AMD Radeon RX 480 Review

AMD Radeon RX 480 Review

Virtual reality is turning into an imperative technology even more than before; we can visualize the future of VR as the highest protected and rapidly augmentable technology. This augmenting technology is being embedded with the latest technology offerings.

For instance, the Oculus VR that is a child organization of Facebook Ins. has also introduced the top VR releases such as the Oculus Rift headset, or you can also take the example of HTC Vive; both of these are capable enough to turn standard motion pictures into the virtual reality view.

AMD Radeon RX 480

AMD Radeon RX 480

AMD RX 480, the under-consideration product extremely remarkable for its VR technology, is a graphics card that supports VR gaming and its primary features. It has been built specifically for desktop usage on the architecture of “Polaris.” The good thing is that it can meet all the required specifications defined by Oculus Rift & HTC Vive.

So far, this is an excellent release in the graphic cards range, given its lowest price. AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card comes in 2 variant editions with a considerable memory difference among both as the one comes with a memory of 4Gb. In contrast, the other edition offers an experience of 8Gb memory.

Quick overview of AMD Radeon RX 480

Pros

  • Virtual reality gaming experience
  • Relatively Cheaper price
  • Experience GTX 970 performances for a lesser cost
  • Decent performance up to 1440p
  • Best performance at 1080p
  • Adaptive power saving
  • No stuttering
  • Lag-free gaming
  • DirectX 12 technology

Cons

  • Lack of new & advanced technologies
  • Poor overclocking capabilities
  • Not any extraordinary feature
  • Ordinary level of performance as compared to other graphic cards
  • Can not beat NVIDIA’s new releases in performance

Specs

Specs

If we consider its specs, it is pretty viewable to everyone that being a mid-range release, it lacks the latest technologies; comparatively, it doesn’t offer something extraordinary. Given its operational efficiency, it is capable enough to reach up to a remarkable figure of 5.8 TFLOPs (trillion floating-point operations per second).

The manufacturing process of AMD RX 480 is based on a 14nm (nanometer) process which is a dense process that resists power reduction & heat; though, in the former generation of AMD, 28nm process was in use. The point to be noted that the 14nm process is still considered denser than the 16nm, which is being used in the Pascal architecture of NVIDIA’s GTX 1070 & 1080 releases.

Radeon RX 480 possesses a powerful GPU (graphics processing unit) of 110 W, which is quite suitable for many low-budget users. Its processors’ running speed is approximately 1120 MHz in core clock, which is pretty fair concerning its cost, and the boost speed ranges at 1266 MHz.

The RX 480 graphics card possesses a bandwidth of 256 GB/s and a memory bus of 256 bits. AMD RX 480 works on an asynchronous mechanism that sets priorities in the process’s executions; still, it resists the lagging & stuttering in the games that run in the advanced DirectX 12 framework.

Design

Design

Though there is nothing much fancy when it comes to its design or layout, it is still quite aligned with its price perspective. To much extent, the design of AMD Radeon gives a similar look to one of NVIDIA’s graphic cards.

Though the card is 24.2cm long, but the actual length of the card is 18cm, while the rest of the part is for cooling purposes. The sides of the AMD RX 480 graphics card are configured with matte black plastic and a finishing cover of dotted plastic. While on the top, you see a located Radeon logo.

It also possesses a single fan for its cooling system, whose spinning noise is pretty suppressed; the purpose of this cooling section is to cool the power converter & memory modules. You can see almost 3 Display Ports on an AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card, each of 1.4 specifications.

If you have compatible monitor support, you can readily experience relatively high-resolution gaming. Moreover, it also owns an HDMI port on its rear.

Cost Comparison

Though there is nothing fancy when it comes to its design or layout, it is still quite aligned with its price perspective. To much extent, the design of AMD Radeon gives a similar look to one of NVIDIA’s graphic cards.

Though the card is 24.2cm long, the actual length of the card is 18cm, while the rest of the part is for cooling purposes. The sides of the AMD RX 480 graphics card are configured with matte black plastic and a finishing cover of dotted plastic. While on the top, you see a located Radeon logo.

It also possesses a single fan for its cooling system, whose spinning noise is pretty suppressed; the purpose of this cooling section is to cool the power converter & memory modules. You can see almost 3 Display Ports on an AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card, each of 1.4 specifications.

If you have compatible monitor support, you can readily experience relatively high-resolution gaming. Moreover, it also owns an HDMI port on its rear.

Overclocking

Overclocking aspect is interlinked with the clock rate of its memory. To enhance the performance, a sound graphics card must be able to deliver an efficient overclocking feature. Generally, the AMD Radeon RX 480 graphic card can be overclocked to a level of 2250 MHz, which is not a much higher rate if we compare it to other rival graphic cards available in the technology market. So, we can conclude that AMD RX 480 possesses poor overclocking capabilities, resulting in poor performance tuning.

Performance

It is an unneglectable fact that it cannot beat or compete the efficiency level of NVIDIA’s newly offered releases if looked over the performance factor, but this can not be a hindrance based on its decent usage ratio 2021.

Radeon AMD RX 480 can give a pretty adequate performance, especially in the gaming experience above 1080p. If we consider the related cooling aspect, AMD RX 480 is so far a cooler version relatively than the formers editions of AMD graphics cards. Because RX480 experiences an average power draw up to 150 W.

You can easily play the games like Grand Theft Auto VI, Call of Duty: Warzone, VALORANT, etc., on a high resolution with AMD RX 480 graphics card. Generally, AMD RX 480 runs 4k and supports almost most of the latest outputs for 4k, but it would not run Fallout 4 or any other similar game at 4k.

If we look over the performance from a cost perspective, it is good because only this level of performance can be delivered at such a low price. Nevertheless, it can be considered approximately equivalent to NVIDIA’s former range GTX 1060 in terms of its performance. That’s also a point that provides it an edge to be still picked up for 1080p gaming.

Is AMD RX 480 better than NVIDIA?

Here, only this RX 480 release of AMD is under consideration, so a comparison must be established with the rival releases of NVIDIA. If we look into the Graphics processing unit (GPU), they perform pretty well and are closer to NVIDIA’s competitive releases regarding their performance.

Moreover, the cheaper price aspect of the AMD graphic card can’t be neglected at all. The one critical factor of AMD releases is that it possesses a relatively lower clock speed than NVIDIA’s rival releases and consumes more power consequently.

Though, we can’t prioritize one over the other, merely relying upon a single perspective. However, NVIDIA still wins this battle of overall performance so far.

Is AMD RX 480 still a worth buying release?

With the ongoing evolution in technology products, Radeon RX 480 graphics card has become an outdated release slightly, as the market has constantly been restocking with the latest releases that are capable enough to overlap the specifications of former technologies with significant improvements.

It won’t be wrong even if we say that it is being replaced with RX 580 that a newer release of AMD works with similar Chips & GPU though on a higher clock rate relatively.

Verdict:

Which factor opposes its usage?

Though Radeon RX 480 graphics card is top-notch in the product stack released by AMD, it is still a fact that this is not a high-end or much attention-grabbing graphics card released in today’s market where much advanced & latest technology-based high-end range of graphic cards is available.

Given the performance aspect, it cannot beat the latest releases of NIVIDIA at all. Most importantly, its processors’ running speed is relatively lower than many other graphics cards in the market. Moreover, the AMD RX 480 cards possess relatively poor overclocking capabilities.

Why Knowtechmag recommends AMD Radeon RX 480?

Knowtechmag recommends the AMD RX 480 because it is equally affordable to everyone; RX480 enables the gaming aspirants to meet their virtual reality gaming requirements, which won’t be heavy on their pockets.

Given the cost aspect, AMD RX 480 stands remarkably on the stack of cheapest graphic cards as you can quickly grab Radeon RX 480 4Gb card at the lowest cost of 199 USD and variant edition Radeon RX 480 8Gb at a price of 239 USD. Still, surprisingly, this AMD edition offering 8Gb of memory is competitive to NVIDIA’s GTX 1060 in terms of cost & performance.

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