Afterwards 4 years of 28nm designs, Nvidia recently ushered in the 16nm process by launching today'due south pinnacle performing GPUs: the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. In short, their operation was impressive, power consumption was astonishing, and prices were... well, typical. Sadly, availability of these new cards has been underwhelming, leaving some consumers frustrated with the temporary hike in pricing.

Those who can afford a $400+ graphics carte and actually managed to hunt down a Pascal GPU will no doubt exist pleased. For the balance of u.s.a., or rather for the bulk of us, we have been waiting for something else, and for well-nigh that something could exist AMD's Radeon RX 480.

Touted as the perfect VR solution for the masses, AMD is hoping to claw back a fleck of marketplace share with the new Radeon RX 480 which is aimed at the mainstream $200-250 segment, with other affordable Polaris GPUs expected to follow.

Whether on purpose or forcefully and then, AMD is flipping how they used to release new GPUs, starting with mainstream products this time and working upward to the loftier-end stuff. This might brand sense given the company's current marketplace share predicament, though I personally feel the motion to the 14nm process has about forced AMD into this strategy. The procedure may need to mature before larger, more complex GPUs can exist created in sufficient volumes.

Then again, with over 80% of the PC gaming market dominated by $100 - $300 graphics cards, this is where the bulk of the marketplace share is won and lost. AMD'southward first strike will be made at the $200 price range ($240 for the 8GB model) with the RX 480.

This Polaris-based GPU is based on the 4th-generation GCN architecture, boasting up to 15% more performance per Compute Unit (CU) than GPUs using 2nd-gen GCN, according to AMD. Retentivity performance and pinch has also been improved with an updated memory controller supporting GDDR5 at upwardly to 8Gbps information rates for a memory bandwidth of 256GB/due south.

For Polaris, AMD selected Samsung and Global Foundries' 14nm FinFET-based process, which is the densest foundry process bachelor. FinFET transistors are crucial to reducing power consumption and enabling operating voltages that are 150mV lower than the previous generation, thereby cut active power by 30% from a 1V baseline.

In dissimilarity, Nvidia is using TSMC'south 16nm FinFET-based process, so it volition be interesting to see how they compare in terms of size and efficiency. Nvidia has had the upper hand in terms of efficiency for some time now and with Pascal proving to exist its well-nigh efficient compages yet, we are banking on big things from AMD.

Meet Polaris 10's Biggest GPU

Then far we know there will be at least two GPUs based on the Polaris x die, the biggest of which is the 2304 Steam Processor-enabled Radeon RX 480.

The die measures just 232mm2, which is incredibly minor for a GPU claiming 5.8 TFLOPS of compute power. In terms of physical size, the RX 480 GPU is close to the R7 370, a budget oriented GPU with just 1024 SPUs and ii TFLOPS of compute power.

Radeon RX 480 Radeon R9 390 GeForce GTX 970 GeForce GTX 1070
Release date June 2022 June 2022 September 2022 May 2022
Price (electric current) $240 $260 $260 $400
Cost at launch $240 $330 $330 $380
Architecture GCN 4th-gen
(Polaris)		 GCN 2d-gen
(Polaris)		 Maxwell Pascal
Fab (nm) 14 28 28 xvi
Die size (mm2) 232 438 398 314
Cadre (MHz) 1120 k 1050 1506
Heave (MHz) 1266 North/A 1178 1683
Memory (MT/s) 8000 6000 7010 8000
Cores/TMUs/ROPs 2304:144:32 2560:160:64 1664:104:56 1920:120:64
Pixel (GP/s) 81 64 58.8 96.4
Texture (GT/due south) 182.iii 160 109.2 180.vii
Memory size (MB) 4096/8192 8192 3584+512 8192
Bus width (bit) 256 512 224/32 256
Retention blazon GDDR5 GDDR5 GDDR5 GDDR5
Bandwidth (GB/s) 256 384 196/28 256
Single precision (GFLOPS) 5834 5120 3494 6463
TDP (W) 150 275 145 150

Compared to Nvidia'south 16nm Pascal-based GTX 1080 and 1070 GPUs, the Radeon RX 480 is 26% smaller merely of grade it is targeting a lower performance tier.

Within that die nosotros take 2304 SPUs, 144 TMUs and 32 ROPs. Cadre specifications place the RX 480 between the Radeon R9 380X and R9 390. Naturally, it's meant to be more efficient, so that should help information technology close in on the beefier R9 390. In fact, besides helping out here are the advanced clock speeds.

One of the biggest questions surrounding the RX 480 ahead of its launch regarded its operating frequency. The Pascal GPUs run no slower than 1.5GHz and can oft be found operating at up to 1.8GHz out of the box using Nvidia's GPU Boost 3.0 technology.

AMD has been more than conservative, clocking the Radeon RX 480 at just 1120MHz with a boost clock speed of 1266MHz. This means the RX 480 can operate up to 27% faster than the R9 390 in its stock configuration, which should aid compensate for the 10% reduction in cores.

Still, compared to the R9 390, the RX 480 does take 1 other disadvantage: its memory interface. Even with AMD's generational efficiency improvements, we wonder how they programme to overcome the RX 480'south ~30% decrease in memory bandwidth. While the previous generation R9 390 utilized a huge 512-bit wide memory coach allowing 384GB/southward of bandwidth using relatively deadening 1500MHz GDDR5 retention, the memory omnibus of the RX 480 has been halved to 256-bit. To shut that gap the RX 480 makes utilize of faster GDDR5 memory clocked at 2000MHz.

We know the RX 480 has fewer cores than the R9 390, only they are clocked a chip higher. We also know that the die is extremely small and that improvements to efficiency have been made beyond the die shrink. All of this helps to explain the card'southward 150 watt TDP rating, which is some 45% lower than that of the R9 390, though it's concerning that this is the same rating given to the GTX 1070 and we expect that card to be considerably faster.

Pricing and so volition be the Radeon RX 480's key to success. The 8GB model that we are testing tody will toll $240, while a 4GB model will be bachelor for simply $200. Both support DirectX 12 along with OpenGL four.v, OpenCL 2.0 and Vulkan 1.0. They also come up with 3 DisplayPort i.4 outputs with HDR support and a HDMI 2.0 port supporting 4K @ 60Hz.

AMD Radeon RX 480 'Forefathers Edition'

Unlike Nvidia, AMD won't be charging a premium for graphics cards using its reference cooler. Information technology'southward also not giving anything a fancy proper noun -- the reference card and cooler volition be unofficially known as the AMD reference version, merely equally it has been in the by.

Design-wise the RX 480 reference card is minimalistic, there are no LED lights, no steel fan shrouds and no back plate. Borrowing its blueprint from the previous-gen R9 380, the card looks nice. It has that Fury X expect most it, without the liquid cooler hanging out the back. Instead you go a typical blower style fan that can draw in air from both sides, which can be useful in small cases.

The menu measures 240mm long, though the PCB is simply 177mm, so it should exist easy for board partners to produce smaller cards correct out of the gate. Whereas most R9 390 cards stretched at least 270mm long, nosotros wait to see most RX 480s shaving 100mm off that length.

The RX 480 reference card is surprisingly light thanks to the use of a very minor heatsink. So small that we'd simply expected to see this on the lowest end gaming graphics cards. It volition be interesting to see how hot the RX 480 runs. We're also curious to see how well the RX 480 overclocks. Considering AMD'due south recent history, we're not expecting great things, just I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Power consumption should exist relatively depression going past the TDP rating and the utilize of a single 6-pin power connector. Fifty-fifty the older R9 380 required two 6-pin connectors, and you had to stride down to the R7 370 before you found a unmarried power connector. In fact, the PCB pattern and configuration looks more like a GeForce GTX 960. Onboard we discover a six+one phase ability pattern and viii GDDR5 memory chips for a total VRAM capacity of 8GB.

Finally, on to the benchmarks... !