At Computex in Taipei, AMD has revealed how it’s planning on challenging NVIDIA’s VR-ready graphics cards line – by offering something much cheaper. This comes in the form of AMD’s first VR-ready graphics card: the Radeon RX 480, which has an RRP of just US$199.
AMD’s press release is short on benchmark performance indicators, but Gizmodo has some more technical information. The RX 480 will apparently be capable of pushing 5 teraflops, and will be available in 4GB and 8GB options. AMD claims that two RX 480s in CrossFire will slightly outperform a single NVIDIA GTX 1080.
Representatives from both HTC and Oculus have commented on the RX 480’s announcement. Dan O’Brien, vice president of VR at HTC, said:
“We congratulate AMD for bringing a premium VR ready GPU to market at a $199 price point. This shows how partners like AMD survey the entire VR ecosystem to bring an innovative Radeon RX Series product to power high end VR systems like the HTC Vive, to the broadest range of consumers.”
Meanwhile, Nate Mitchell, vice president of product at Oculus, added his thoughts:
“We’ve seen an incredible range of immersive applications and game-changing experiences that have given millions of people around the world their first taste of virtual reality. AMD is going to help drive that adoption forward even more by bringing their high-end VR GPUs to the $199 price point.”
Though the low price point is impressive, obviously scepticism remains concerning just how well a card like the RX 480 will perform in real-world VR situations. With the high resolution and high frame rate that VR requires, we’ll need to see some end-user benchmarks before we can truly determine if such a card really is VR-ready. The RX 480 will be available on June 29.
Can't wait to see its power in testings :D