It has been verified that many or all of the 4GB RX-480 currently on sale for $200 are actually 8GB cards with a 4GB BIOS. Reflashing the BIOS gets one an 8GB card for $200. The cards are in an 8GB box with a 4GB sticker pasted over the 8GB.

Don't know how long that will last (or if it is already over). I surely would have bought a "4GB" card had I known. One could go to the local store and check the 4GB boxes for the sticker (if one has a local store).

I, of course, make no guarantees. I'm merely reporting what has been written.

They also have Stickers applied to the Heatsink Shroud,

lol, No need to dis-assemble to void warranty, it's obvious by looking at stickers.

The 16.7.1 driver for RX-480 came out. Its supposed to fix power issues with no hit on performance. AMD says up to 3 percent increase in FPS -- of course, the words "up to" allow zero as an outcome.

My 2 tests showed 0.0 and 2.5 percent FPS increase.

Reports indicate power usage down on the PCIe bus -- raised power on 6 pin connector. Net lower power. Moreover, there is a "toggle" (normally off) that lowers power draw to the "PCIe Standard". Over 5 percent FPS increase in one game -- others were less.

So, at first look, it seems like AMD did what they promised. Lower power, can set power all the way down to PCIe Standard, and increased FPS in some cases.

I tried a quick overclock using WattMan (included in the driver package). Before using, look up WattMan on Youtube -- its not intuitive at first. However, once you see the "trick", its not hard -- just click, click, click.

I found that the card tends to NOT run at full rated speed all the time. You can use WattMan to force it to run at full rated speed a larger part of the time (you decide how much larger). That, without overclocking, speeds up the FPS very measurably.

In addition, I tried moving the full-speed from 1265 to 1325MHz (a VERY gentle overclock).

That (higher max clock plus more time at max clock) got me to the hoped for greater than 50 percent better than the HD7970 in the test that previously showed 40 percent better. It was 54 percent better. There was no overheating using the Reference Fan.

The extra FPS were, of course, "measurable" not "visible to the unaided eye".

Just follow up information.

you can prolly undervolt and still overclock the gpu.

A ton of "speculation" and a small amount of fact-based "analysis" went into this Rumor.

Could be true. AMD marketing could use a competitor to 1080 (while we await Vega). A dual-GPU RX-490 could compete directly on FPS in benchmarks and some games. As we know, such a card could cost much less than 1080. Moreover, DX12 is implementing support for CrossFire and SLI (which it did not initially).

But, unless AMD is going to try some of its Navi technology sooner than expected, its still just CrossFireX. FWIW, Navi is speculated/rumored to combine multiple GPUs on one card -- such that they act like one GPU (no CrossFire or SLI problems).

Explicit Multi-Adapter would see both GPUs as one Resource, Both Banks of RAM as Their own, No more mirrored Memory Arrays.

So, a Dual GPU 480 w/ 8GB Total in DX12 EMA Mode would be seen as a 4612 Core GPU with either 8GB or 16 GB of Ram.

Yet the GTX 1080ti is likely to be announced in August with the 1080 Titan coming at a later stage. Looks like we'll be back in a similar situation whereby Nvidia can trump anything that AMD do and spoil the party.


I hope AMD can release something that truly competes so that Nvidia are forced to evaluate their prices. Lets be honest, it's been a while since we've had a good fight at the top end.

What are you rolling your eyes at?....you disagree? The point is that even if an RX 490 is competing with a 1080 as Skate and Allen have mentioned....the 1080ti is likely to have another 50% performance (according to leaks) so anyone wanting that single card performance from AMD still won't be challenging at the top level because the 490 will be competing with Nvidia's second tier card.

The 1080 Titan will then be fighting it out with AMDs top end cards with HBM2 - is anyone going to bet at this stage that AMD have it wrapped up? I'm not so confident. Maybe it comes down to whether your allegiance is to a certain brand....I'm certainly not but with VR I need guaranteed performance and good drivers which is something that AMD have struggled with in recent years and they don't currently have a GPU which will push 90fps at 1440p for VR so the choice is already limited. The last AMD card I had was a 290X and in some games the performance was poor in comparison to the Nvidia equivalent (or in the case of DCS and the Oculus DK2 it wouldn't run at all until a workaround was introduced) which ultimately forced my hand down the GTX 970 route.

I'd also waited since half-way through last year to upgrade my GPU ready for the retail Oculus....the RX480 obviously isn't going to cut the mustard in view of getting high frame rates so my options were to wait even longer with no guarantee when we'd have a competitive card or drop silly money on a GTX 1080.

You again propagate myths. AMD doesn't have bad drivers, at least they're no worse than Nvidias, and the whole trumping by Nvidia whenever AMD releases something. This is some high level fanboying right here. Just wait for the releases.

It's widely accepted that AMDs drivers in the past haven't been great, they certainly haven't been as regular to keep up with the flow of games. Asd I said I my last card was a 290X about 2 years ago so unless it's drastically improved since then it's perfectly valid - I certainly don't recall AMD offering day 1 driver updates for the latest games but could be mistaken.

Trumping by Nvidia?... well that's fact in terms of performance. You can roll your eyes as much as you want but I'm speaking from experience from owning most of AMDs and Nvidia cards in recent years...buying and selling one level behind the top-end curve - AMD have always released value for money cards which is why I plumped for the 7970 and 290X at the time, however Nvidia have always had the card for pure performance - granted, they have often gone for brute horsepower than efficiency but whether you look to the 290/390 or Fury X of recent years Nvidia have always had an equivalent pushing better frame rates in most games, only the most ardent fanboy would even attempt to argue that.

In terms of current cards I'm going off Skate/Allen's posts above.....the R480 isn't challenging the 1080 and it was never attempting or designed to, however if the 490 is going to be the card to challenge the 1080 as discussed above then it's not going to be challenging top end performance because the 1080Ti is going to push the bar much higher than it is now. There's nothing fanboy about saying that whatsoever, we have no idea what the RX490 or 1080GTX performance will really be but like I said it's a comment based on what the guys above are saying. Perhaps you think the RX490 will have performance above and beyond the current GTX1080?

Sounds like you just want an argument for the sake of it which wouldn't be the first time. Perhaps you need to discuss it further with Skate/Allen because RX490 performance that matches GTX 1080 in a few months time isn't going to get everyone that excited if the 1080Ti is another level above.

I agree AMD is behind Nvidia on "raw maximum FPS" in the highest cost products. For a variety of reasons, its been that way for years.

The main reason may be that being first in FPS (no matter what they have to do to get there) is a cornerstone of Nvidia marketing (at least, that's what they said at one point).

The second reason is that (according to Nvidia engineers who were interviewed years ago), nearly all games are developed on Intel/Nvidia with Nvidia help (though that's changing) -- and Nvidia coders make sure the games run better on Nvidia -- they say its relatively easy (given their access to the game engine).

Nowadays, there's more to a graphics card than raw FPS. In providing those "other" things, AMD can be competitive and even slightly ahead. Moreover, smaller differences in FPS (say 10 percent) are not "visible"; those are for advertising/marketing purposes.

My prediction, that I have made before, is that Nvidia will usually be ahead on FPS for a given price range. If not, something went terribly wrong at Nvidia. AMD wants to win at FPS. But, they have said they will not compromise their product approach just to get that win.

Since Vega10 is still in development, and AMD knows the competition, Vega10 may temporarily lead in FPS when it is released.

Navi is a new ballgame. Since AMD GPU architecture has been aiming towards a Navi solution for a while, AMD migh actually beat out Nvidia with Navi -- and Nvidia may take a while to catch up (and surpass) AMD on that one. However, I imagine Nvidia is already "designing" to beat Navi -- so, we'll see

Competition is good

Totally agree with the above however it's largely irrelevant why or what makes one card faster or better than the other.

As we're all aware AMD have had the better technology and hardware implementation in recent years but the problem is as gamers we can only play what the developers have implemented and regardless of whether Nvidia are using dirty tricks or throwing their money around it has meant that Nvidia has edged peformance.

Buying a GPU at this moment in time means for me at least with VR as I've already mentioned was not a difficult decision, simply because AMD isn't competing. I do find from some of the posts in this thread there is almost a 'hope' that developers switch from the Nvidia collaborations over to AMD based on market share of the audience or the association of current consoles using the same APIs and libraries but until that happens Nvidia still have that performance edge and in my opinion it's a bit of gamble assuming that AMD will actually pull this off.

We can only go on current games at the moment, and there are nowhere near enough DX12 or gaming utilising Async Compute to determine that AMD are or have closed the performance gap. What if the devs that have used Hairworks etc in the past continue to do so?....it will mean that regardless of AMD still having these quality GPUs are still going to be struggling to match performance within games.



I think the quote above is probably key, but the problem is that Nvidia are prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure they have the best performer regardless of how they get there.

Competition is most definitely good and desperately needed for us as consumers.

Seems true.

Using WattMan, I reduced voltage (microscopically), reduced allowable GPU temperature 5C, and increased allowable power draw 20 percent -- while setting the max clock to 1300GHz (from 1266).

Now, a card that cycled between roughly 1150+ to 1260 runs almost constantly at 1300 (during a game) and runs cooler.

The 4GB RX-480 is looking better and better for the money (on paper). So far, nothing I've run has used more than 2GB of RX-480 RAM. I assumed the 8GB RAM was overkill -- so far, it is -- 4GB seems enough (at least for 1440p in my recent games).

It might be better to state what games you're playing. What works for one person or a particular game will be wildly different for someone else playing other games. A lot of people play Arma 3 on these forums and that often goes above 4GB VRAM at high settings/+600 draw distance. Quite a few recent titles use lots of VRAM too.

We see things similarly -- particularly what drives a most current customers to consider Nvidia over AMD. So long as Intel and Nvidia greatly outsell AMD, those two will control what gets implemented in games. In some way, its amazing that AMD (being an "outsider" with little way to influence the process) competes as well as it does.

Regarding RAM size and RX-480 4GB:

The price competitive Nvidia 1060 3GB has only 3GB. So, maybe for a few people the corresponding RX-480 4GB wins that one

Regarding the comment about "my" gaming experiences not encompassing all gaming experiences:

I agree. My reports on what I do with my system and how it works are NOT to be considered "gospel". The next person may experience something different depending on their games or PC hardware.

Folks should base their purchase decisions on "official test reports" from the sites that do that "for a living".

I post abbreviated versions of my experiences merely to indicate that I am "an actively involved customer" who is "paying attention" to what is going on in the industry today. And, also, to give prospective CPU/GPU buyers some things to consider when they read the test reports.

I've posted a lot lately. It was "pent up" as I waited for two years for a new AMD product to buy. A month or two from now, I'll probably be "back in hibernation" as I await the "next big thing" from AMD