AMD Radeon RX 480

L

LNERlover5

Average Grad
Reviews are out for AMD's mainstream targeted offering. Overall the card looks to be a cracker, with GTX 970 performance or greater with a peak 150W available power draw and competitive pricing at roughly £170 for the 4Gb variant, and £220 for the 8Gb variant.

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_displays/amd_radeon_rx480_polaris_8gb_review/1

I think i'll be waiting for the non-reference cards for the sake of an aftermarket cooler, then be picking one up myself to replace my R9 270X.

Jack
 
I strongly suspect Trainz is optimised for nVidia cards, the market is very fuid at the moment so I'd hold back. Watch the card size length it may not fit in your case. Looking at the UK prices they look very high compared to North Amerca.

Cheerio John
 
johnwhelan said:
I strongly suspect Trainz is optimised for nVidia cards, the market is very fuid at the moment so I'd hold back. Watch the card size length it may not fit in your case. Looking at the UK prices they look very high compared to North Amerca.
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The only cards we expect from now until Q4 are the Geforce GTX 1060 which we expect to be slightly faster, although at a less than competitive price point, as well as the RX 470 and RX 460 which are aimed at differing markets. As far as size is concerned the reference RX 480 is no larger than your typical performance orientated card, and is smaller than my R9 270X regardless.

Pricing is still good regardless, components typically cost more outside of the US, however the penalty this time around isn't as dramatic as expected when £199 for the 4Gb model was speculated.

Yes, Trainz is biased, however it's not the only game going, and my Steam library includes countless visually demanding titles that would see a benefit.

Jack
 
No DVI port, that is going to hit their intended market for another £20 for an adapter, or even more for a new monitor.

Balanced not over hyped review on Toms Hardware, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-10,4616.html

Not too keen on this though.

AMD’s Radeon RX 480 draws an average of 164W, which exceeds the company's target TDP. And it gets worse. The load distribution works out in a way that has the card draw 86W through the motherboard’s PCIe slot. Not only does this exceed the 75W ceiling we typically associate with a 16-lane slot, but that 75W limit covers several rails combined and not just this one interface.With peaks of up to 155W, we have to be thankful they're brief, and not putting the motherboard in any immediate danger. However, the audio subsystems on cheaper platforms will have a hard time dealing with them. This means that the "you can hear what you see" effect will be in full force during load changes; activities like scrolling may very well result in audible artifacts.

We’re also left to wonder what we'd see from a CrossFire configuration. Two graphics cards would draw 160W via the motherboard’s 24-pin connector; that's a tall order. Switching from the bars back to a more detailed curve makes this even more evident.
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The power issue is now sorted with the latest drivers for the 480's,will be treating myself to a 1060 GTX in a few weeks,middle of the road card without breaking the bank,will post a review how it runs TANE.

Daz
 
PC_Ace said:
The GTX 1060 looks promising - NVidia are claiming that it will outperform existing GTX 980s.
Haven't seen any independent reviews yet as it is too early...
This post is interesting, however:
http://videocardz.com/62122/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-official-performance-leaked
Click to expand...


Iv'e read the same that it will outperform 980,although iv'e also read that the 1060's won't SLI,Nvidia disabled it.
Looking forward to some testing when I get it,a card upgrade comes only once every 2 year's now
I'm not counting the move from 60hz through HDMI to 144hz display port Gsync monitor,smooooth gameplay ......i'm converted ....will never go back.:)


Daz
 
honestly in my view we currently have a nice step of evolution on hardware level: both new Radeon RX 4xx and nVidia 10xx series basically obsolete all older products. I still wait with upgrading my R9 290 until next year - there are still some things to come.
There is also the evolution in progress on software level: Vulkan and DirectX12. While the latter is currently Windows 10 only, Vulkan does benefit older Windows versions, linux and android. Also older hardware can benefit from it. Still, it's in early productive stages meaning developers are only exploring the possibilities and not many products exist yet but DX11 needs to phase out asap. Sorry, also OpenGL needs to go on. All major game engines are currently adopted for new technologies.
And if a developer complains it's too much to do to port his software I must say, he is lazy and does not understand that he got power to control hardware now in a level he never could before. I prefer the curious developer exploring new things. Also N3V will need to jump on that train like they did with TANE to proceed to 64bit.
Lockheed
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Lockheed02 - We are indeed in a golden era for gamers, with the step-change from 28nm GPU process technology to 16nm and 14nm architectures.
This brings many new features and graphics capabilities and unprecedented performance.
The good news is that we can expect even further positive developments with AMD's upcoming Vega series of GPUs and some exciting new GTX offerings (including top-of-the-line Ti models) from NVidia.
Realistically though, it will be T:ANE's evolutionary successor that should be developed to reflect the latest DirectX and Vulkan architectures, as the existing version is still duty-bound to support DirectX 11 and other legacy rendering technologies.
Otherwise we run the risk of alienating many of our valuable and stoically-loyal Trainz user-base.
 
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agreed, I not expect TANE to support more than the current render paths in near future. Just saying N3V should have (or more likely - already has) it on the agenda for some future release. The TANE successor is more likely for that. If I remember correctly in earlier Trainz versions you could switch in options between OpenGL and Direct3D. Also I don't see any backward compatibility issues if 2 more render paths are added there. And for content assets itself I doubt it has much impact. The magic should happen in the engine that brings the things on screen.
Lockheed
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