It's disappointing because their performance per watt has increased only from the node shrink, which means they're going to have a really hard time competing with Nvidia in the high end. They're using as much power as a 1070 for 970 level performance. They're going to end up stuck in the midrange and below on gpus just like they are with cpus right now.
I guess we'll see. That's a pretty big assumption so far though. We haven't seen the high end stuff from this cycle yet. Could be really good, or nothing noteworthy.
In a vacuum though, this card is amazing and stellar value for great gaming performance. We were just having the discussion on this board about how gaming has become more expensive, but this is by far the best value I've seen from a card at launch. I've never seen a $200 card that can run modern games like this one.
There is no doubt it's very strong performance per dollar, but it bodes horribly for the high end. It's the best $200-$250 card since the HD 7870 (no way it's as good as that card though for the time), but I was really looking for something to indicate they could make a game changing high end card. And this shows they probably can't scale to a large die (say > 400mm^2 area) without power absolutely going through the roof.
Also this card has zero OC headroom in its current form with the 6-pin power that goes out of spec. I think it was Hardware Unboxed who showed temps went from 83C to 91C from a miniscule 1.6% bump to the core clock.
Well now we know why AMD didn't show RX 480 benchmarks at Computex or E3, and why they had the review embargo end on launch day instead of a few days before like Nvidia did.
$500-ish gaming rig suggestions? not a huge gamer, I dont need anything that runs the latest games on highest settings but i want something capable
http://pcpartpicker.com/list/nDdf8K
Add a $200 r480x to this, and you'll have a very solid gaming machine for $570ish. If you can stretch the budget a little you can upgrade the i3 to an i5 and then have a rig that can basically max anything at 1080p and most games at 1440p.
Please note that I didn't do a lot of digging. You could probably do even better if you hunt around for deals or combo deals.
badass man, thanks ill check it out
If you're ok going up to $600 and pirating Windows this is doable, and is frankly a monster system for 1080p ultra gaming. Even better if you can use an old hard drive from your current computer to save a few bucks.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($197.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($26.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($47.49 @ OutletPC)
Case: Cougar e MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($30.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($42.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Other: AMD RX 480 4GB ($200.00)
Total: $596.43
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-29 19:05 EDT-0400
The bad things I'm saying about the RX 480 are in the context of what the higher than expected power consumption means for their high end Vega card coming out in a few months (and it is a disastrous outlook for AMD's high end cards). But an RX 480 for $200 is tremendous and it's really the only gaming gpu that makes any sense below $420 (where the GTX 1070 is priced). I recommended a cheaper case, motherboard, power supply, and only 8GB of RAM instead of 16GB to try to fit an i5 in, because i5 have very long shelf lives. An i5-6500 is a processor you're not likely to want to upgrade for years. What games are you interested in playing though?
Last edited by baseline bum; 06-29-2016 at 06:17 PM.
Damn that ain't a bad deal for an EVGA B2 power supply. I think those are made by Super Flower and are extremely high quality. I usually run like from a $30 rebate though, I'm still pissed that MSI jewed me on the rebate for my board.
rx480 isnt even a high end card by the way its position in t he market, unless nvidia starts to drop prices on its 970-980ti cards...
do u guys think there be a high end card from amd to compete with 1070-1080? vega?
Vega 10, which is rumored to come out around October.
thanks. mostly strategy games rather than fps. Im ok going over budget but i'm a pretty casual gamer. Though i dont mind paying for something that i wont have to upgrade for years.
Strategy games are kind of a mixed bag. Many will do really well with an i3 (these graphs all show average framerate when paired with really strong gpus):
And then some of them really want those two extra cores
Right now the current trend is cpus being pretty long lived. If you bought a $200 i5-2500 in January 2011 it's still a pretty strong gaming cpu here in June 2016. Intel's not really making much in the way of gains on their cpus and AMD's highest processors came out in 2012 (FX-8350 and the overclocked versions of it). So CPU performance is really stagnant since 2011. GPUs don't last nearly as long, those still improve by pretty impressive amounts every couple of years. But RX 480 is so good for the price that it pretty much wipes out every gpu out there below $420 unless you're only looking for a system to play stuff like Minecraft, League of Legends, and Counter Strike Global Offensive (in which case a $100 gpu is more than enough). In July Nvidia might be releasing a GTX 1060 which I imagine will sell around $220-$250 or so and offer similar performance to the RX 480 (Nvidia can command a price premium over AMD, they have way more market share).
Also if you're ok going a little over budget, I would recommend taking Cry Havoc's advice and getting a 16GB kit of RAM. The reason is because RAM is really cheap right now and you'll probably eventually want more. 16GB of DDR4 for ~$55 is insane considering I paid about $80 for 8GB of pretty low end DDR3-1600 in 2014 when I built my current system (last year I upgraded it to 16GB of pretty high end DDR3-2400 for $85).
If you have never built a system before, check this video that goes into extreme detail:
Also I recommended the cheapest case to get the job done. If you want something with better build quality that looks nicer, the Phanteks Enthoo Pro M is really slick for about $70
Last edited by baseline bum; 06-30-2016 at 11:37 AM.
great info! thanks, im excited to get going!
and i have not built a system before but I'm pretty handy so hopefully it's not too intimidating.
Nvidia is having an event on July 7th in Melbourne, Australia which might end up being the GTX 1060 reveal or launch.
so what does that mean for my build? still go with the 480?So much for the RX 480
The GTX 1060 looks to be about 15% more powerful in DirectX 11 games. I imagine they'll perform pretty equally in DirectX 12 games, as AMD usually does significantly better in DX12. I also imagine it'll sell for around $250. I was laughing more at AMD because they're going to have such a short window where they're running unopposed in the midrange market. This GTX 1060 is probably going to get an official announcement next Thursday and will probably be on store shelves a week or two later. AMD is in some pretty serious financial turmoil and the prospects of it existing in its current form within 3 years are pretty grim, so they need to take market share back as quickly as possible. They have some enormous debt payments coming due in 2019, I read they're paying $180 million a year just in interest right now. I don't know man, buying over RX 480 level seems like overkill for what you're looking for (strategy games don't require the huge amount of gpu power that fps and rpgs do usually) but what if AMD has to lay off most of their driver team in 2 1/2 years to keep their heads above water?
I imagine by 2019 the Radeon Technology Group (the gpu side of AMD) will probably get sold off to someone like Intel. All of AMD's troubles really started when they got into the GPU business by buying ATi back in the mid 2000s. They paid way too much for the company.
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