http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/rx-480-vs-gtx-970

Barely an upgrade. Waste of money tbh.

You can spend £1000 on the best GPU in the world, but the back plate won't cool it by even 1 degree. False marketing.

I'm sorry, but you're completely wrong about this. Thermal pads don't provide any cooling by themselves. They merely provide effective heat transfer to another surface. You need something pressing against both sides of a thermal pad for it to do anything constructive. Just placed on a surface by themselves, at best they'll do nothing and at worst they'll act as a slight insulator. You can't just slap them on the back of a card without a backplate (or you can, but it'd be stupid to). When connected to a large piece of metal (i.e. the backplate), they transfer the heat from the component into the metal, which can then be cooled via airflow.

A backplate with thermal pads attached to the PCB absolutely will provide some cooling, even if it's fairly negligible. It's not very useful when it comes to the core itself (as evidenced by the LTT video that people are going to now spam to "prove" that backplates do nothing), but they can provide minor additional effective cooling to the VRM area in particular (or VRAM chips on the back of the card, but not many modern cards have any on the rear due to the larger size of modern modules). However, that's only the case if there are thermal pads in place to facilitate heat transfer. Many backplates have no thermal pads at all, and thus do absolutely nothing besides look pretty.

Of course, Luke didn't test this in his highly-scientific five minute video and focused entirely on core temperatures. Which is somewhat fair, given that Gigabyte's snake oil copper plate over the core was the focus of the video. However, it certainly doesn't change the fact that a large piece of metal connected to the back of the board via thermal pads is going to wick some heat away from the PCB. EVGA recently used this to help with their overheating VRMs, along with a secondary plate on the inside of the cooler (which is really no different from the backplate in terms of potential function).

​Are you saying it needs a backplate cause it runs hot? backplates are for reinforcement and asthetics.

HOLY SMOKES!

Now that's a deal.

Semi-decent price but again another RX 480 without a backplate. Polaris runs BLOODY hot!

But seriously this is just getting ridiculous. 480s cheaper than 470s. WTF!?

Oh I also had to laugh at this


Wow!

if you are going to spend 150 on a gpu im sure you have another fiva extra for the next day delivery c'mon now

heat

Screw it, ordered. I'm getting bored of my 970 and would like a new toy. It wont be a big upgrade, but It shouldn't cost me much either so *shrug

Wow - bargain! I've just returned my Sapphire RX 460 4GB to Amazon as I wasn't impressed with the performance - for another £40 I can get this - amazing price.

i think he means upgrading to a newer model tbh i dont think he cares much about the comparison etc.

Its a bigger upgrade than the benchmarks linked suggest, as the 480 has matured well since release. Also it looks like they used a reference card which throttle badly.

But I agree that its not worth it, I just want a new toy really.

WENT FOR IT

few quids cheaper here with free next day delivery, couldnt post thread cuz UKHD didnt approve of site but if you shop at CDKEYS then go for it, zippytom and CDKEYS are one company - http://zippytom.com/asus-radeon-rx480-dual-4gb-ddr5-pcie3-dvi-2-hdmi-2-dp-1320mhz-clock-overclocked-vr-ready

I ordered this earlier today. Been looking for info on it, but not much. Seems to be decent. Good price regardless.

Just a heads up, the Red Devil 470 is £137.39 (+£5.99 delivery) £143.38 delivered at Unatechnology, although I've never shopped with them before.

I was looking at teardowns due to the bad rep his (it would seem alot is possibly unjustified now) but came across this.

You can spend £1000 on the best GPU in the world, but the back plate won't cool it by even 1 degree. False marketing.

Hot! I got the RX470 for £150 during Black Friday and I'm running BF1 at 1080p on ultra settings

8GB version £183 also

http://www.onestoppcshop.co.uk/asus-dual-rx480-o8g-radeon-rx-480-8gb-gddr5-90YV09I2-M0NA00.html

​Nope. https://youtu.be/OBsxuNXyDJk

http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews262617.html

Onestopcshop reviews, make of them what you will

Er no. They also help in cooling the vrms hence why good backplates are made out of aluminium.

​lets agree to disagree.

No they don't.

Backplates have heat-pads on them, little sticky things. This makes direct touch with the Vram.

Does it help cool the entire GPU? No.
Can you attach the heat-pads without a backplate? Yeah
Does the backplate itself cool down the GPU? No.

Fair enough. In any case rigidity and keeping dust/water off components would be more than enough reasons without thermals coming into play. My own view is that any manufacturer who doesn't include one is just cheaping out.

This is a ridiculous price. Probably best deal on a graphics card for circa £150 in several years. I am tempted but want to go for a mini itx build and fear this may be too big

Yeah I'm not going to get into an argument here over something and nothing but I think you're getting confused between the backplate i.e. the underside and the heatsink i.e. topside.

why on earth are you guys bothered about backplates? just make sure you have a pc case with good airflow and keep it breezy on the inside im sure it will all be alright...then just before summer comes along sell it and buy a gtx...or the new vega 500...simple.

I'm really not lol.

I was going to say something but I was sure he had to be trolling lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBsxuNXyDJk

2.15.

Thermal pads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrg076P2h5U

0.51.

Vram has gotten too hot, so burned through the back. EVGA solved this by adding thermal pads on the back.

not only did you have to request thermal pads from EVGA but it was also DIY...then they came out with the ICX model where you had to send you previous 1070/1080 model back and pay like 75 quid more so they can send you back the new ICX

I'm sorry, but you're completely wrong about this. Thermal pads don't provide any cooling by themselves. They merely provide effective heat transfer to another surface. You need something pressing against both sides of a thermal pad for it to do anything constructive. Just placed on a surface by themselves, at best they'll do nothing and at worst they'll act as a slight insulator. You can't just slap them on the back of a card without a backplate (or you can, but it'd be stupid to). When connected to a large piece of metal (i.e. the backplate), they transfer the heat from the component into the metal, which can then be cooled via airflow.

A backplate with thermal pads attached to the PCB absolutely will provide some cooling, even if it's fairly negligible. It's not very useful when it comes to the core itself (as evidenced by the LTT video that people are going to now spam to "prove" that backplates do nothing), but they can provide minor additional effective cooling to the VRM area in particular (or VRAM chips on the back of the card, but not many modern cards have any on the rear due to the larger size of modern modules). However, that's only the case if there are thermal pads in place to facilitate heat transfer. Many backplates have no thermal pads at all, and thus do absolutely nothing besides look pretty.

Of course, Luke didn't test this in his highly-scientific five minute video and focused entirely on core temperatures. Which is somewhat fair, given that Gigabyte's snake oil copper plate over the core was the focus of the video. However, it certainly doesn't change the fact that a large piece of metal connected to the back of the board via thermal pads is going to wick some heat away from the PCB. EVGA recently used this to help with their overheating VRMs, along with a secondary plate on the inside of the cooler (which is really no different from the backplate in terms of potential function).

No. They solved it by adding thermal pads between the tops of the VRM/Memory and the heatsink NOT by adding thermal pads to the back!

From a hd 7950 should i get the 4gb or the 8gb verion?? gonna have this card for 3years +?

any advice please also why they getting so cheap

if you plan to keep for 3 years then 8gb for sure

I have a mini itx build and have EVGA GTX 1070 SC with a power link on it. Just about fits as touches fan casing but without powerlink still a bit of room. This will fit, case depending obviously.

Ridiculously cheap, heat!

I have a mini itx build with a Fractal Node 304 case and my GPU is a 970. Mini ITX can have full sized GPUs as mine can take a 1080....although I'm waiting for the 1080 mini to be released already..

At this price, it puts the 470 out of commission and the 460 to a lesser extent. Not sure why they couldn't have been at this price to begin with though.

Note to self:
Never talk about backplates on a thread :laughing:

I have a GTX 1070, but thinking of downgrading because I only play MOBA games like LoL at 1200p which don't need such a powerful card. I'd be getting £300 back for the 1070, so if I replace it with this it'd be £140 back in my pocket with zero noticeable difference in the games I play. Anyone reckon this is sensible?

Looks like my 7950 is finally getting an upgrade. Hope it's not very noisy, anyone found a decent review?

Makes sense to me, btw you could easily get £350 for that 1070 right now.

I just replaced a 7850 with this and am happy with it, depends what you're after though.

I have a GTX 760 and was looking to upgrade soon. Am I better with this or the 1060 (or something else) for a decent speed bump

id get the 1060 6gb over this...you will have many problem with amd and its drivers but with nvidia your good 2 go without any probs.

Good deal. Cheapest one on ebay is 171.

I wish people would recognise the importance of VRAM - 4GB is low end, the 8GB version of this card is truly great and will last a while
rather spend the extra tbh
voted hot for price but yeah

great price but isn't another amd gpu due out soon

You clearly haven't owned both then.

Comes close to matching the performance of my 1060 6GB, at around £100 less. Heat from me.

This card is definitely an upgrade from 970. 970 owners can cry now.

iv got so many the list goes on...i have more than you just know that much.

You understand why the 970 tanked here though? 3.5GB VRAM, this 4GB card will not fair much better.
Check your own source: http://www.ixbt.com/video4/games-re7-geforce.shtml#perf

Translated from Russian: "With these settings, today's game is using the volume of more than 4 GB of storage in the video memory, and the GPU, having such a volume (a GeForce GTX 970, in fact, even less), start too often "climb" over the data in RAM, which causes a significant reduction in FPS."

not tryna show off but um, got no reason to lie...need i say more?

how much can i sell a GTX 960 4GB for?, thinking of selling that, and adding a bit on top to get this?

depends....what brand is it? condition, the core clock etc.

oh sorry, its a Gigabyte OC Edition, condition looks brand new and comes with box

here - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GIGABYTE-Geforce-GTX-960-OC-Edition-4GB-GDDR5-Graphic-Processing-Unit-GPU-/252776588707?hash=item3adaa8a5a3:g:FGUAAOSw3v5YqGUF

you can probably put it for a tenner less or even more if you feel like ....up 2 u

sounds good, sell it for around £125 and take away postage then its £30 odd more and i get this, thanks

Still much better than 970:

You seem to make a habit of missing context or just presumably not understanding what you are posting. You realise that may as well have been a picture of a cat as that graph alone in no way backs up whatever point you are trying to make.. although I genuinely wonder if you even know. What was the game? Settings? Resolution? How is that relevant to a 970?
I assume this is one of those situations where I'm banging my head against a brick so excuse me if I don't reply anymore.

If you're buying this it might be an 8gb one, worth crossflashing see what happens...

The 480 is about half a level upgrade over the 970, the 480 is almost athe level of a 980. If you wanna go higher you got either the Fury at around 260ish or perhaps the 1070 at 330ish. the 1070 is around 30% faster at double the cost, so perhaps not the best value although it is a sweet high FPS 1080 card or solid 1440p.

If you can get like 120 second hand for your 970, then I would say it would be worth it.

​​​​Honestly I'd say so, I've got a Rx380 in mine and I play lol often, but it still handles any triple A game I feel like playing. The only problem is if you're planning on going up in resolution any time soon as I can see it struggling

No it's not worth cross flashing, because if it's not the right card you've just bricked it. You'd want to google and find out what memory chips onboard to look for etc

That was only the first batch of reference 4gb models. ALL other 4gb models, especially from oem are 4gb. It does make me wonder how many people bought 4GB cards hoping for this though.

Tempted in the 8gb version (£185 posted, thanks for the link!) but I really don't need it and probably can wait couple of months..

Maybe it's worth waiting for the price to tumble more. :neutral_face:

lol. I myself am thankful for finally finding out why it was a a big deal for some whether a particular graphic card had a backplate or not.

Cracking deal, maybe we'll see £150 delivered by next week *crosses fingers*.

As for the 4GB to 8GB RAM argument, if you are planning to game at 1920x1080, then there is really no reason to go for 8GB presently, however if you are planning on changing monitor to 2560x1440 or above then 8GB would be recommended. :smiley:

I've had worse cards for heat. Wouldn't say the 480 is especially bad TBH, just bad relative to the competition today.

I have a Sapphire 290 Vapor-X. I'll hardly see any sort of difference if i buy this right? But I'm thinking of getting it as the warranty will start afresh. The 290 vapor-x currently sells for £150-160 on eBay so if i wait for a eBay capped fee offer, I should get most my dosh back.

Is Asus Warranty still 3 years? It doesn't really matter as I know I'll be upgrading once the new AMD cards are released. I just think having warranty will make my card sell better when it comes to that. Or do you reckon the 290 Vapor-X is likely to hold it's value more than this? What do you guys think?

I'm in the same boat - tempted by this but don't know if i should just wait for the 1060 to drop in price. Kinda want to sell on the 760 now though while it's still worth a little bit.

Considering buying it for first PC build.. Can it run Witcher 3 on Ultra 1080p steady 60 fps?

Why not get 2 and crossfire them!

That's only the case with DX11 games the moment you go for DX12 or Vulkan there is quite a difference

crossfire these and I'll get almost nvidia1080 performance! for half the price! wow am seriously considering it

There's always one.

Anyone know for sure how well a pair of these would compare to a single gtx 1070, and the minimum psu needed?

There's actually a lot more than one, look at Nvidia's quarterly revenue year after year :smile:

Haven't had a chance to watch it all, but hopefully this answers some questions. He's using two 8gb cards from what I see.

**** hell this thread is a car crash.

OBVIOUSLY I wasn't suggesting BLINDLY crossflashing it ffs hence why I said MIGHT.

Seriously learn to read properly.

Thinking of buying but idk if its worth the upgrade from GTX 960 2gb which i havent used much, i know this can give me like 30fps more on some games but not all but im looking for a much bigger upgrade


Maybe ill get 2

What case are you using?

Well these are suppose to compare to 1060
Its a competitor for 1060

But if you have 2 of these beasts it almost beats the 1080, sometimes it even beats it

Ultra steady 60fps.. I dont think, idk but Witcher 3 gpu heavy, i recommend you buy 2 of these its like GTX 1080 but a lot cheaper

Check the benchmarks

RX 480 compares to 1060, Crossfire RX 480 compares to GTX 1080, it depends, check a watt calculator http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

You dont even need much, you should be ok with 600w

id use a 750w quality psu in just in case tbh

Fractal Define Nano S Case.

Most average gaming pcs run 400w so yh 600 is enough

http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

I calculated my specs if i added 2 RX 480s (Crossfire)
It said recommends 550w but the load is less, i have 600w so i should be good

Maybe less, i added some extras

Return it, buy this

your 970 is a better card lol

Cancelled. Not suprised, never heard of this company before once people started posting reviews, it became clear.

Cancelled :/

Hi Ian, unfortunately we could not process your order as the item has actually sold out, we have been experiencing problems with our updating stock software over the weekend, I am sorry for the inconvenience caused

Mine cancelled too, I ordered 5 minutes after the deal was posted.
What a load of utter garbage.

I'm thinking they don't actually have any stock at all and can't source new stock at the price sold.

Looks like my order has also been cancelled, bit disappointing, but no great loss

my order from startech just cancelled.

try zippytom, they got a 9.4 rating on trust pilot - http://zippytom.com/asus-radeon-rx480-dual-4gb-ddr5-pcie3-dvi-2-hdmi-2-dp-1320mhz-clock-overclocked-vr-ready

Thanks for that, I looked this morning as I remembered you posting it at the beginning of the thread, but there was no add to basket button.

Just completed order, we'll see if it tutns up tomorrow.

Thank once again.


Looks like a supplier pricing error maybe, all these stores listing then cancelling, Zippytom cancelled too. Suppose I'll wait until 28th Feb and see what transpires.

transparent UK have 7.9 on trustpilot also - http://transparent-uk.com/asus-dual-rx480-o4g-radeon-rx-480-4gb-gddr5.html

how come all these stores look alike?