ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces Strix RX 480

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 07/20/2016 02:59 PM | source: | 43 comment(s)

Powered by the latest AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics processing unit (GPU), clocked at 1330MHz in OC mode, ROG Strix RX 480 delivers up to 15%-faster performance in 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme and 19%-faster gaming performance than reference cards in Hitman and Doom.

ROG Strix RX 480 is packed with exclusive ASUS technologies, including DirectCU III with a patented triple wing-blade 0dB fan designed to deliver maximum airflow for 30%-cooler and three-times (3X) quieter performance, and ASUS FanConnect, which features GPU-controlled fan headers to connect to system fans for targeted supplemental cooling. Industry-exclusive Auto-Extreme technology with Super Alloy Power II components ensures premium quality and reliability.

ROG Strix RX 480 enables complete gaming system personalization with Aura RGB Lighting. A virtual-reality (VR)-friendly design with two HDMI ports lets gamers always keep a VR device and a monitor connected to their system for immersive gaming anytime. It also includes GPU Tweak II with XSplit Gamecaster for intuitive performance tweaking and instant gameplay streaming. ROG Strix RX 480 is equipped with ASUS DirectCU III cooling technology, which features direct-GPU-contact heatpipes that transport more heat away from the GPU, outperforming reference designs and achieving up to 30% cooler gaming performance. DirectCU III technology includes triple 0dB fans, engineered with a patented wing-blade design that delivers maximum airflow and improves static pressure over the heatsink by 105%, while operating at three-times (3X) quieter volume than reference cards.

ROG Strix RX 480 also comes with ASUS FanConnect technology. When gaming, the GPU often runs hotter than the CPU, but chassis fans usually only reference CPU temperatures, resulting in inefficient system cooling. ASUS FanConnect solves this issue with two four-pin GPU-controlled headers that can be connected to system fans to provide targeted supplemental cooling for optimal thermal performance. All ASUS graphics cards are now produced using Auto-Extreme technology, an industry-exclusive, 100%-automated production process that incorporates premium materials to set a new standard of quality. Auto-Extreme technology ensures consistent graphics card quality as well as improved performance and longevity. This new manufacturing process is also environmentally friendly, eliminating harsh chemicals and reducing power consumption by 50%. Super Alloy Power II components enhance efficiency, reduce power loss, reduce component buzzing by 50% while under full load, and achieve thermal levels that are approximately 50% cooler than previous designs for enhanced quality and reliability.

ROG Strix RX 480 includes ASUS Aura RGB Lighting on both the shroud and the backplate. This stunning illumination technology is capable of displaying millions of colors and six different effects for a totally personalized gaming system. ROG Strix RX 480 also has a VR-friendly design with two HDMI ports that let gamers connect a VR device and display at the same time, so they can enjoy immersive VR experiences anytime without having to swap cables.

Redesigned with an intuitive user interface, GPU Tweak II makes gaming and overclocking easier than ever, while retaining advanced options for seasoned overclockers. With one click, the Gaming Booster function maximizes system performance by removing redundant processes and allocating all available resources automatically. An included one-year XSplit Gamecaster premium license — a $99 value — lets gamers easily stream or record gameplay via a convenient, in-game overlay. The overlay also displays GPU clock speed, temperature, and VRM usage, and has GPU Tweak II controls, so gamers can choose a gaming profile and boost performance with just one click.

ASUS ROG Strix RX 480 will be available worldwide from mid-August 2016. Please contact your local ASUS representative for further information.

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Dygaza
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#5309302 Posted on: 07/20/2016 03:18 PM

Suprisingly big performance upgrades they promise with so little clock boosts. Just shows how inferior cooling reference design has. Small boost in clocks, no throtling from thermals and powerlimit, and we're almost up to 20% in performance.

Denial
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#5309306 Posted on: 07/20/2016 03:27 PM

DarkQuark
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#5309308 Posted on: 07/20/2016 03:34 PM

Dygaza
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#5309311 Posted on: 07/20/2016 03:44 PM

Denial
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#5309314 Posted on: 07/20/2016 03:46 PM

I am desperately trying to decide between 480 and 1060. It seems to me that the 1060 has the edge overall. But one thing I wonder about is that extra 2GB of memory on the 480 (6GB vs 8GB).
Does anyone see that making a difference?

Currently? No. In the future? Maybe.

Honestly my opinion is that if you plan on using the card as your main GPU for more than a year, get the RX480. If not, get the 1060.

Dygaza
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#5309316 Posted on: 07/20/2016 03:49 PM

Currently? No. In the future? Maybe.

Honestly my opinion is that if you plan on using the card as your main GPU for more than a year, get the RX480. If not, get the 1060.

I'm on the same line. Both cards offer good value.

Fox2232
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#5309324 Posted on: 07/20/2016 04:03 PM

Interestingly enough, the FE model of the 1080 is the same way. The stock fan profile tanks the frequencies after like 10 minutes.

http://media.bestofmicro.com/W/3/581763/gallery/01-Clock-Rate_w_600.png

I don't get how both companies screwed this up, it's not like it's their first GPU launch. Especially Nvidia, who is charging a premium.

Anyway the Strix stuff is cool -- I usually go with EVGA for my GPU's but decided to try ASUS this time and I'm impressed with the cooler. It feels solid and the RGB stuff is pretty neat, although i ended up turning it off. Going to be interesting to see this compared to the Nitro and stuff.
This is purely nVidia's fault. People did not care about power efficiency much. Then Maxwell came as power efficient and nearly everyone started to think that power efficiency means better fps or huge financial savings.

And as with 14/16nm transitions, both companies overestimated final power efficiency gains and underestimated stable clock.
So in the end both of them could clock higher and AMD/nV decided to clock them higher for marketing purposes even while they knew about throttling.
And both manufacturers used higher Voltage than needed which is part of TDP problem.I'm on the same line. Both cards offer good value.
All I needed was to see DX12 AMD/nVidia's titles and Doom Vulkan.
Considering that all big game engines support at least one of those, we can expect this to be pretty standard situation soonish.

Koniakki
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#5309352 Posted on: 07/20/2016 04:58 PM

I am desperately trying to decide between 480 and 1060. It seems to me that the 1060 has the edge overall. But one thing I wonder about is that extra 2GB of memory on the 480 (6GB vs 8GB).
Does anyone see that making a difference?

Well, if going by HH latest GTX 1060 FE review both perform about the same @1080p with the GTX 1060 having a slight edge overall here and there.

That could change in future as many suggested if AMD history is any indication.

About the VRam, I wouldn't sweat on it. Both are fine for 1080p for some time to come.

I would wait for AIB RX 480 reviews before deciding just to get a fuller picture.

waltc3
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#5309358 Posted on: 07/20/2016 05:12 PM

I am desperately trying to decide between 480 and 1060. It seems to me that the 1060 has the edge overall. But one thing I wonder about is that extra 2GB of memory on the 480 (6GB vs 8GB).
Does anyone see that making a difference?

I've heard that the 1060 has no SLI capability, whereas the RX 480 series does do x-fire, so between more 25% more very fast Vram and the capability of going x-fire if you want (if it's true that nVidia left it off just to lower the price of the card)--it would seem a no-brainer for the RX 480, imo.

Noisiv
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#5309380 Posted on: 07/20/2016 06:23 PM

This is purely nVidia's fault. People did not care about power efficiency much. Then Maxwell came as power efficient and nearly everyone started to think that power efficiency means better fps or huge financial savings.

And it does mean better fps. At the very least at high-end and in mobile.
Power ceiling being fixed at 250-300W for high-end desktop GPU, better perf/W is the only way to get more performance from the next GPU generation.

Look at Polaris vs Pascal to see how perf/W translates in pure perf:
If AMD wanted to challenge GTX 1080 on pure performance basis, they would need pretty much double RX 480, ie 400mm2+, 300Watt+ just to challenge 314mm2 171W GTX 1080.

Which would be a disaster of epic proportions, and hence it's not happening(!)
Instead we'll have to wait for HBM2 Vega improving 50% on perf/W for AMD to challenge 1080 on pure performance basis.
Is that good enough example to explain how Efficiency ~ Performance?

Where Efficiency does not matter too much is mid-range desktop.
120 or 160W is not that much of a big deal. Although I would take 120W part every time, particularly in this hot time of year, and simply because low-watt gaming is kewl

Orthello
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#5309402 Posted on: 07/20/2016 07:13 PM

If considering an AIB card , the 480 vs 1060 looks to be a real gain fort the 480 , not so much the 1060.

From Asus they are saying 15-19% from the strix 480 card at factory OC , from a link at HardOCP today "clocked at 1873MHz in OC mode, ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1060 delivers up to 5%-faster performance in 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme and 6.5%-faster gaming performance in Doom®."

Both cards can still be overclocked further , i would say by a similar amount of real world gain , 100 mhz on 480 will be equal or better to 200 mhz on pascal.

So early days without reviews but if that panes out you can see where its heading - DX11 parity or win for 480 , RX480 DX12 win , RX480 Vulkan win.

Dygaza
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#5309405 Posted on: 07/20/2016 07:32 PM

From Asus they are saying 15-19% from the strix 480 card at factory OC , from a link at HardOCP today "clocked at 1873MHz in OC mode, ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1060 delivers up to 5%-faster performance in 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme and 6.5%-faster gaming performance in Doom®."

Both cards can still be overclocked further , i would say by a similar amount of real world gain , 100 mhz on 480 will be equal or better to 200 mhz on pascal.

Way too overoptimistic ratio between frequency scaling. Keep in my that for AMD the biggest gain on that promised 15-19% increase, doesn't come from clockspeed itself, but from better powerlimit/cooling. The card doesn't throttle so it can actually maintain boostclocks, unlike reference models. Remember there were people pointing out almost 10% increases just by undervolting their reference 480.

Fox2232
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#5309417 Posted on: 07/20/2016 07:55 PM

And it does mean better fps. At the very least at high-end and in mobile.
Power ceiling being fixed at 250-300W for high-end desktop GPU, better perf/W is the only way to get more performance from the next GPU generation.

Look at Polaris vs Pascal to see how perf/W translates in pure perf:
If AMD wanted to challenge GTX 1080 on pure performance basis, they would need pretty much double RX 480, ie 400mm2+, 300Watt+ just to challenge 314mm2 171W GTX 1080.

Which would be a disaster of epic proportions, and hence it's not happening(!)
Instead we'll have to wait for HBM2 Vega improving 50% on perf/W for AMD to challenge 1080 on pure performance basis.
Is that good enough example to explain how Efficiency ~ Performance?

Where Efficiency does not matter too much is mid-range desktop.
120 or 160W is not that much of a big deal. Although I would take 120W part every time, particularly in this hot time of year, and simply because low-watt gaming is kewl

No one is giving a hard time to 480 because it uses 40 watts more. Because 40 watt difference is rather unimportant when it comes to these two products.
Where this difference becomes important is when you look at the underlying arch and prospects of future/missing products.
Doubling transistors is not 100% necessity. There are parts of GPU which will not be doubled. Like PCIe IO, VCE, Scheduler, internal bus, ...
+RX-480 is not really that power hungry on GPU side, solid part of consumption is blower and gddr5.

At mobile, it sure is important. But we have not seen those yet. Secondly Polaris have seen nice improvement over Fiji on terms of higher performance per ROP, TMU, SP, Memory bandwidth at same clock.

And on top of this improvement, if ASUS's statement is solid and their 5% OC + proper cooling/power delivery brings 15~19% improvement in performance over stock card...

Back in the day, I have seen Fiji as more capable than Maxwell per transistor investment and same clock. But AMD as always picks denser manufacturing, higher leakage, and lower stable clock. Improvement from Maxwell to Pascal is much smaller than Fiji to Polaris. And as such AMD/GloFo has to fix that clock and leakage issue... and we have big improvement maximum achievable performance per single GPU.

Noisiv
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#5309419 Posted on: 07/20/2016 07:56 PM

Way too overoptimistic ratio between frequency scaling. Keep in my that for AMD the biggest gain on that promised 15-19% increase, doesn't come from clockspeed itself, but from better powerlimit/cooling.

it mostly comes from 1120 MHz base clock used for ref. card

1330/1120 = 119%

Noisiv
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#5309424 Posted on: 07/20/2016 08:08 PM

Doubling transistors is not 100% necessity. There are parts of GPU which will not be doubled. Like PCIe IO, VCE, Scheduler, internal bus, ...
+RX-480 is not really that power hungry on GPU side, solid part of consumption is blower and gddr5.

that's why I called it 400mm2+, and not 2x 232 = 464mm2 part

And on top of this improvement, if ASUS's statement is solid and their 5% OC + proper cooling/power delivery brings 15~19% improvement in performance over stock card...

+5% OC =+19% performance? Perpetuum mobile? give me a break...
It's +19% over base clock locked card.

Back in the day, I have seen Fiji as more capable than Maxwell per transistor investment and same clock. But AMD as always picks denser manufacturing, higher leakage, and lower stable clock. Improvement from Maxwell to Pascal is much smaller than Fiji to Polaris. And as such AMD/GloFo has to fix that clock and leakage issue... and we have big improvement maximum achievable performance per single GPU.

We've been over these high hopes before 480/Pascal launch.
("All AMD needs to do is... increase clocks")
And what did we get? MHz gap is bigger than ever. Performance gap is bigger than ever.
And every other Maxwell metric advantage only got increased. Additionally AMD's time-to-market just cratered, nothing, nada, MIA...

AMD is still missing perf/W work that Nvidia has done Kepler -> Maxwell. If they can do that AND cover anything Nvidia comes up in the meantime, they're back in game.

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