Introduction

Radeon RX 480 Market Segment Analysis Radeon

R9 380X Radeon

R9 390 GeForce

GTX 970 Radeon

RX 480 MSI RX 480

Gaming X Radeon

R9 390X GeForce

GTX 980 GeForce

GTX 1060 Radeon R9

Fury Radeon R9

Fury X GeForce

GTX 980 Ti GeForce

GTX 1070 Shader Units 2048 2560 1664 2304 2304 2816 2048 1280 3584 4096 2816 1920 ROPs 32 64 56 32 32 64 64 48 64 64 96 64 Graphics Processor Tonga Hawaii GM204 Ellesmere Ellesmere Hawaii GM204 GP106 Fiji Fiji GM200 GP104 Transistors unknown 6200M 5200M 5700M 5700M 6200M 5200M 4400M 8900M 8900M 8000M 7200M Memory Size 4 GB 8 GB 4 GB 4 GB / 8 GB 8 GB 8 GB 4 GB 6 GB 4 GB 4 GB 6 GB 8 GB Memory Bus Width 256 bit 512 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 512 bit 256 bit 192 bit 4096 bit 4096 bit 384 bit 256 bit Core Clock 970 MHz 1000 MHz 1051 MHz+ 1120 - 1266 MHz 1303 MHz 1050 MHz 1126 MHz+ 1506 MHz+ 1000 MHz 1050 MHz 1000 MHz+ 1506 MHz+ Memory Clock 1425 MHz 1500 MHz 1750 MHz 2000 MHz 2000 MHz 1500 MHz 1750 MHz 2002 MHz 500 MHz 500 MHz 1750 MHz 2002 MHz Price $210 $260 $265 $199 / $239 $265 $310 $360 $249 / $299 $530 $600 $440 $379 / $449

AMD's Radeon RX480 Series was released in late June and is the company's first graphics card based on its new "Polaris" GPU architecture, and its first chip built on the 14 nanometer FinFET process. It is also the first AMD GPU made at GlobalFoundries, which is a deviation from the year-long relationship with TSMC.The silicon driving the RX 480, which is based on "Polaris," is codenamed "Ellesmere" and is externally referred to by AMD as "Polaris 10." Polaris 10 on the Radeon RX 480 comes with 2304 shaders enabled, 144 texture units and 32 ROPS that are connected to a 256-bit wide memory bus with 8 GB of GDDR5 memory.In this review, we are taking a look at the MSI RX 480 Gaming X, a custom-design Radeon RX 480. We've tested many MSI Gaming cards in the past and nearly all of them impressed with good temperatures and low noise levels. Let's hope MSI can pull it off on the RX 480 as well, a card where many AIBs have failed to produce good board designs that can compete with NVIDIA's GTX 1060 offerings.MSI has told us pricing of their RX 480 Gaming X to be $259-$269, so we'll be using $265 throughout this review.