Post news Report RSS AMD Releases $199 VR-Ready Radeon RX 480 Graphics Card

This budget GPU apparently supports comfortable VR gaming performance

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Yesterday marked the launch of AMD’s next generation of graphics cards, beginning with the Radeon RX 480. At just US$199, the RX 480 continues AMD’s trend of capitalising on the budget space when it comes to GPUs, while NVIDIA remains comfortably at the high-power, higher-priced end of the performance spectrum.

What’s most interesting about the RX 480 is that AMD says that it is the cheapest VR-ready graphics card on the market. Its cheapest 4GB model has an RRP of US$199, while its 8GB model goes for US$239. This is in comparison to the recommended specifications for most VR experiences, which require at least a Radeon R9 290 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 – cards which retail for hundreds of dollars more.

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So now that the RX 480 is out, does it actually perform as AMD claims? Guru3D ran the benchmarks on an 8GB RX 480, and found that it outperforms the GTX 970 and GTX 980 in the recently-released Total War: Warhammer. However, it did come behind the Ti version of the 980 card, as well as Radeon 390X.

But how does it perform in VR? TweakTown’s in-depth benchmarks show that the RX 480 does actually perform adequately in most VR experiences. Its writer states:

“I tested at least 12 of the most demanding titles on the Oculus Rift with the RX 480 on my test bench (which uses an Core i5-6400) and they all delivered a smooth experience, mostly maintaining between 84fps and 90fps with low average frame times. The one exception was Crytek’s The Climb on its highest quality settings, briefly dipping down to 47fps.”

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When put through the SteamVR performance benchmark, the RX 480 maintained a consistent “High” performance level, with occasional spikes into “Very High”. Crucially, no frames dipped below the standard 90fps in the benchmark itself.

So it seems AMD’s claims are true: the Radeon RX 480 looks like it functions as an adequate, entry-level VR gaming GPU. Just don’t expect it to future-proof your system. Finally, we’re expecting to hear NVIDIA announce a new card, likely a budget-range GTX 1060, at its upcoming July 7 event, which may itself prove to be a better budget VR gaming option.

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Noobkiller2
Noobkiller2

Good job,AMD :)

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