This season has marked the launched of many GPUs. Nvidia’s traditional approach to the market has proved to be the right choice as the GTX 1070 and 1080 GPUs have earned a lot of appreciation. However, instead of launching a top end GPU and competing with other flagships, AMD has decided to step in the monsoon season special of the battle of GPUs with its mid ranged AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB GPU.
Nvdia has strengthened its reign as the leading GPU manufacturer in the world but its not too late for AMD to match Nvidia’s pace. By targeting at the budget conscious customers, AMD has taken a rather smart step. The mid budget market has a plethora of customers.
In terms of exterior design, the AMD Radeon RX 480 is a shabby looking GPU. However, the cooler placed at the edge of the short PCB is an intelligent design feature. The cooler can suck air from the front and also let the air from the back come in. DVI is absent in this GPU and the output configuration contains 3 Display Ports and one HDMI port.
The 6-pin PCI connector is housed at an awkward place (somewhere in the middle)which can pose problems while routing cables. A standard GDDR5 chip is used in the card. The base frequency is 1,120MHz and the boost frequency measures 1,266MHz. The GDDR5 chip has a memory bandwidth of 7Gbps.
The memory bus is 256 bits wide. AMD has tried its best to make the graphic card future-proof. VR is supposed work in an efficient manner, HDR displays will be supported, improved audio is promised and the best of all, the AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB GPU will support 4K HEVC encoding at 60 frames per second. The graphic card was reported to have a PCIe power draw issue, but AMD fixed it with an updated driver.
Being backed up by a good processor and enough RAM, this graphic card can run GTA 5 at about 82 frames per second when the resolution is 1920×1080 and the graphic settings are average. At 4K resolution, the game was not playable as the FPS count was below 30.
However, with certain changes in the graphic settings, around 32 frames per second were obtained. Talking about Rise Of The Tomb Raider, the recorded frames per second were 63 at full HD and an unplayable 21 at ultra HD. The 2016 Doom reboot ran exceptionally well with an average of 63 fps at ultra-graphic settings and full HD resolution.
Even at 4K and ultra-graphic settings, DOOM delivered 32 frames per second. Far Cry 4 also ran flawlessly. Even at 4K and the highest possible graphic settings, 30 frames per second were observed. At full HD and maximum graphics, the game ran at a stellar average of 75 frames per second.
This card can run every game at available for PC at full HD if not 4K. However, the card does heat up when the load is maximum which forces the cooler to struggle more. Therefore, it runs a bit warm and noisy. On the whole, the AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB GPU is an impressive one.
There card is quite capable in terms of performance and further driver updates can make it work even better. However, the price at which it is offered is not competitive enough.
Price: $300 approx.
