AMD Radeon RX 480: specs and benchmarks

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Summary

AMD started Radeon RX 480 sales 29 June 2016 at a recommended price of $229 . This is a desktop graphics card based on a Polaris architecture and made with 14 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamer market. 8 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 8 GHz are supplied, and together with 256 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 224 GB/s.

Compatibility-wise, this is dual-slot card attached via PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 241 mm. 1x 6-pin power connector is required, and power consumption is at 150 Watt.

It provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at 22.28% of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.

RTX 4090GeForce RTX4090
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General info

Some basic facts about Radeon RX 480: architecture, market segment, release date etc.

Place in performance ranking228
Place by popularity93
Value for money12.07
ArchitecturePolaris (2016−2019)
GPU code namePolaris 10 Ellesmere
GCN generation4th Gen
Market segmentDesktop
Designreference
Release date29 June 2016 (7 years old)
Launch price (MSRP)$229
Current price$174 (0.8x MSRP)of 168889 (A100 PCIe 80 GB)
Value for money

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Technical specs

Radeon RX 480's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon RX 480's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.

Pipelines / CUDA cores2304of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT)
Compute units36
Core clock speed1120 MHzof 2610 (Radeon RX 6500 XT)
Boost clock speed1266 MHzof 3599 (Radeon RX 7990 XTX)
Number of transistors5,700 millionof 14400 (GeForce GTX 1080 SLI Mobile)
Manufacturing process technology14 nmof 4 (GeForce RTX 4080)
Power consumption (TDP)150 Wattof 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem)
Texture fill rate182.3of 969.9 (H100 SXM5 96 GB)
Floating-point performance5,834 gflopsof 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo)

Size and compatibility

This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon RX 480 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).

Bus supportn/a
InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16
Length241 mm
Width2-slot
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pin
Bridgeless CrossFire1

Memory

Parameters of memory installed on Radeon RX 480: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.

Memory typeGDDR5
Maximum RAM amount8 GBof 192 (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Memory bus width256 Bitof 19000 (GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB)
Memory clock speed8000 MHzof 23000 (GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER)
Memory bandwidth224 GB/sof 3276 (Aldebaran)
Shared memory-

Video outputs and ports

Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon RX 480. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.

Display Connectors1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort
Eyefinity1
HDMI2.0
DisplayPort support1.4HDR

Technologies

Technological solutions and APIs supported by Radeon RX 480. You'll probably need this information if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

AppAccelerationn/a
CrossFire1
Enduron/a
FRTC1
FreeSync+
HD3Dn/a
LiquidVR1
PowerTune+
TressFX1
TrueAudion/a
ZeroCore+
UVD+
VCE+

API support

APIs supported by Radeon RX 480, sometimes including their particular versions.

DirectXDirectX® 12
Shader Model6.4
OpenGL4.5of 4.6 (GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile)
OpenCL2.0
Vulkan+
Mantlen/a

Benchmark performance

Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon RX 480. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

Benchmark coverage: 25%

RX 480 8638

3DMark Vantage Performance

3DMark Vantage is an outdated DirectX 10 benchmark using 1280x1024 screen resolution. It taxes the graphics card with two scenes, one depicting a girl escaping some militarized base located within a sea cave, the other displaying a space fleet attack on a defenseless planet. It was discontinued in April 2017, and Time Spy benchmark is now recommended to be used instead.

Benchmark coverage: 17%

RX 480 39552

3DMark 11 Performance GPU

3DMark 11 is an obsolete DirectX 11 benchmark by Futuremark. It used four tests based on two scenes, one being few submarines exploring the submerged wreck of a sunken ship, the other is an abandoned temple deep in the jungle. All the tests are heavy with volumetric lighting and tessellation, and despite being done in 1280x720 resolution, are relatively taxing. Discontinued in January 2020, 3DMark 11 is now superseded by Time Spy.

Benchmark coverage: 17%

RX 480 17919

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics

Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.

Benchmark coverage: 14%

RX 480 12186

3DMark Cloud Gate GPU

Cloud Gate is an outdated DirectX 11 feature level 10 benchmark that was used for home PCs and basic notebooks. It displays a few scenes of some weird space teleportation device launching spaceships into unknown, using fixed resolution of 1280x720. Just like Ice Storm benchmark, it has been discontinued in January 2020 and replaced by 3DMark Night Raid.

Benchmark coverage: 14%

RX 480 72213

3DMark Ice Storm GPU

Ice Storm Graphics is an obsolete benchmark, part of 3DMark suite. Ice Storm was used to measure entry level laptops and Windows-based tablets performance. It utilizes DirectX 11 feature level 9 to display a battle between two space fleets near a frozen planet in 1280x720 resolution. Discontinued in January 2020, it is now superseded by 3DMark Night Raid.

Benchmark coverage: 8%

RX 480 383333

Unigine Heaven 3.0

This is an old DirectX 11 benchmark using Unigine, a 3D game engine by eponymous Russian company. It displays a fantasy medieval town sprawling over several flying islands. Version 3.0 was released in 2012, and in 2013 it was superseded by Heaven 4.0, which introduced several slight improvements, including a newer version of Unigine.

Benchmark coverage: 4%

RX 480 132

Gaming performance

Let's see how good Radeon RX 480 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.

Average FPS across all PC games

Here are the average frames per second in a large set of popular modern games across different resolutions:

Full HD78
1440p54
4K35

Performance in popular games

Full HD
Low Preset

Cyberpunk 2077 35−40

Full HD
Medium Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 58
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 40−45
Battlefield 5 70−75
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 55−60
Cyberpunk 2077 35−40
Far Cry 5 55−60
Far Cry New Dawn 55−60
Forza Horizon 4 100
Hitman 3 65−70
Horizon Zero Dawn 45−50
Red Dead Redemption 2 69
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 66
Watch Dogs: Legion 40−45

Full HD
High Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 49
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 40−45
Battlefield 5 70−75
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 35
Cyberpunk 2077 35−40
Far Cry 5 55−60
Far Cry New Dawn 55−60
Forza Horizon 4 93
Hitman 3 65−70
Horizon Zero Dawn 45−50
Metro Exodus 41
Red Dead Redemption 2 34
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 57
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 78
Watch Dogs: Legion 40−45

Full HD
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 35
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 40−45
Battlefield 5 70−75
Cyberpunk 2077 35−40
Far Cry 5 55−60
Far Cry New Dawn 69
Forza Horizon 4 77
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 44
Watch Dogs: Legion 40−45

1440p
High Preset

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 30−35
Hitman 3 35−40
Horizon Zero Dawn 30−33
Metro Exodus 21−24
Red Dead Redemption 2 21
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 27−30

1440p
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 24−27
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 21−24
Battlefield 5 50−55
Cyberpunk 2077 14−16
Far Cry 5 35−40
Far Cry New Dawn 50
Forza Horizon 4 40−45
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 27−30
Watch Dogs: Legion 16−18

4K
High Preset

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 16−18
Hitman 3 21−24
Horizon Zero Dawn 14−16
Metro Exodus 15
Red Dead Redemption 2 12−14
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 18
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 27

4K
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 17
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 12−14
Battlefield 5 24−27
Cyberpunk 2077 5−6
Far Cry 5 18−20
Far Cry New Dawn 26
Forza Horizon 4 27−30
Watch Dogs: Legion 10−11

Relative perfomance

Radeon RX 480's performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.


NVIDIA equivalent

According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon RX 480 is GeForce GTX TITAN Z, which is faster by 4% and higher by 9 positions in our ranking.

GTX TITAN ZGeForce GTXTITAN Z
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Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon RX 480:

Similar GPUs

Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

R9 NanoRadeon R9Nano
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RX 580Radeon RX580
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RX 470Radeon RX470
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GTX 1650GeForce GTX1650
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R9 390XRadeon R9390X
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RX 590Radeon RX590
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Recommended processors

These processors are most commonly used with Radeon RX 480 according to our statistics.

User ratings: view and submit

Here you can see the user rating of the graphics card, as well as rate it yourself.


4.2 1537 votes

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Questions and comments

Here you can ask a question about Radeon RX 480, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.