Rx 480 vs: AMD RX 480 vs Nvidia GTX 1060-6GB

AMD Radeon RX 480 vs Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Nvidia grabbed recent headlines with its flagship GPU launches, but AMD stole some of that thunder with the new Radeon RX 480. The red team has made bold claims about its new card, saying that it’s the best 1440p and VR-ready card for around £200.

The RX 480’s new architecture and lower price see it charge headlong into one of computing’s busiest battlefields – and, in particular, up against Nvidia’s older GTX 970. New hardware has caused that card to drop in price, which means it’s now a key challenger for AMD’s card.

Is it worth shelling out for the new Radeon, or can Nvidia’s classic GTX 970 hold its own?

If you want to read our individual reviews, you can click here for the RX 480 and the GTX 970.

Related: Best graphics cards in 2016

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 v AMD Radeon RX 480 – Specs and technology

AMD has made the unusual decision to debut its Polaris architecture with this mid-range card. There’s a lot to like about the fourth iteration of the Graphics Core Next system, not least the move from a 28nm to a 14nm manufacturing process.

That’s a bigger leap than Nvidia has taken with its new 16nm Pascal cards, and it means that AMD can cram even more transistors into the same area without increasing heat and power consumption.

The RX 480 remains a mid-range card, so expectations should be managed. It has a reasonable 2,304 stream processors divided into 36 Compute Units for more granular task delegation, and its core sits at stock and boost speeds of 1,120MHz and 1,266MHz.

Video: AMD Radeon RX 480 review

AMD’s card has some software features that have also been introduced on Nvidia’s new hardware, like better asynchronous computing. That’ll help when managing CPU and GPU workloads in games with DirectX 12, but it’s not a feature that’ll be coming to the GTX 970.

AMD is building the RX 480 in two versions – one with 4GB of GDDR5 memory, and one with 8GB. The 8GB card will have faster memory, too, with throughput of 8Gbps compared to 7Gbps from the lesser card.

Prices fluctuate pretty rapidly, which is why the GTX 970 is such a close competitor to the RX 480.

The Radeon’s specification compares well to Nvidia’s older card. The GTX 970 uses the older 28nm manufacturing process, which means it has half a billion fewer transistors than its rival, and it only has 1,664 stream processors. Its stock and boost clocks sit at 1,050MHz and 1,250MHz, and it has just one memory configuration: 4GB of GDDR5.

Related: Best gaming PC specs to build yourself

The GTX 970’s lesser specification means it provides a throughput rating of 3.4TFLOPS – far less than the 5.8TFLOPS of the AMD card. There’s little between their power consumption ratings, despite that: the RX 480’s 150W power demand is only five Watts higher than the GTX 970.

It doesn’t sound like much of a contest on paper, but the benchmarks reveal a far closer fight than I expected.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 v AMD Radeon RX 480 – Testing Methodology

I benchmarked the GTX 970 and RX 480 on TrustedReviews’ test rig, which has been designed to match the specifications of a standard enthusiast gaming PC. It features the following components:

  • Motherboard: Asus Z170-Deluxe
  • Processor: Intel Core i5-6600K (not overclocked)
  • RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2666MHz, 16GB DDR4
  • Cooler: Corsair H60 liquid cooler
  • PSU: Corsair CX750M
  • SSD: Samsung 850 EVO
  • OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 v AMD Radeon RX 480 – Performance

I’ve tested these powerful cards with five games. Each title is run at its highest settings, and I’ve tested each game at 1,920 x 1,080, 2,560 x 1,440 and 3,840 x 2,160 – 4K.
I’ve also used a selection of synthetic benchmarks, with 3D Mark’s demanding Fire Strike test alongside benchmarks to measure power consumption and peak temperature.

DIRT Rally
Ultra at 1,920 x 1,080 average

GTX 970: 97. 3

RX 480: 88.9
Ultra at 2,560 x 1,440, average

GTX 970: 65.4

RX 480: 61.6
Ultra at 3,840 x 2,160, average

GTX 970: 34.4

RX 480: 34.7

This is the easiest game in this testing setup, with plenty of fast-paced textures but less intensive workloads in other departments. It’s no surprise that both cards blitzed this rally racer at 1080p: the RX 480 averaged 88.9fps, while the Nvidia card was about nine frames faster.

That means the GTX 970 had an 8.63% lead, but the gap closed to 5.81% at 1440p – perhaps because the RX 480 is flexing its extra transistors and memory. Both cards beat the magical 60fps figure, with the Nvidia silicon almost four frames ahead.

Both cards also managed to beat 30fps at 4K, which isn’t too surprising considering that this is a less intensive game. I was surprised when the AMD hardware took a slim lead: its 34.7fps average is 0. 3fps ahead of the Nvidia card.

That’s good, but don’t expect either of these GPUs to handle 4K gaming. Those 34fps averages will be undermined by sluggish minimum framerates, especially when the on-screen action becomes more frantic.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Ultra at 1,920 x 1,080 average

GTX 970: 85.4

RX 480: 83.6
Ultra at 2,560 x 1,440, average

GTX 970: 55.9
RX 480: 57.2
Ultra at 3,840 x 2,160, average

GTX 970: 37.7

RX 480: 39.3

This game is full of particle and fire effects, which can make it a little tricky for some GPUs, especially considering I run this test at Ultra settings.

Nvidia’s card continued its 1080p lead with an average framerate of 85.4fps, but its advantage was a slim 2fps – and it was overturned when I turned the resolution up to 2,560 x 1,440. With the larger number of pixels deployed the RX 480 averaged 57. 2fps, which was more than a frame faster than the Nvidia card.

Both of these GPUs managed to run the benchmark at 4K, too. The RX 480 maintained its slim advantage with an average of 39.3fps.

Hitman
Max Settings at 1,920 x 1,080, average

GTX 970: 59

RX 480: 69.7
Max Settings at 2,560 x 1,440, average

GTX 970: 45.4

RX 480: 54.3
Max Settings at 3,840 x 2,160, average

GTX 970: 25.08

RX 480: 30.6

Hitman is a game designed with AMD in mind, so the results here aren’t surprising. It’s a competitive set of results for a title that’s among the toughest benchmarks around thanks to its reliance on high-end lighting and particle effects.

Its Full HD average of 69.7fps was ten frames better than the GTX 970 and on the right side of the crucial 60fps barrier, and it was nine frames quicker than its rival at 1440p. The Radeon’s average of 54. 3fps will ensure smooth gameplay at this higher resolution.

The RX 480 maintained a good lead at 4K, too. Its average of 30.6fps is five frames better than the GTX 970 and it does break the important 30fps barrier, but don’t assume that it’ll play Hitman smoothly at 4K without compromising on several of the graphics options.

Rise of the Tomb Raider
Max Settings at 1,920 x 1,080 average

GTX 970: 60
RX 480: 63.5
Max Settings at 2,560 x 1,440, average

GTX 970: 36.7

RX 480: 44.2
Max Settings at 3,840 x 2,160, average

GTX 970: 19.9
RX 480: 27.3
Tomb Raider strains graphics cards with trickier weather and lighting effects than most other titles on the market.

This is also the only game where the RX 480 led the way at every resolution and opened up a wider lead over the GTX 970 as I increased the pixel count.

Its 63. 46fps average at 1080p was just over three frames quicker than the GTX 970, and the Radeon then scored 44.2fps at 1440p – far better than the 36.7fps over the Nvidia card. That’s a gap of 5.77% improving to a gap of 20.44%.

The Radeon averaged 27.33fps at 4K. That means the game isn’t playable at its maximum settings at 3,840 x 2,160, but it was a whopping 37.61% faster than the GTX 970 in the same test.

Synthetic Benchmarks, Power and Heat
3D Mark Fire Strike Ultra

GTX 970: 2767

RX 480: 2638
Peak power:

GTX 970: 260W

RX 480: 249W
Peak temperature:

GTX 970: 73

RX 480: 70

There’s very little to choose between these two cards in the synthetic 3D Mark Fire Strike test. The GTX 970 leads the way with a score of 2,767 points, but the RX 480 is barely behind thanks to its result of 2,638 points.

That supports my conclusions from real-world tests: the GTX 970 might be better in lower resolutions and easier games, but the RX 480 is a more efficient architecture and deploys its power with more aplomb – therefore it takes key victories in tougher tests.

AMD’s shrunken architecture consumed less power than its rival, too. The test rig drew 249W from the mains with the Radeon installed, which is 11W less than the Nvidia-powered machine required.

And, finally, it’s cooler – albeit only by three degrees. The Radeon’s top temperature of 70°C is an excellent result, and it means there’s no need to fret about overheating.
Performance Conclusions

There’s a clear trend to be seen across most of my test games: if a game is a tougher benchmark, the RX 480 tends to outperform its older rival. That’s clear evidence of the newer architecture, increased memory throughput and shrunken manufacturing process paying dividends.

It’s a victory for the RX 480 in most of the important tests, then, but don’t go thinking that AMD’s cut-price card will handle 4K gaming smoothly. This is a GPU designed for Full HD and 1440p gaming, and in those department it’s stop on – but any higher resolutions will cause it to struggle.

The RX 480 consistently beats its rival while consuming less power: its peak draw of 249W is eleven fewer than the same machine with the GTX 970 installed.

Buy Now: GTX 970 at Amazon.com from $259

Other Things to Consider

My testing looked at an EVGA-overclocked GTX 970 and a reference RX 480. In other words, this is one of the best GTX 970s around versus an early RX 480 that’ll surely improve over time with third-party manufacturers pre-overclocking it and adding beefy cooling systems. This means that the narrow lead the GTX 970 shows in any of the above benchmarks will likely be diminished by more powerful RX 480s.

Buy Now: AMD Radeon RX 480 at Amazon.com from $199.99

Verdict

The RX 480 delivers excellent Full HD and 1440p performance for a surprisingly low price – and its consistent leads in tougher tests bode well for the future and indicate that AMD’s new hardware is doing its job.

The GTX 970 is similarly quick at those resolutions and is a tad cheaper, but it doesn’t have the new architecture, the extra memory or the software improvements – as you’d expect for an older card, of course. If they drop in price even further, they’re still an excellent buy.

In this comparison, the RX 480 takes a clear win in the 1440p stakes. But, of course, there are external factors to consider as well. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 has arrived on the scene in both 3GB and 6GB guises. We haven’t tested the GTX 1060 in 3GB form, but we have full benchmarks of the 6GB version, which show it’s a worthy 1440p card.

Related: Best graphics cards in 2016

AMD RX 480 review: Gone, but not forgotten

AMD’s pixel pumping Radeon RX 480 is slightly old hat now. Despite its close competitor, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, being alive and well and readily available to buy, the RX 480 has all but disappeared from online retailers — unless you want to pay massively over the odds for one, of course. That’s largely because it’s now been replaced by the newer RX 580, which shares the same GPU / chipset / thingy as the RX 480, but comes with a slightly higher clock speed, allowing it to run just a teeny bit faster compared to its 480 predecessor.

That said, until we’ve taken a closer look at said RX 580 to find out just how much better it is, you can get a pretty good idea of what it’s like by reading my original thoughts on the RX 480. So how does it perform? Forget the benchmarks, let’s give the new RX 480 a good old grope.

As before, I’m not going to get bogged down with the speeds and feeds. You can read my earlier post on the RX 480’s original announcement here for that. Or there’s a handy table comparison table here that puts the new GPU into technical context.

That said, one detail I do need to deal with involves graphics memory. The RX 480 is available in both 4GB and 8GB versions — much like the RX 580. I’m looking at both options here. So, yes, I do have an answer to the 4GB versus 8GB conundrum.

All I’ll add re the new RX 480’s technical gubbins is that, for my money, the most interesting element is that it exists at all given AMD has ditched its long-time manufacturing partner TSMC and shacked up with Global Foundaries. Polaris is the first big GPU to come out of that partnership and it’s being produced on a pretty cutting-edge 14nm process (down from 28nm for AMD previous graphics chips), so it’s a relief to see that AMD and GloFo managed to get the thing out the door. It could have gone horribly wrong.

The caveat to all that involves the relatively modest clockspeeds – modest compared to Nvidia’s latest GPUs, at least. But hold that thought, let’s find out what the RX 480 is really like.

AMD’s new board lacks the visual theatrics of Nvidia’s fancy-pants new Geforce cards

My instinct coming in and having studiously avoided reading third-party impressions was that the 8GB board would be the one to go for. So that’s what I kicked off with. As ever, I’m running things pretty much maxxed out in terms of image quality settings, but refer to my Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 hands-on for more detail on my non-scientific and intentionally touchy-feely approach. This isn’t about benchmakrs.

Keen as I often am to entirely miss the point, I jumped straight into the irrelevance that is running Doom running at 4K. It’s a thoroughly tedious game in single-player mode and the one thing the RX 480 isn’t cracked up to be is a 4K machine.

But whaddyaknow, it’s actually completely playable even if you do get the odd slight stutter here and there. To be honest, that probably says more about how efficiently coded the latest engine from id is and in turn how badly coded most other games are than it does about the RX 480. Using the Vulkan codepath, Doom seems to fly on just about everything.

Needless to say, it’s really slick at 2,560×1,080 on the 480 and pretty much impeccable at 1080p. Time for a real test, therefore. Let’s try Total War: Attila, a beast of a game that brings the likes of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 to its knees.

The single six-pin power connector means the RX 480 should play nicely with even modest power supply units

At 1080p or 1,920×1,080 pixels, the RX 480 is slick and smooth everywhere, which is a relief. I had feared it might show signs of slowdowns zoomed in among the troop formations at ground level. Jump to 1,440p, however, and you do get a little of that.

It’s fine with the camera giving you a broader, aerial view of the battle and — let’s be honest — that’s what you’re almost always doing in practice. But that ground-level perspective reveals the 480’s limitations. It doesn’t fall apart, but the drop off in frame rates is obvious enough. Needless to say, 4K in Attila is ugly. Even zoomed out, it’s a pretty juddery experience.

Next up is Witcher 3 at 1440p, or 2,560×1,440 pixels. The RX 480 is actually pretty playable, hurrah. It’s hard to spot specific faults with the performance or pick out conspicuous slow downs or dropped frames. The response to inputs feels snappy, too. And yet you also wouldn’t call it buttery smooth.

It’s only when you drop the res down to 1080p that you can really put your finger on the performance shortfall. At 1080p, the rendering is that critical bit more fluid and easy, which is either fine if 1080p is your target or a little disappointing if you have a 1440p panel. Anyway, the 8GB version of the 480 also hangs together surprisingly well when you up the ante to 4K. I wouldn’t actually want to play it at 4K with this card. But neither does the performance fall of a cliff.

Shadow of Mordor is our final destination and I jump straight into 1440p which the 480 handles with surprising aplomb. In isolation, it’s hard to fault. It feels as responsive as this particular game engine ever does, which is to say not terribly, and the frame rates feel smooth and playable. Once again, it’s the step down to 1080p and the slight but undeniable uptick in slickness that confirms the 480 is right at the edge of its abilities running at 1440p. There’s no margin, no performance to spare.

DisplayPorts aplenty. DVI? Not so much

At 4K in Mordor, it ain’t pretty. Well, the rendering quality is pretty, but there’s copious input lag and sluggish production of new frames. I’d guesstimate high teens re the frame rates.

All of which makes the new 480 in 8GB trim a very decent effort from AMD but not quite the game-changing value proposition I was hoping for. It’s not a 1440p killer for £200, that’s for sure. It’s usable at 1440p, don’t get me wrong. But it’s happier at 1080p and, personally, I’ve moved on from 1080p. It just ain’t enough.

But what of the 4GB version? Arguably, it’s academic. After all, the extra graphics memory is all about running at really high resolution, which isn’t the RX 480’s forte in any case. But for what it’s worth, at 1080p I can’t tell the difference at all and even at higher resolutions I’m not sure I can, either. Yup, that includes at 4K.

Certainly, there’s no dramatic drop off, no evidence of texture swapping over the PCI Express bus putting the kibosh on the frame rates. This was a surprise, so I hopped in and out of Witcher and Shadow of Mordor at 1440p over and over trying to sense some advantage with the 8GB board. Maybe it did feel just a little smoother. But maybe I was projecting.

It’s not quite the budget 1440P board we’ve been waiting for

At that point I cheated a little and perused the web for benchmark numbers. Sure enough, various comparison tests reveal that the 8GB board is typically just a few frames per second faster. In other words, not enough that you’ll actually be able to feel the difference.

All of which means that the RX 480 — and by extension the RX 580 — is a pretty nice bit of kit depending on your needs. It’s a great 1,080p gaming card and a workable option for 1,440p with a little tweaking to the odd graphical setting, and it’s also slightly cheaper than its main rival, Nvidia’s GTX 1060, with 4GB variants going for as little as £240 on Amazon and 8GB versions costing around £50-60 more depending on model. Whether that’s good enough is up to you, but when the next cards up (ie: Nvidia’s GTX 1070 and AMD’s RX Vega 56) are going to set you back at least £400, the RX 580 makes a pretty compelling case for those with slightly less-demanding gaming setups.

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AMD Radeon RX 480 vs AMD Radeon RX 580 comparison, which is better?

General information

Price-quality ratio

The sum of all the advantages of the device divided by its price. The more%, the better the quality per unit price in comparison with all analogues.

53.6% 55.1%

1.5% (2.8%) better than

Architecture

GCN 4.0 GCN 4.0

Codename

Ellesmere Polaris 20

Type

Desktop Desktop

Exit price

229$ 229 $

Number of shaders

2304 2304

Core clock

1120MHz 1257 MHz

At 137 MHz (12.2%) better than

Boost frequency

1266 MHz 1340 MHz

At 74 MHz (5.8%) better than

Number of transistors

5. 700 million 5.700 million

Process

14 nm 14 nm

Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16

Power Demand (TDP)

Calculated thermal power indicates the average heat dissipation in load operation,
the larger the value, the more the requirements for cooling and power consumption increase.

150W

-35 W (-18.9%) better than

185 W

Length

241 mm 241 mm

Additional power connectors

1x 6-pin 1x 8-pin

Vulkan

NVIDIA’s Vulkan technology allows developers to gain low-level access to the GPU to optimize graphics commands (better than OpenGL and Direct3D APIs).
It is an open, free, cross-platform standard available for all platforms.

+ n/a

Zcash / ZEC (Equihash)

1 Sol/s n/a

Tire

n/a n/a

Design

reference n/a

Number of Compute conveyors

36 n/a

CrossFire without bridge

+ n/a

Eyefinity

+ n/a

HDMI

DisplayPort support

AppAcceleration

n/a n/a

FRTC

+ n/a

FreeSync

+ n/a

HD3D

n/a n/a

LiquidVR

+ n/a

PowerTune

+ n/a

TressFX

+ n/a

TrueAudio

n/a n/a

ZeroCore

+ n/a

VCE

+ no data

OpenCL

2. 0 n/a

Mantle

n/a n/a

UVD

+ n/a

DisplayPort 1.3 HBR / 1.4 HDR Ready

+ n/a

Enduro

n/a n/a

GCN generation

4th generation n/a

Video connectors

1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort 1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort

DirectX

DirectX® 12 12 (12_0)

Floating point performance

5.834 gflops 6.175 gflops

Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto)

27 Mh/s n/a

CrossFire

+ n/a
Memory

Memory type

GDDR5 GDDR5

Maximum memory

Large video memory allows you to run demanding games with lots of textures,
use high resolution monitors, provide more opportunities for cryptocurrency mining.

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