Hey guys this is Austin. Say hello to the new Radeon RX 480. I’ve got to give a big
shoutout to AMD for not only sponsoring this video but also for inviting me out to Macau
for tech day this year. The star of the show is the new RX 480. At $200 this promises serious
performance for the price but it represents an interesting shift. Now that GPUs are ready
to take advantage of smaller process nodes AMD has opted to focus on mid range cards
in the $100 to $200 price point. One of the ways they’re doing that is with VR. But
we knew that this Holodeck like experience was on it’s way the minute the GPU got powerful
enough to be able to render you know, fully immersive, realistic scenes. The RX 480 is
fully certified to work with both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive which significantly brings
the cost down on building a PC that can handle virtual reality. So one of the things about
virtual reality that’s actually really important is keeping a steady frame rate. So when you’re
in the virtual world this is all I can see right now, I look down I see my fake body,
I see this giant space station and it’s immersive and something that is super easy
to break the immersion is if the performance is not up to par. But the cool thing is this
is a completely identical experience to playing on a five, six, seven hundred dollar graphics
card. There’s more to the 480 than just VR though. The GPU is capable of recording
gameplay at up to 4K without hurting your performance unlike before where you would
take a small but sometimes noticeable hit. This also applies to streaming with programs
like OBS and it also can output 4K at up to 120 frames per second or even up to a 5K display
using a single cable. While usually reference cards aren’t as popular as more extreme
coolers I think the RX 480 looks pretty solid. It has a dimpled finish up front with a single
surprisingly quiet fan toward the back. With a TDP of 150 watts it only needs a single
6-pin PCIe power cable and around back you’ll find three DisplayPort 1.4 ready ports along
with a single HDMI 2.0 to pump out some serious pixels. It also supports HDR displays which
are hard to appreciate on a YouTube video but if you have a newer high end TV it makes
a noticeable difference. You can also put two together in CrossFire which is becoming
more interesting with DirectX 12 multi adapter and they also had an RX 480 set up at tech
day with the Razer Core. Connected to the Razer Blade Stealth over Thunderbolt 3 Battlefront
was totally playable. Of course the biggest question is how does the 480 actually perform?
At launch there are four and eight gigabyte versions, I have the reference model with
eight gigs of memory but there will be non reference models available a little later
in the year. I did all my testing inside the Neutron 3.0 which is an upcoming $750 build
with the 480 along with a Core i5-6500, you guys can check out the full video for the rest
of the specs. The first benchmark is the 3DMark Fire Strike test which gives us a solid baseline
to start with. Considering the GTX 970 is $100 more expensive it’s nearly a tie where
the $330 R9 390 is able to pull out a small lead. Getting into an actual game we have
Grand Theft Auto 5 which can still be fairly taxing when you turn the resolution up. Running
on Ultra settings the RX 480 is right behind the 390 and narrowly outperforms the still
powerful 970. Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor is another solid title that the 480 does well
in, still edging out the GTX 970 while delivering just under 60 frames per second at 1440p.
Moving over to a DirectX 12 game in Ashes of the Singularity this plays well to AMD’s
DX12 strength with the 480 pulling away, especially when you compare to the 285 which really struggles
here. It’s pretty clear than the 480 has absolutely no problem with 1080p ultra gaming
and even 1440p is totally playable. But how about 4K? It’s actually sort of doable.
I tested the cards on 4K ultra settings and while only Shadow of Mordor is even close
to being playable if you turn down the settings you can make it work. The thing is, this is
a $200 graphics card. It wasn’t long ago that 1080p at this price point was all you
could hope for but the RX 480 can easily handle 1440p and beyond along with virtual reality.
Speaking of, AMD was cool enough to hook me up with an extra 480 to giveaway to you guys.
All you need to do is make sure you’re subscribed to the channel and leave a comment down below
and I will pick a winner in one month. So what do you guys think about the RX 480? Let
me know in the comments below and I will catch you in the next one!