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AMD Radeon RX 480 Graphics Card Roundup

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1440p Game Benchmarks

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

The following charts cover 2560x1440:

For Honor

Grand Theft Auto V

Mafia 3

Sniper Elite 4

Watch Dogs 2

The Witcher 3

All of the factory-overclocked cards offer similar performance, more or less. Apparently, these cards already operate so far above their sweet spot that performance no longer scales linearly with clock rate, and thus the price for even a slightly higher frame rate is a disproportionate increase in power consumption. Thus, to find the "best" Radeon RX 480 for your purposes, compare power and cooling, rather than the gaming results. Especially for the RX 480, a more modest approach pays off.


MORE: Best Graphics Cards


MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table


MORE: All Graphics Content

38 Comments Comment from the forums
  • alchemy69
    Not sure where you found a reference card for $180 but it sure as Hell wasn't Amazon.
    Reply
  • artk2219
    You can find them on Newegg for around that much pretty often. Also the R9 Fury is a hell of a mixed bag, Some games its matching a 1070, others its below the 480. Weird.
    Reply
  • techy1966
    I only ask because I have 2 390x cards and I get way better results than yours does here and yes with crossfire off mine is getting better results granted it is overclocked @1236mhz. Heck I just played watch dog 2 single card mode and got always above 60 fps here that card is getting 45 fps..just saying is all. Nice write up though. Just noticed GTA numbers as well and was WTH why is their 390x card sucking so much must be old old drivers I 'm sorry but even with crossfire off my numbers at 1080p are way higher maxed out. I do know I can beat a 480 in everything and slaughter it in crossfire will Vega ever get here already or do I have to slide over to the green team lol.
    Reply
  • envy14tpe
    Hmmm. Is the 580 coming out soon?
    Reply
  • bakko88
    Realy? Where fuck is it the gtr?
    Reply
  • shrapnel_indie
    HIS has been missing from the U.S. Market for a few years now. As to noise, Yes we can measure it, and determine a loudness level, but tolerance is dependent on the individual as always. I still question the price links used as some are unrealistically high compared to the market Amazon competes in (Mail-Order.)

    Was the latest driver used? Was the BIOS updated in every card?
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    I am a bit perplexed as to why you love the ASUS Strix so much with a 6 pin power connector. Either it's pulling too much power over the PEG, or pulling too much power over the 6 pin. It really needs an 8 pin connector to stay in spec.
    Reply
  • Nate_K
    WOW! HIS is making cards again?
    Reply
  • blppt
    "Also the R9 Fury is a hell of a mixed bag, Some games its matching a 1070, others its below the 480. Weird."

    The newest generation AMD cards (Polaris) are apparently designed to handle heavy Tessellation better than previous gens, so my guess is that would be the circumstances in which the RX480 beats the Fury. I would say it was the extra 4GB of frame buffer space, but we've seen that the HBM often negates that RAM shortage in many benchmarks.
    Reply
  • NewbieGeek
    Hmm. Interesting article. Personally never had temperature issues with my Sapphire Nitro rx 480 8gb. Maybe Tom's is defective? Mine runs at 1330mhz core 2020mhz ram without drops, even during intense gaming... And I've got a custom fan curve making the card quieter than stock...
    Reply