AMD Targets Performance/Dollar with RX 480

With a launch price of $199 MSRP, the RX 480 is obvious a contender for the performance per dollar crown. The great value is part of AMD’s move to expand VR and gaming to everyone instead of locking it away in the high-end. During their press event, AMD went into some details we’ll like to share about just why the RX 480 is such a great bang for the buck.

First off, the RX 480 offers at least 5 TFLOPS of performance. This means it will at least be on par with the R9 390 and likely surpass the R9 390X. Given the improvements to GCN 4.0, we may see real world performance match or exceed the Fury as well. We’re getting all this performance for less than half the cost of what the R9 390X launched for.

Compared to Nvidia, the RX 480 does well there too. The main contender right now is the GTX 1070 which offers 6.5 TFLOPS of theoretical performance at $380/450. Assuming a decent custom card at $400, AMD is undercutting that with a card 50% the cost but with about 84% of the performance. Once you consider the improvements of GCN 4,0 to real world performance, we  may see numbers approaching 90% or even higher.

Finally, AMD is claiming a build quality worthy of  a $500 card. The blower is reportedly the same one uses in past flagships, mainly the R9 390X. While that cooler was much derided, the nearly halved TDP of the RX 480 should allow for cool and quiet performance. Honestly, the only down side I see is the single 6pin PCIe power connector which limits overclocking.

What do you think of AMD’s move with the RX 480?