Tom's Hardware Steam Giveaway - Rocket League

[Jsimenhoff]

General Info on How To Enter

Spoiler

• 
  ■ These giveaways now span 2 full weeks instead of 1. This means there's more time for you to enter!
  ■ There are now two ways to enter to win! Each person can only win once.
  • 
    1. Enter the raffle via the gleam widget. All we ask for there is a name and a contact email. There will only ever be 1 copy of the game up for grabs with this method.
    
    2. Take part in the discussion in this thread! A discussion prompt will be provided each time. Just answer the prompt to be eligible to win! Eligible participants will be randomly selected to receive a copy of the game.

[widget="https://gleam.io/9uup2/toms-hardware-steam-giveaway-rocket-league", 400][/widget]

Hey everyone! We've got another great Steam giveaway for you!

This round, we're bringing you three (3) copies of Rocket League. As always, one will be awarded via the raffle (found below) and two will be given away to participants in the discussion.

And now, drum roll please for this giveaways discussion prompt!

Can AMD recover from the power issues plaguing the RX 480? Many in the community, such as myself, were hoping that the RX 480 would finally offer Nvidia true competition, whether it be from a pricing or performance perspective. Now that RX 480 is beset with fairly serious power issues, what do you think will become of AMD's graphics division? Does this bode poorly for the rest of the Polaris line of GPUs?

The contest will run until 12 p.m. EDT on Friday, July 15th. The game will be awarded to the winner as a Steam gift. A Steam account is required to receive the prize and play the game.

Good luck and happy gaming!

 

[Corwin65]

I think that AMD will recover, but their reputation will be at the same level it was before the RX 480 hype train. I was rooting for them to finally stop shooting themselves in the foot, but they just did it again. And with Nvidia's new cards coming, AMD will once again be relegated to just not good enough.

 

[Kurz]

I think once they have the work around in the drivers and they don't negatively effect performance I think AMD will recover just fine.

 

[nimbian]

I was really pulling for AMD here. I've always ran Nvidia and most likely always will however I was hoping AMD would be able to apply some pressure. With that being said this power issue is sad news. The thing that bothers me is with an issue like this I don't think it can be fixed with a firmware issue like they are attempting. I believe in order to fix something like this the card will end up having to be gimped in order to lower the power consumption. I hope I am wrong but we will have to see how this plays out.

 

[Corwin65]

The issue that bothers me most is that there is a power spec. Don't you think, someone would have been smart enough to say "hey, maybe we should umm I don't know, make sure we are within spec?"

 

[CropEditPaste]

Ultimately I believe that AMD will find a way to fix the issue using driver software to manage the power fluctuation. It's either that or come up with some way to recall the cards and manually fix them.

 

[Corwin65]

Ultimately I believe that AMD will find a way to fix the issue using driver software to manage the power fluctuation. It's either that or come up with some way to recall the cards and manually fix them.

I don't think they could afford a recall.

The fix will gimp the cards hopefully only slightly.

I wonder how many heads will roll?

 

[ZeroRequiem]

Can AMD recover from the power issues plaguing the RX 480?

They MUST recover. Some of my friends were eagerly waiting for the RX480 up until they read about the power issues. Now, most of them stopped even caring for the RX480 and are looking/waiting for other cards. I guess this short story says a lot, I'm pretty sure my friends are not the only who stopped looking at the RX480 after reading about the issues. I'm certain AMD will come up with something.

 

[Maarsch]

I think they'll take a confidence hit with people like us for a while.
And I think we should be suitably skeptical for their next launch.
But if the non-reference cards performs well I hope we can recommend them for whatever price niche they have when someone does come here and asks "I want to upgrade my GPU, I can spend $XXX"
And then:
The average joe schmoe that buys a casual gaming rig they will take the GPU it comes with.
If the RX480 performs well in its price segment it will get put in casual gaming rigs, by manufacturers and cusual builders alike.
So I'm not sure how much financial impact it will have. I think Nvidia with their pricing of 1060, 1050 and 9XX have more to say on that.

Most important thing I hope to come out of this is that people learn to temper their hype.
Be exited about things coming your way, sure.
Then wait for benchmarks.
Performance reviews.
And buy accordingly.

Stop the f'ing hype
If you don't have the money to throw away: don't buy stuff before you see what it actually does.

And then when they fix it (and this is corroborated by independant sources), take that into consideration. If you have $240 to spare and the RX480 outperforms the GTX1060, then buy the 480.

 

[chimera201]

I hope TH does a retest of the RX 480 after the issues are cleared. AMD advertised it as targeting the mainstream market so it gains some market share over Nvidia. But I heard Nvidia is readying up its launch of GTX 1060 which was supposed to launch in last quarter of the year. So AMD will basically fail right there. With the over-current issue discovered it doesn't look so good for AMD.

 

[giogi]

Can AMD recover from the power issues plaguing the RX 480?
over the years many companies, including qualqom, intel, amd, etc have launched some products that turned out to have some problems.
sometimes they have solved those issues in a way tht pleased their customers, so i think that this time they will be also able to recover from it

 

[Greywolf772]

I'm not concerned that this issue will affect AMD too much.

 

[Jsimenhoff]

They MUST recover. Some of my friends were eagerly waiting for the RX480 up until they read about the power issues. Now, most of them stopped even caring for the RX480 and are looking/waiting for other cards. I guess this short story says a lot, I'm pretty sure my friends are not the only who stopped looking at the RX480 after reading about the issues. I'm certain AMD will come up with something.

I'm in the same boat as your friends. Was really banking on RX480 being a great value proposition for 1440p gaming, but now with these power issues not so much. I'm hoping that AMD's board partners can fix these issues otherwise Nvidia will just keep charging whatever the heck they want like $300 for a x60 card. I remember when I bought my 560ti (embarrassingly the card that is still in my system) it was $250 and would almost match the power of a 570. Sadly times have changed.

 

[sippon]

If the updated drivers coming this week can fix the problem i think they will manage to recover and this issue won't be affecting them that much.

 

[kireato]

Isn't this power issue way overblown? Clearly, AMD's internal testing was not representative of the real world behaviour of the card, which drew too much power, but as far as I understood this should not be a problem and it could be fixed. There has been a lot of conflicting information on the matter and some very exaggerated accounts but those who verified that there was a power issue still only had one conclusion: it's not a critical matter, it doesn't change how much of a great value the card is, and if AMD fixes it with a driver update as they claimed they could, the issue can be put behind and forgotten.

And the results of the fix are out; it works as intended. So yeah, AMD should recover from the momentary bad press because it's really silly to not reconsider the card and turn to Nvidia this generation if you're level-headed. Just a couple of months ago, there were reports about the Nvidia drivers which could damage your system. These kind of issues can plague both Nvidia and AMD.

I was also hoping that Polaris would be able to compete with Pascal and in terms of performance but there's a big gap between the GTX 1080 and the RX 480 and it seems that we'll have to wait for Vega for AMD to start tackling the high end. That said, at its price point, I can only recommend the RX 480 so Polaris is definitely competitive.

AMD is in a worrying situation but what they are doing seems sound and polaris should still be a success too.

 

[thefresh]

Apparently the RX 480 power issues were solved with a driver update. But now with the announcement of the GTX 1060 with a MSRP of $250 and a probable performance close to the GTX 980, I'm not sure AMD will sell as much RX 480 as they wanted, since the difference in the price is just $20~50 (depending on the model 4 or 8 GB of the AMD).

 

[Corwin65]

Apparently the RX 480 power issues were solved with a driver update. But now with the announcement of the GTX 1060 with a MSRP of $250 and a probable performance close to the GTX 980, I'm not sure AMD will sell as much RX 480 as they wanted, since the difference in the price is just $20~50 (depending on the model 4 or 8 GB of the AMD).

I wonder how much of a price cut would make it worth it.

 

[Burrandino92]

AMD will 'recover', meaning they will fix the issue with their RX 480, but they have been in a downward spiral in the graphics card market for a long time. They really shouldn't be releasing products that have obvious issues either. AMD, take your time and show your customers you want to deliver some quality product for cheap!

 

[damcrac]

People will try to bring down the 480, just like people attacked the 970, but in the end, the card will speak for itself.

I think it will highly depend on the performance of the GTX 1060, with pricing as low as 250, if they every reach advertised MSRP, if it outperforms the 8GB 480, AMD could be in trouble. A lot to see with the OC ability of the 1060 and AIB 480's.

What I like about the 480 is the possibility of jumping into crossfire for cheap down the road. Imagine being able to add a second one for under $200(sale price or second had) to get 1070+ like performance. While you will have to completely replace the 1060 to increase performance.The 1060, while it might outperform the 480, will have a much pricier upgrade plan.

 

[rtware923]

AMD will recover but it is definitely not going to help in the battle vs. Nvidia over price/performance. And now Nvidia is continuing to add performance and reduce power. This will be an interesting race.

 

[glez13]

I think the damage is already done and many people are just waiting for the GTX1060 to release to flock to the greener side. I know I will since they have failed in my eyes with their Tonga driver problems and the "driver crash-monitor signal loss" issue that they haven't even acknowledged but has been a problem for my r9 285 since around the 15.12 driver. Actually I have seen some threads on AMD forums of people with 480 that have the same symptoms as Tonga cards.

 

[ajpaolello]

Will they recover? I believe so. But this will hurt their reputation and definitely not help their sales, which they are needing if they want to stay in the PC GPU market.

 

[doctorbrew]

I think they can recover. The new driver they put out seems to fix the issue while only sacrificing a small amount of performance. I would be very surprised if the non-reference cards didn't include a 8 pin power supply, which would definitely give it the headroom needed to OC. I think with whats coming down the line, the 400 series will prove to be a really great affordable option for a lot of people

 

[USAFRet]

"Recover"? Yes.

A year from now, people will be buying whatever new GPU comes out of AMD.
Just like people still buy whatever new GPU came out of nVidia after the 3.5GB issue.

 

[duckandchicken]

RX480 will recover from the issues , this time it's already.
But the AMD ref heatsink is a joke. I will wait more time as my 7970 sitll rock