[Powerbits]

You may have seen in our previous article that the leaked benchmarks show that RX 480 CF runs better than Titan X but not GTX 1080, but those were synthetic benchmark scores, and the real world FPS paints a much better and brighter picture for the red team.

AMD made a short Ashes of Singularity demonstration of their Radeon RX 480 running in Crossfire mode during Computex 2016 in Taipei. Such configuration was compared to Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080, and according to AMD, Two RX 480s in Cross Fire mode offers better framerate while being utilized at an amazing 183%. Robert Hallock (Head of Global Technical Marketing at AMD) shared more details about this demonstration. The first thing we learn are the exact benchmarks results performed by AMD:
In Game Settings for both configs: Crazy Settings | 1080P | 8x MSAA | VSYNC OFF

But more importantly, Robert Hallock explained the ‘controversy’ over different image quality using competing hardware by saying, “At present the GTX 1080 is incorrectly executing the terrain shaders responsible for populating the environment with the appropriate amount of snow. The GTX 1080 is doing less work to render AOTS than it otherwise would if the shader were being run properly.”

This test was done with the pricey FOUNDERS EDITION version of the GTX 1080, and even with lesser work to perform due to the terrain malfunction, it lost to the red’s dual 480s. Shame. So it’s true that two are better than one. And a 400$ setup, beats a 700$ one. And for those who argue that this one test could be a fluke, they performed the same test 10 times at different resolutions (1440p included) and the results were within +-1% errors. Meaning that AMD did a better job every time. Amazing job by the new little kid on the block.

Here is a video from AMD:

Source: AMD/ Asidcast

 

[Kurt]

Intresting…

[Robin Brimalm]

Well, this card is interesting. Very interesting and I’m really interested in what will come next from AMD and Polaris. I wanna know how they will counter and compete with GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. This card though, is not it. We know from what they have said so far that there will be two versions of this card. One with 4 GB memory and one with 8 and that the 4 GB version will be $200. We have been told that it has a compute power of approx. 5 teraflop. Thats like a 980. The 1070 does 6.5 teraflops so that could be beaten by a RX480 crossfire setup however the 1070 has 8 GB of Vram.

So you would think for 1080p gaming (where more than 4 GB of Vram is rarely used), surely two RX480s would be the most affordable setup with basically the same price as a 1070? No, I know from personal experience that a lot of games still to this day lack multi-GPU support (Crossfire, SLI) or do it very poorly with many times less than 30% scaling. Battlefield 4 is a good example. With SLI turned off i land at around 45-50 average fps at 4K in ultra. With SLI on, its about 65-70. That’s SLI scaling for ya.

A test in Ashes of the Singularity has 0% credibility to me. I can not recommend buying two of these cards. One, sure. That will give you ok fps in most 1080p games, just like a 980. If you want something affordable and more powerful than a 980, and can wait, i would see what Polaris has to offer next.

Just to clarify, this is not an Nvidia fanboy post or RX480 rant. This is a post saying one strong card is a better choice than two weak ones.

[-Bullithol-NL]

I disagree with the notion that Ashes of Singularity benchmarks aren’t worth anything. Two 480’s out performing a GTX 1080 is really something to consider when it comes to how much money you only have. While I think it is clear that the 480 is not as good as the GTX 1070, the idea of buying ONE card that competes against a 980 for only $200 dollars is a great competitor for the GTX 1070 because of the price alone. Especially if you play at 1080p. I personally am leaning towards the 1070 because I want longevity out of a card. I still think the 480 is a great alternative to the GTX 1070 unless of course NVIDIA rolls out a GTX 1060. Then we’ll see what happens. We should all be thankful that AMD offers such competitive prices or else NVIDIA would be trying to be like Apple and price gouging the customers.

[Robin Brimalm]

But two RX480s dont out perform one 1080, thats the thing. The 1080 is a 8.9 teraflop card! And thats on the GPU. Both 1070 and 1080 has way faster memory and memory bus than the RX480. Ashes of the singularity, in all benchmarks all the way back from the first benchmarks for dx12 last spring, has given AMD cards an advantage that you just do not see in any other game.

Theres nothing wrong in buying one of these but two will not give you 1080 or 1070 performance on average, even in 1080p. You’ll be better of with a 1070 for sure.

As i said in my first post though, im super interested in what AMD comes out with next! If its like in the past, the RX480 should be a medium performance card with faster cards (and a few slower) coming out over the next 12 months. Nvidia on the other hand begins a little higher on the performance scale with higher value cards coming out later (like the 1060 and 1050).

[-Bullithol-NL]

Perhaps the term out-perform was a bit much, but given the benchmark we see here, it certainly does not under-peform.

[Robin Brimalm]

In —— ashes of the singularity….

[-Bullithol-NL]

That game requires some heavy hardware. Even though I think the game sucks, it seems destroy FPS of weaker PC’s.

[Powerbits]

I dont think its that powerfull, but a great bang for your buck

[Anonymous]

Its interesting but i need to see benchmarks of other games to!

I’m running Amd for about 7 years now and never had 1 problem. And the fps was always +70 even now on this old card. The temps are even still the same as when i bought it.

So might 2 cards out perform a 1080? Plausible

But can only be decided in the future

[Author]

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