Prepare yourself for lots of AMD news this year.
We are finally getting some solid information about upcoming AMD releases this year, so let’s get straight to it:
RX 480 Graphics Card
AMD held a press conference on June 1 and revealed the RX 480, the first of its upcoming generation of graphics cards.
We have no details on any other card, but the RX 480 sound very promising on its own. The performance, according to the interpolations by various sources, puts the RX 480 somewhere between the R9 390 and R9 390X. In other words, you can get between $300-$400 worth of last generation’s performance for just $200.
That is not as awe-inspiring as the $700 GTX 1080 performance, but it is a much more important release. Why? The biggest segment of gamers will be buying ~$200 cards, not $700 cards. So, if the performance interpolations turn out to be true, the RX 480 is poised to be a bestseller!
The RX 480 is expected to launch (and be properly benchmarked) on June 29th. We will be adding it to the Logical Increments parts list, assuming it is a logical purchase after the reviews are in.
Zen CPUs
It is no secret that Intel rules the >$200 CPU market, mostly due to AMD’s failed Bulldozer launch. AMD says that its Zen CPUs, planned to launch in Q4 2016, will provide a 40% increase in performance over their current CPUs. We will not sugar-coat it: a 40% improvement over Bulldozer will not make Zen competitive with Skylake. But a 40% increase could make Zen an attractive for gamers if it is priced right. We do not know enough about Zen yet, so we will be waiting for more news and actual benchmarks.
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Should I go ahead and buy an R9 380 4GB now, or should I wait until after the release of the RX 480? I’m not sure if waiting a few more weeks will get me a better graphics card or the R9 380 going down in price, so I’m not sure what to do.
Build : http://pcpartpicker.com/list/jFrQzM
Thanks in advance!
Sam 10 years ago
Since we are so close, I would reccomend waiting. There is a very good chance that you can get better performance for the same price in a few weeks than you could get right now.
Your build looks solid, and should work great!
Matthew Zehner 10 years ago
Since we are so close, I would reccomend waiting. There is a very good chance that you can get better performance for the same price in a few weeks than you could get right now.
Your build looks solid, and should work great!
Matthew Zehner 10 years ago
Now I feel stupid for buying a 960.
Serathis 10 years ago
The 960 is still a great card, in terms of Nvidia options!
Matthew Zehner 10 years ago
It is, but not so great from a price/performance persepctive. How much RAM will the 480 will have?
Serathis 10 years ago
I believe it will have both 4 and 8GB variants.
Matthew Zehner 10 years ago
As I see there is no reason not to buy the 480 in that case
Serathis 10 years ago
The 480 is almost certainly a better card (though we will need to wait to see more benchmarks and such, and VRAM isn’t always indicative of quality) but the 960 is still a solid mid-tier card regardless.
Matthew Zehner 10 years ago
I believe it will have both 4 and 8GB variants.
Matthew Zehner 10 years ago
I thought that Zen has a 40% boost over Excavator, not Bulldozer, and Excavator already has a boost over Bullldozer, so those would add up to be greater. Plus, in a recent slide, it was said that it would have double the performance of the 8350
G4M3B0Y 10 years ago
If you take a look at AMD’s slides, they do not mention the exact microarchitecture, only “40% more”: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10391/amd-briefly-shows-off-zen-summit-ridge-silicon
If they can provide double the performance of the 8350, that would be fantastic!
The Falcon 10 years ago
They say 40% more IPC, but without a clockspeed, that means nothing. with a 40% increase in IPC, but a decrease in clockspeed they could be slower than there previous CPU’s, and on the other side they could have an increased clockspeed and have 10 times better performance. My point is that talking about IPC is completely irrelevant with out a clockspeed.
Andreas Balslev 10 years ago
They say 40% more IPC, but without a clockspeed, that means nothing. with a 40% increase in IPC, but a decrease in clockspeed they could be slower than there previous CPU’s, and on the other side they could have an increased clockspeed and have 10 times better performance. My point is that talking about IPC is completely irrelevant with out a clockspeed.
Andreas Balslev 10 years ago
Used GTX 970 for ~$230 or the new RX480? Do we know enough performance-wise to know what is better?
genericiz3d 10 years ago
We will likely have to wait for the card to be released and benchmarks to come out to know for certain.
Matthew Zehner 10 years ago
I suspect similar value.
The problem with the new cards is that there is no direct competition between AMD and NVIDIA, so no incentive for them to stick with their low prices.
We already see low supply and high prices with the GTX 1070 and 1080.
Orion 10 years ago
Sounds like excellent performance per dollar here! This should definitely keep the price of the future 1060 down. Hopefully the 490, 490-X (490-Z?) will curb the 1070 and 1080 as well whenever those are planned to be released.
saraboulos 10 years ago
This is a more nebulous question; but if the price difference is a negligible $30-$40, why would anyone opt for the 4GB variant of these cards? Is there a technical bottleneck or limitation with the 8GB cards? (e.g. does it take a beefier processor to take advantage of it)?
genericiz3d 10 years ago
It’s hard to know for sure until everything comes out, but often increasing VRAM from 4 to 8 doesn’t make a huge difference because the rest of the card’s specs bottleneck the system before the VRAM can. However, it will certainly make a difference in most games to some degree, but it’s hard to say how big of a difference that will be.
Matthew Zehner 10 years ago
The only reason people buy 4GB instead of 8GB is because it’s cheaper. There is no downside to having more RAM.
Andreas Balslev 10 years ago
That’s what I was thinking. Matt suggests we have no way to determine how negligible the extra RAM is (at least until we get a benchmark), but when you are talking about only ~15% added to the cost of the card I find it hard to argue a reason to buy the 4GB variant.
Even it is only a 2% gain, in terms of forward flexibility the 8GB seems like the only logical choice; and for the extra cost of a crappy dinner at Chili’s.
genericiz3d 10 years ago
I agree!! But some people whom are only playing certain games at 1080p might not ever need more than 4GB. And some of these people also wanna save every dollar they can. That’s all I can say.
Andreas Balslev 10 years ago
This is it. Most games don’t use more than 4GB even at 4K resolution, and use less at lower resolution. For example, the Witcher 3, one of the most gorgeous and demanding modern games, uses 3.2GB at 4K with the settings turned all the way up.
Orion 10 years ago
Yes, I know. I just personally like all GPU’s to be build with a surplus of VRAM, because that will set the standard for what game manufacturers will allow them self to use of VRAM, thereby making bigger and better games in the future. Or at least I like to think so, but at any rate, you can never have to much RAM
Andreas Balslev 10 years ago
If the manufactures give the game developers the possibility to do what they want in terms of memory, those might overuse it so that cards with lower memory can’t play the games well, or they don’t code so efficient like before.
SMESH 10 years ago
That is also true, annoyingly enough. But I was thinking that if the game is optimized the same, but build with the knowledge that people have more RAM and VRAM, so that games will allow more things in the game environment to be open in the RAM, thereby reducing or removing loading times in every game. Also not having the game environment reset itself just because walk 10 meters away in game.
Andreas Balslev 10 years ago
8GB is more future-proof, and afaik there is no game except GTA IV that uses more than 4GB of graphics memory at 1080p (without mods; even Witcher 3 maxed out uses only ~3.3 GB), so you could definitely save some cost. The few dozens of additional dollars can often be spent on another GPU that has a general better performance which is more important than the 8GB (you shouldn’t buy “future proof” anyway).
SMESH 10 years ago
Today is the day!
Serathis 10 years ago
So… What now?
Andreas Balslev 10 years ago
Seems like the RX 480 is not really out performing the Gtx 970… I had hopped it did a bit better…Also the rx 480 seems to be using the same watt amount like the gtx 1070 which offers more performance… Not sure what to buy now :
Matthias VW 10 years ago
Intel integrated graphics is the only way to go!!
Andreas Balslev 10 years ago
3rd gen AGA ftw!
SMESH 10 years ago
Benchmarks are very different. In general it outperforms the 970 by ~2% in 1080p.
Things to wait for:
– With the latest beta driver, the RX performs 1,5-3% better than with the standard one. Only 1-2 reviews took that into account
– Will the 4GB variant be slower? (Expected to be between a reference 290X and overclocked one/ GTX970).
– Will the GTX 1060 be released on Thursday? How will it perform (expected to be between reference 290(X) and RX480 4GB)? Has nVidia learned something about price tags?
You should definitely wait for
– aftermarket variants for OC & better cooling
– and if the 1060 will be released this week
SMESH 10 years ago
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