Apart from the fact that AMD appears at the front in the alphabetically sorted order, we also deliberately put the reference map of the Radeon RX480 first. While these cards always have to contend with their reputation for being worse than board partner cards, this is surely only half the truth in this case.
AMD, one has to admit without envy after testing several board partner solutions, has not done such a bad job and is even able to use this DHE (Direct Heat Exhaust) solution to control many factory overclocked cards with axial fans in the closed housing. Cut a little.
We got another reference map, which is also used by SI, and made the measurements again. Even if the results hardly differ from those of the launch article, we only found it fair not to test with a model from the first batch, but with a currently (er)en chip, especially since our measurement structure has also changed slightly.
1. External appearance and key data
At first glance, the card, which weighs only 685 grams, is 24.2 cm long (from slot aperture to the end of the card), 10.5 cm high (from the top of the motherboard slot to the top edge of the case) and 3.5 cm deep card still resembles the Radeon R9 Fury Nano, but on closer inspection you can see very much quickly, which rules here a little bit of the red pencil.
The black plastic full-body suit consists of one piece, even if the four supposed hexagonal screws actually suggest something else. One merely tried to indicate a multi-part cover structure with beading and different surface structures. In the end, this fits, because hardly anyone will really want to acquire such a reference design later. or maybe? We are looking forward to it!
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The back of the card reveals that the actual board is only 18 centimeters long. By the way, we saw the overhang for the radial fan and the additional opening for the air feed a few years ago – at Nvidia.
In addition to the unlit Radeon lettering on the top side, a single PCIe power supply connection with six pins is emblazoned. We are also clarifying that this is only just enough and, above all, why this is the case when we analyse the power consumption. Normally, an 8-pin connection belongs here – and we also give the reason for this announcement in a nutofes.
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The end of the card is completely closed, as it should be for a DHE solution. The slot panel is somewhat meagerly equipped and dispenses with a DVI-D connection in favour of the openings for the air outlet. There are three ports for the DisplayPort 1.4 and an HDMI-2.0 output.
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2. Board layout and power supply
When looking at the naked board, it is noticeable that the voltage converter block has again completely moved towards the slot aperture. We cannot currently answer what led AMD to take this rather detrimental step. The Polaris GPU, which by the way does not show any name, is again placed diagonally in the socket, as we know it from older AMD graphics cards.
When it comes to memory, AMD relies on Samsung modules. The K4G80325FB-HC25 are individual modules with a capacity of 8 GBit (32x 256 MBit) each, which can be operated with voltages between 1,305 and 1.597 V depending on the required clock and reach a maximum of 2000 MHz. This allows you to install the same modules as Nvidia on its GeForce GTX 1070.
Let's take a closer look at the board. The IR 3567B from International Rectifier is also a good old acquaintance (e.g. from the Radeon R9 290) and as a PWM controller is virtually the heart of the digital power supply on this graphics card. AMD thus remains true to itself and deliberately dispenses with the path that Nvidia has taken with its undocumented new controller chip. The well-known protocols and interfaces then make at least the programming of the usual tools much easier.
Overall, AMD is relying on a rather unusual 6+1 phase design in this class, which is quite surprising given the announced TDP of 150 watts. In contrast to Nvidia, AMD does not rely on a dual, but two single-channel N-MOSFETs for the six phases of GPU power supply: one MDU1514 (30V, 66.3A, 6 m) and one MDU1511 (30V, 100A, 2.4m) per phase are each used by one MDU1514 (30V, 66.3A, 6 m) and one MDU1511 (30V, 100A, 2.4m) each phase. CHL8510 as a high-performance gate driver.
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The seventh phase is used to power the memory modules, which, unlike the Fiji cards, is again located on the 3.3V line of the motherboard slot. This simplifies the design considerably, especially since the power consumption of the modules is relatively low. After all, we can see that the way taken by Fiji to place the gate drivers on the back of the board directly under the MOSFETs has been dropped again, thank God – the thermal hot spots were not from bad parents.
3. Power consumption and compliance
The power consumption of the refern design is still above the specified TDP of 150 watts, even after the driver adjustment and the compatibility mode, but only slightly. This can be tolerated in good conscience.
In the gaming loop, the map reaches a good 157 watts, while the Torture loop measured just over 158 watts. There is not much more to do with this card, whereby the peak values represent only short moment values, which do not have to be used as a guideline for the power supply measurement, but show that one pay attention to a qualitatively appropriately equipped secondary side of the power supply (Low Impedance Caps).
The two graphs that follow illustrate the course over 2 minutes each in the gaming loop and in the Torture test, on which the respective calculation of the average power consumption is based.
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Let's now turn to the evaluation of the flowing currents and they (unfortunately) really have it in them. First, we can take a look at the current flows of the individual supply rails corresponding to the diagrams above.
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What we see fits almost like a fist on the eye. If we remember the launch article for the Radeon RX480, it was precisely the non-standard load on the 12V motherboard connector that caused AMD to have to improve by means of a driver trick. But after the implementation of the compatibility function in the Radeon software, everything is in the balance on the comma:
We strongly recommend that you use the compatibility mode offered by AMD in the driver to avoid possible motherboard problems with older models as a precaution. However, for motherboards with full connection of the PCIe slot, a warning can be given.
4th. Cooler structure and temperatures
If you loosen the six screws on the side, the lid can be removed very easily. The cooling solution visible below consists of a simple rib heatsink, a larger stabilization and cooling frame and the radial fan as old acquaintances from bygone times (but this time with a lower maximum speed of 5000 rpm). Another part of the board is also visible. Radial fan, airflow aligned towards slot aperture and closed housing – the RX480 cooling works according to the Direct Heat Exhaust (DHE) principle, in which much of the resulting waste heat is blown out of the housing directly at the back.
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The heat sink is a very simple piece of stranded aluminum, to which a small copper core has been donated for better heat absorption above the GPU. A strip glued to the ribs above additionally ensures that the air does not pass above the heat sink, but is completely blown through it.
The already mentioned frame is for the cooling of the memory modules on the one hand and also for the taming of the MOSFETs in the voltage converters on the other hand. At this point, hinted ribs also provide a slightly larger surface area.
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The cooling performance is not even bad, because in the gaming loop an average clock of around 1225 MHz is kept on average and this only sporadically breaks down by a few MHz. The reasons for this are due to the power limit, which already starts to take effect in some places with a very high gaming load.
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Let us now consider the temperatures not as a curve, but check what consequences the load leaves on the board. Typical for the DHE card is that the temperatures in the open and closed structure hardly differ. Only the GPU gets marginally warmer, but this could also be because of the slightly higher inner compartments in the housing.
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In the stress test, very similar values measure and again the values hardly differ between open and closed. The overall slightly higher temperatures result from the slightly higher power consumption.
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The cooling is therefore perfectly fine even in the closed housing, at least as far as the measured values are concerned. at the memory, we move with approx. 83°C on the hottest module, however, is already just below the limit specified by the manufacturer as the maximum value.
5. Fan speeds and noise emission
But what do the radial fan do to ensure these temperatures?
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Now let's take a look at the noise in the gaming loop after the map reaches its maximum temperatures. The 41.9 dB(A) correspond to the values from our launch article except for the decimal point, because the fan speeds are identical.
In the idle, the measured 31.1 dB(A) are slightly below the initial measurements are a fairly good value, which is only slightly above the noise level of a normal living room. However, the sound character of the radial fan at low speeds is rather snarling and the spectrum also contains dominant lower frequency ranges.
6. Intermediate conclusion
We have already indicated at the outset that the reference card is not in principle as bad as one might often put it lightly. With the compliance update, which also stands for a significantly more balanced power supply, this card can be optimized even further in the Wattman, because the chip quality has increased and often enough the predetermined voltage is set far too high.
The cooling performance is quite confident, especially since the fans still act acoustically in a tolerable frame despite higher speeds. The card does not have to hide behind many board partner cards, one must admit without envy. The Roundup will certainly show which that might be.
- 1 - Einführung, Übersicht und Test-Setup
- 2 - AMD Radeon RX480 Reference
- 3 - Asus RX480 Strix
- 4 - HIS RX480 IceQ X² Roaring Turbo
- 5 - MSI RX480 Gaming X 8G
- 6 - Powercolor RX480 Red Devil
- 7 - Sapphire RX480 Nitro+
- 8 - XFX RX480 GTR Black Edition
- 9 - Übersicht: Gaming-Performance
- 10 - Übersicht: Temperatur, Lautstärke und Leistungsaufnahme
- 11 - Zusammenfassung und Fazit
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