Hardware Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro+ OC 4GB and 8GB Reviews

Nice review. I bought the 4gb Nitro a month or two ago as it seemed the best offering at the time, glad to see this backed up here too.

 

I'm not seeing the Doom results, is that just me?

I think AMD have shot themselves in the foot with the RX470 performing so close to the RX480 (usually within 5-10% tops). Likewise with the RX470 and GTX1060 6GB, so very close performance wise, miles apart price wise.

 

I think AMD are playing the Nvidia game. IE - pushing you toward the more expensive card.

Don't the 470s have exactly the same PCB, cooler etc as the 480?

 

If you accept this card for what it is...a card designed purely for 1080p gaming, then there is absolutely no need to spend the extra £50 for the 8GB version, if you want to step up to 1440p, then you really should be looking at the 6GB Nvidia 1060 as a minimum.

Very nice looking as well, no wonder they sell so well.

 

It all depends I guess. For example, you can not access the Nightmare settings on Doom with 4gb VRAM. However, that kinda doesn't matter because from my testing it makes hardly any difference, if any visual difference.

Yeah it's a gorgeous little card. Quite probably THE best looking GPU in ages and ages I really wish the other manus would have a look at it and realise that they don't need to make things look stupid in order for them to sell.

As for 1440p? I don't agree on the 1060. I have a Fury X still and the other night I decided to do some testing on it at 1440p. There was only a very small handful of games that required more VRAM and tbh I question the legitimacy of the 1060 as a 1440p card any way, given I run a Titan X and it's just about enough to max out all games at 1440p. The 1060 would struggle..

Doom on the other hand with 4gb? I was able to set it to ultra and then VSR up to 4k and saw an absolute minimum of 45 FPS with a max of 85 and it generally sitting right around 60-70 even during very busy battle scenes. This was with 4gb on a Fury X.

Tomb Raider needs more VRAM, as do a couple of others but AMD have recently changed their drivers to circumvent this issue. I have yet to try it though but will soon. I forget what they call it now, but they have acknowledged it and done something about it.

https://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=78541

They call it Shader cache.

Improved Shader Cache storage limit. This will allow the Shader Cache feature to store more shaders for extremely demanding games that may have previously hit the old storage cap.

I will try it later on BLOPS III, which was notorious for running out of VRAM (it was one of the three games that did).

 

What were the Unigine Valley scores?

 

I've just ordered the 8gb from Scan, it will be my xmas gift. its on offer for £209.99, down from £254.99.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/bla...polaris-pcie-30-8000mhz-gddr5-1208mhz-gpu-130

That currently makes it only £5 more than the 4gb version.

 

Is the score you quote the 'main score' or the 'Graphics Score'?