning on playing Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, or Rainbow Six Siege the 8GB card offers an advantage in certain scenarios. But there are also scenarios in those games where the additional vram doesn’t make any discernible difference.
The point is that AMD advertised up and down that the RX 480 was going to be $200 and yet seemingly 75%+ of available stock have been 8GB for $240-250. The 4GB card offers a better value.
There are games that would be
There are games that would be happy with just 2GB RAM. Does this means that you are overpaying when buying a 4GB card? You don’t make any sense.
AMD was advertising the price of the 4GB model and if you think that 8GBs are a waste of money just search and find a 4GB model. It’s not AMD’s fault if you can’t find a 4GB model in your neighborhood. And AMD can’t put the gun on the head of it’s partners if they want to concentrate on the 8GB model, because the vast majority of consumers, think that an 8GB model for just $30-$40 is a much better investment.
Little point for some gamers,
Little point for some gamers, Maybe on some games that use 4GB or less of textures, but lots of points for those doing non gaming 3d graphics rendering! That 8GB comes in handy for extra high resolution graphics/meshes. And even for independent games makers using the RX 480 8GB for making those gaming textures on high resolution 3d mesh models to generate high definition textures to be scaled down to fit on lower definition gaming meshes/models. And the 8GB means that there will be extra space for more staging of the textures that do not have to be swapped out from memory as often even for games that rarely need to be working on 4GB texture/other data sets at at any single time.
Rendering at the highest definition for textures and images takes a lot more memory space, but those high definition textures/images look better once they are scaled down for gaming by the games’ developers, and for those other graphics users(Who can not afford the Pro cards) that do lots of high definition/high resolution rendering.
Nvidia gamers think that those Gaming models/high resolution textures grow on trees, and that all graphics users should be paying for Nvidia’s high high priced pro graphics. AMD always has more compute in their consumer SKUs for other uses, but those Nvidia gaming GITs do not even know how games are made. Nvidia always gimping consumer graphics hardware down for gaming usage only, and overcharging for what little compute remains!
That is called a business
That is called a business model. And it’s working just fine for nvidia.
Fine for Nvidia and not fine
Fine for Nvidia and not fine for the consumer, so AMD’s RX 480 will put a dent in Nvidia’s sycophant fanboy based market tactics. More affordable gaming hardware from AMD is going to be great for VR gaming, and AMD’s GPU hardware(Async compute fully in the GPU’s hardware) is better positioned for VR/DX12/Vulkan gaming. Just look and see Nvidia’s dual GPU disabling on the GTX 1060 SKUs, and see just where Nvidia seeks to disable more feature in order not to cannibalize its expensive gaming solutions. It’s more about greed than giving value from Nvidia to its customers, as Nvidia is in milking mode 24/7 365, with its gimping to segment and profit at the expense of affordability!
You are a useless triangle that does not even take up a pixel’s space, and will be discarded by the primitive discard accelerator on AMD Polaris micro-architecture.
AMD’s new GCN/Polaris is now capable of speculatively prefetching instructions, just like a CPU does and will reduce pipeline stalls and boost total performance. And that speculative execution of instructions is done in the hardware and will result in much better execution resources utilization while Nvidia uses a software kludge for its execution resources management. Nvidia is throwing higher clocks at the problem, with little improvements is making more efficient use of its existing execution resources, and that shows when things need to be done with less latency. Just wait for the gaming engine makers to start making use of more async compute, and the VR games makers have already stated that AMD’s fully in the GPU’s hardware async compute is the way froward for VR games done with low latency in mind.
What the…i swear the nvidia
What the…i swear the nvidia RDF had surpassed Apple’s. I really hope this was posted by a marketing firm and not actually an individual’s opinion.
Read this detailed
Read this detailed benchmark(4GB vs 8GB) and see why 8GB on the RX 480 is better than 4GB if more texture modding and AA is used! It’s a very good review.
“You should definitely buy 8GB ($240) for games that are more texture heavy (or if planning to apply heavy texture mods) and if you like anti-aliasing and texture filtration, because that’s where we’re seeing the gains. Otherwise, 4GB is an acceptable way to save $40.” (1)
(1)
“AMD RX 480 4GB vs. 8GB Benchmark – Is 8GB VRAM Worth It? ”
http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2503-amd-rx-480-4gb-vs-8gb-benchmark-is-it-worth-it
You’re presenting facts, test
You’re presenting facts, test results, and logic to someone who has demonstrated by his original post that he is impervious to such things.
I admire and applaud your effort, I am just sad that it was wasted on someone so blind.
Nvidia has a sizable
Nvidia has a sizable sycophant fanboy market segement, but that will change as the newer graphics APIs with the games that are more optimized to work with Async Compute fully in the GPU’s hardware start to come online in increasing numbers. Polaris GCN 4.0 is now out there, and there will be more developers working to get the most out of the better hardware resources on AMD’s newest GPUs.
I don’t like that nVidia is
I don’t like that nVidia is charging more for FE either, its a bullshit marketing move. My point was that at least nVidia doesn’t pretend that it offers better performance and has only ever stated that they are doing to so as to not compete with their AIB partners, but also because they believe their quality construction is worth that extra costs. It is up to consumers to decide if that is the case, and clearly people are buying every card as soon as its available. I personally wouldn’t buy a 1070 for over $400.
With the RX 480 AMD decided that they wanted to advertise the $200 price and focus on that the entire time leading up to release, while be very closed about the cards performance. And then they went and sent the 8GB cards to every reviewer, and it seems that 75% of the stock available are 8GB cards for $240+. To top it off, the 4GB cards are literally identical to the 8GB cards and people are already flashing the cards to unlock the full 8GB. So how does AMD justify charging an extra $40 for a different VBIOS when the physical cards are exactly the same?
Until gamernexus posted their 4gb vs 8gb comparison today I hadn’t seen a single review site showing test results for the 4GB model. I still think we need to see more test results on more games.
I also don’t appreciate accusations of being a fanboy. Just because I criticize one company doesn’t mean I can’t also criticize their competition. Its possible for two competing companies to both be doing dumb shit that people should call them out on.
“And then they went and sent
“And then they went and sent the 8GB cards”
AMD sent those cards to reviewers so they could test 4/8 GB without having to send the same reviewer 2 cards. And most people wait for the AIB cards anyways. Nvidia is doing what Intel does and Intel gimps its consumer SKUs so they don’t compete with the Xeon versions. A Classic monopoly marketing segmentation strategy on Nvidia’s part, gimp and segment the parts and charge for every little improvement, Milk Milk Milk is the Nvidia way!
You are most definitely one of those Nvidia apologists, and Nvidia has them out in force spreading the FUD! AMD will bring more competition to the GPU market all while not only catering to gamers but also catering to other consumer uses of their GPUs. Nvidia is all about Nvidia and nothing else!
I ended up seeing that
I ended up seeing that article after my initial comment. So Mirror’s Edge and Assassin’s Creed actually benefit from the increased vram. Until this article was posted there wasn’t a single source that I could find showing any results like this.
Previous articles that had matched 2 vs 4 or 4 vs 8 on the same gpu have shown next to no difference in most situations. This is still somewhat true here, AC definitely takes advantage. But, even in Mirrors Edge the difference only shows itself at Hyper settings, and in both cases neither card is capable of sustaining 60fps, but at Ultra settings both cards are almost identical.
I still think we need to see more testing being done to see which games actually show a difference at playable settings to make it worth the 20% extra.
DX12/Vulkan optimized games
DX12/Vulkan optimized games will put Nvidia behind, and the gaming engine/gaming engine SDKs as well as the games/VR gaming industry will get at every little Polaris feature and optimize the hell out of their games for GCN/Polaris and async compute fully implemented in AMD’s GPU hardware. GCN/Polaris is already showing some better overclocking results on some custom modded parts, so the AIB makers appear to have greatly improved RX 480 based SKUs to get even more performance/dollar out of GCN/Polaris.
Fyi nvidia claims that
Fyi nvidia claims that Polaris is selling better than any other generation, meanwhile an etailer told me that they are only getting 15 cards per shipment, not 150, not 1500, but 15!
More like 150 cards per county, 1500 for the whole world.
Anyone drooling over the gp 102 titan rumors expect even more limited supply and extremely higher price tag titan z anyone?
* pascal lol
* pascal lol
Rather than the reference
Rather than the reference version, I’d be much more interested in an MSI RX 480 Lightning with an 8+6pin.
Although I’m not quite sure that MSI would waste their time with a mainstream product like the RX 480 with the Lightning branding, but it’s fun to entertain the thought.
I really can’t believe how well the RX 480’s are flying off the shelves… Before release there were many leaked photos of pallets of RX 480’s for launch and they’ve all been sold off.
I suppose AMD (or more correctly Raja and RTG) are getting their shit together.
I can’t imagine that the thousands of sold RX 480s won’t reflect in their market share next quarter.
Nvidia pricing is out of
Nvidia pricing is out of control. You’ll start seeing people upgrading more infrequently if AMD can’t bring them to heel.
Hopefully Vega will continue the 480 trend.
lol .. people trying to
lol .. people trying to accuse AMD of charging more for 8gb when 4gb cards can be unlocked to 8gb (by all reports its not all cards) when even their bound to be more expensive 1060 will only have 6gb. NV fanboy logic = Fail. So here you have 4=8 , with nvidia 4=3.5 !!
Meantime AMD provide the pressure for the GTX1060 to be released at a reasonable price rather than something like $300 usd. AMD doing NV buyers a favour again.
Meanwhile polaris sells out in the thousands of units per day metric and nvidia sells in the 10s per day metric from some venders. I will admit it is at a different price bracket however.
I’m mad at everyone haha. AMD
I’m mad at everyone haha. AMD is just making me sad. All this talk and no delivery. I’m sorry but to me the 480 is garbage. Garbage at a decent price I’ll give you that but to me its garbage. I might be more forgiving had they released say a 490 with more balls but no.
You cant compare the 480 to the 1080 in performance or price, although 650 bucks isnt too bad. I feel like AMD kicked me out of the club because I can afford a 600 700 dollar card but they didnt push anything to compete with Nvidia. I was happy with my 390’s in crossfire but why would I touch the 480?
Anybody looking to upgrade from a fairly recent card doesn’t really care about either brand drawing less power, we already have the PSU’s to handle it. We want to give up our cash for cards pushing harder.
As far an Nvidia, nice launch jerks. Next time can you have more than a couple hundred cards on deck? Seriously, what the hell did you do to screw up a launch like that, hire staff from DICE?
I’ll just sit around GPUless because I got an offer for my 390’s I could not refuse until somebody gets their shit together.
It sucks for people who have
It sucks for people who have an R9 390 or above, but the reality is that people who buy $300+ GPUs are only 15%~ of the market.
The vast majority of consumers buy GPUs between $100-$300 dollars, and that’s exactly where AMD is targeting with Polaris.
It is a shame that myself and others won’t have a decent upgrade until Vega or the 1080 Ti ($999 Founders Edition?) so hopefully it’ll be worth the wait.
What are the chances of a
What are the chances of a non-reference, better-performing card with a blower for cases that would benefit from it?
Chances are VERY, VERY good
Chances are VERY, VERY good AIB cards will work much better from all reports coming in.
I’d imagine so – but my
I’d imagine so – but my question is might any be blowers?
WE NEED MORE CARDS AMD!
The
WE NEED MORE CARDS AMD!
The revolution needs Hardware, and a LOT of it!
I hope that we get to see
I hope that we get to see some custom boards soon. Looking for a nice External exhaust card that has a decent heat sync. (Like maybe a HIS ICEQ)
Yes!!!
Yes!!!
Hi is the stock really
Hi is the stock really returning on the 9th of July for the rx480 graphics card on newegg?Does anyone have any information on this ?