A revolution in PC gaming and VR began as AMD launched the Radeon RX 480 graphics card designed to deliver enthusiast-level gaming performance and features, the world’s most advanced graphics technology and an extraordinary value proposition to fans and gamers around the world. The Radeon RX 480 introduces premium technology engineered to deliver the best performance/$ in its class, democratize VR and deliver a wide range of future-proof technologies supporting current and forthcoming game and video standards. The cards will start at SEP $199 USD for the Radeon RX 480 4GB card, and SEP $239 for the Radeon RX 480 8GB card.
“Our message to gamers everywhere is that the Radeon RX 480 is every bit as much your card as it is ours. We designed this technology by listening intently to you, the gamers who have bought and played on our graphics technology for years. We’ve worked tirelessly to produce something that satisfies the most discerning gamer, and delivers the ideal product at an impeccable price. We couldn’t be more grateful for the reception we’ve received from gamers, customers, and technology partners who see what our engineering team has accomplished, and agree that with the Radeon RX Series, gaming and VR is truly #BetterRed.” Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD.
Radeon RX 480 Reception
The global PC ecosystem has demonstrated enthusiastic support for the Radeon RX 480 graphics card. OEM and system integrator partners such as Alienware, HP, and Lenovo are praising the Radeon RX 480’s capabilities. Game and VR application developers including Bethesda, EA, and Ubisoft and VR headset manufacturers Oculus and HTC are applauding AMD for delivering on the promise of bringing flagship performance and features to the mass market, enabling them to greatly expand the reach of experiences they’re developing. Professional and casual gamers alike are also celebrating the launch, with AMD-sponsored eSports teams such as Fnatic and Evil Geniuses hailing the Radeon RX 480 as a triumph for PC gamers everywhere, and prominent video reviewers worldwide affirming the exceptional value of the graphics card across a wide range of games. Prior to launch, AMD’s graphics cards were also the talk of the PC Gaming Show at E3.
CEO Lisa Su delivered a pre-launch showcase of the full line of forthcoming Radeon RX Series graphics cards set to transform PC gaming this summer by delivering enthusiast class performance and features for gamers at mainstream price points. AMD previously showcased the Radeon RX 480 graphics card, designed for incredibly smooth AAA gaming at 1440p resolution and set to be the most affordable solution for premium VR experiences starting at just $199 SEP for the 4GB version. Joining the Radeon RX family are the newly announced Radeon RX 470 graphics card delivering refined, power-efficient HD gaming, and the Radeon RX 460, a cool and efficient solution for the ultimate e-sports gaming experience.
The Radeon RX Series of graphics processors are designed to transform the PC gaming industry across a variety of form factors, delivering on three fundamental “entitlements” for gamers and game developers:
- Extraordinary VR experiences at price points never offered before – Previewed at Computex, the Radeon RX Series will expand the VR ecosystem by democratizing exceptional VR experiences, making them available to many form factors and millions of consumers by lowering the cost barriers to entry.
- Great game content delivered to PC Gamers in real time – Through a combination of Radeon RX Series performance profiles and close-to-the-metal APIs that closely mirror console APIs, AMD believes that developers will be further empowered to co-develop high quality, high performing game content for both consoles and PCs, enhancing the PC gaming ecosystem.
- Console-class GPU performance for thin and light notebooks – Gaming notebooks have traditionally been large and cumbersome or under-powered for today’s gaming needs. The Radeon RX Series addresses this with flagship technology that effectively gives mobile users GPU performance that rivals that of consoles with exceptionally low power and low-z height to drive thin, light and high-performance gaming notebooks, and 1080p 60Hz gaming experiences for both eSports and AAA titles.
AMD has worked closely with HTC to implement several LiquidVR features, only available on Radeon GPUs, including:
- Affinity Multi GPU: VR presents some unique challenges for multi-GPU rendering. The extra frame of latency associated with alternate frame rendering (AFR) is much more noticeable than in non-VR scenarios, and rendering each frame twice (rendering from the viewpoint of each eye) adds CPU overhead that can limit frame rates. Affinity Multi-GPU addresses these challenges by enabling applications to assign tasks to run on specific GPUs. Each GPU can render the viewpoint from a single eye, then composite the outputs into a single stereo 3D image.
- Direct to Display: VR headsets are a new class of display devices that may currently lack native support in existing operating systems. Direct-to-Display is designed to bypass these limitations and create a seamless plug-and-play user experience by enabling head-mounted displays to be treated as special display devices that require no special configuration in the OS.
“We congratulate AMD for bringing a premium VR ready GPU to market at a $199 price point. This shows how partners like AMD survey the entire VR ecosystem to bring an innovative Radeon RX Series product to power high end VR systems like the HTC Vive, to the broadest range of consumers.” Dan O’Brien, vice president of virtual reality, HTC.
“We’ve seen an incredible range of immersive applications and game-changing experiences that have given millions of people around the world their first taste of virtual reality. AMD is going to help drive that adoption forward even more by bringing their high-end VR GPUs to the $199 price point.” Nate Mitchell, VP of Product, Oculus.
Radeon RX 480 Features
The Radeon RX 480 card packs an unprecedented amount of gaming and VR into an incredible price point.
Premium technology engineered for unprecedented performance in its class – The Radeon RX 480 8GB card features the most advanced graphics and gaming technologies ever seen in a GPU at $239, delivering the best performance/$ in its class. The revolutionary Polaris architecture optimized for the 14nm FinFET process drives spectacular improvements in performance and efficiency: more than 15 percent more performance per compute unit and up to 2.8x the performance/Watt over AMD’s Radeon R9 200 series graphics architecture. Fueling up to 5.8 trillion calculations a second in a chip that’s smaller than a US dime, the Radeon RX 480 8GB card is more powerful than every game console ever created combined.
The most affordable solution for premium VR experiences – Starting at SEP $199 USD, the Radeon RX 480 4GB card is the most affordable solution for premium VR experiences, being both Oculus Rift- and Steam VR-Ready. Utilizing LiquidVR technologies designed to provide smoother, more comfortable VR experiences, the Radeon RX 480 4GB card lowers the cost barrier to entry for PC VR making it affordable for millions of consumers.
Future-proof technologies – The Radeon RX 480 card continues the Radeon tradition of innovation being first to new process nodes, first in memory types and bandwidth, and first to support new gaming APIs. Gamers will enjoy the Radeon RX 480 card for a long time to come with a range of “future-proof” benefits including:
Premium HD gaming in DirectX 12 and Vulkan – The Radeon RX 480 card excels in DirectX 12 and Vulkan, APIs that are powering the future of gaming. Polaris architecture uniquely supports asynchronous compute for superior experiences in games and VR applications using these new APIs, and combined with AMD FreeSync Technology, gamers can enjoy silky smooth frame rates at 1440p resolution across the most demanding games.
Next-generation display and video technologies – The Radeon RX 480 card features HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.3 HBR3, and DisplayPort 1.4 HDR supporting the new generation of high-resolution HDR and high-refresh displays enabling experiences such as FreeSync with high-refresh 4K, high refresh UltraWide, and single-cable 5K resolution computing at 60Hz. The Radeon RX 480 features AMD’s most versatile decode accelerator ever, enabling beautiful HDR movies using 10-bit HEVC from the likes of Netflix and Amazon, accelerated H.264 video of streamers on Twitch, accelerated VP9 videos on sites like YouTube, and razor-sharp video calling using HEVC and MJPEG in applications like Skype.
Unprecedented control with Radeon Software and the new Radeon WattMan – Radeon Software complements the sophisticated hardware of the Radeon RX 480 graphics card, enabling the ultimate in performance, features and stability to ensure an exceptionally smooth and fast out-of-box experience, and one that gets better with age as updates roll out. Launching today with the Radeon RX 480 card are nine new features of Radeon Software Crimson Edition designed to give users more control over multi-GPU, display, and power efficiency settings. Radeon WattMan, based on AMD OverDrive technology, enables users to take complete control over the Radeon RX 480 card with a redefined overclocking experience and a wide range of features including dynamic GPU frequency and voltage curves that allow users to customize both elements across seven states. Radeon Wattman also delivers a new histogram interface that enables recording of per-application data to easily track peak and average activity, clocks, temperature and fan speed.
Radeon RX 480 Availability
Radeon RX 480 graphics cards are available from retailers and etailers around the world starting today. For more information on where to buy, visit http://shop.amd.com.
Rising Concerns
As a gamer, I’m sold, AMD has played the long game of delivering affordable gaming to the masses and are targeting a very effective segment of the E-sports market. I’m quite excited to get my hands on it and review it for performance. However, testers globally and particularly reviewers at Tom’s Hardware are reporting discrepancies. They discovered that the RX480 review unit 11W above the maximum 75W specification required to meet compliance on the PCI Express slot. There’s a standard put in place for motherboards and before I press the panic button and say that this is the sort of thing that would fry your motherboard, it appears this is an isolated issue but it’s the sort of thing that AMD shouldn’t have on their hands right after building a great card. AMD have gone on record to say they’re investigating the issue. Raja Koduri addressed those concerns on a reddit thread as GFXchiptweeter. AMD have also confirmed that this could have been an isolated issue.
” The RX 480 meets the bar for PCIe compliance testing with PCI-SIG. This is not just our internal testing. I think that should be made very clear. Obviously there are a few GPUs exhibiting anomalous behavior, and we’ve been in touch with these reviewers for a few days to better understand their test configurations to see how this could be possible. It’s worth reminding people that only a very small number of hundreds of RX 480 reviews worldwide encountered this issue. Clearly that makes it aberrant, rather than the rule, and we’re working to get that number down to zero.” – AMD
What does this mean for Gamers ?
I’m going on a limb and here say that this information isn’t going to affect gaming under most cases. Running your RX 480 at normal clock speeds won’t harm your motherboard. It, however draws concerns when their Wattman driver overclocks cards, it increases power draw and that could be cause for concern. We’ll be getting in touch with AMD to get more clarity.
