Is Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD)’s RX 480 Really All That?
tags: NVDA,AMD
The first performance benchmarks are starting to come in for Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD)’s brand new and supposedly disruptive RX 480 GPU. What are the numbers and what do they mean for AMD‘s future?
The card was revealed at Computex 2016 and its primary market pitch was “affordable premium quality VR”. In that respect, the RX 480 seems to deliver perfectly well. WCFTech posted a couple of great SteamVR performance charts that show AMD‘s new product scoring a 6.8, which puts it well within “VR Ready” territory, i.e. ensuring stable 90+ framerates. The card is also topping the value chart, with the best performance per dollar ratio, well ahead of NVidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s GTX 1070.
The bad news is that the overall performance of the RX 480 is not as impressive as many had anticipated and speculated. Expectations were that the 480 would go toe to toe with NVDA‘s GTX 980, which is really not the case, at least in VR. The benchmark published by WCFTech places AMD‘s new offering somewhere just above a GTX 970 and under an R9 390. If this performance is mirrored in broader benchmarks, this could mean bad news for AMD.
The card is still a very affordable offering and might make a splash in the mid-range. However, NVidia is extending its new lineup with a GTX 1060, which seems like a direct competitor to the 480. The 1060 is expected to launch in July, in order to immediately go toe to toe with third-party 480 designs, with a pricetag of around $250 for its 3GB version.
Retail is stocking huge volumes of the RX 480, according to reports, so things do look good for AMD so far. Time will tell how the product will stack up against NVDA‘s new offering and where customers will find their sweet spot.
