The launch of the Radeon RX 480 has been disastrous: the reference model overclocks very mildly and its cooling system is no good,custom models can’t also overclock much,and of course,these custom models,the most anticipated, are not even for sale yet, but if something can still save the name of AMD is the Radeon RX 480 with 4GB of memory, equally powerful but cheaper, although we face the same problem, for now it is unknown when will this model come, which really is the most interesting model for those who want to play at 1080p.
Thanks to Digital Foundry we can see a performance comparison between the Radeon RX 480 with 8GB of GDDR5 and the 4GB Radeon RX 480, remembering that the memory of the 8GB version runs at 8.00 GHz providing a bandwidth of 256GB/s while the 4GB model runs at 7.00 GHz resulting in 224 GB/s, but unfortunately they did not overclock the memories to see if they could at least reach 8.00 GHz, by not doing so we are wasting 12.5 percent of the bandwidth, so it will influence performance, although depending on the game,it means a loss of 1 to 4% in performance.
On this occasion, Digital Foundry did not make videos of the performance tests, but it did make a video where Richard, DF’s Director, comments on the benefits of the card and shows some games, so we will go directly to performance tests after that video.
| 1920×1080 (1080p) | RX 480 4GB | RX 480 8GB | R9 390 8GB | GTX 1060 6GB | GTX 970 4GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assassin’s Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA | 50.4 | 50.8 | 48.6 | 58.2 | 51.3 |
| Ashes of the Singularity, Extreme, 0x MSAA, DX12 | 45.9 | 47.7 | 52.1 | 45.9 | 40.5 |
| Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA T2x | 68.8 | 70.1 | 75.4 | 78.7 | 72.5 |
| The Division, Ultra, SMAA | 53.6 | 54.8 | 49.8 | 56.6 | 50.2 |
| Far Cry Primal, Ultra, SMAA | 57.1 | 58.7 | 65.1 | 65.6 | 56.2 |
| Hitman, Ultra, SMAA, DX12 | 71.4 | 73.2 | 75.6 | 65.8 | 59.0 |
| Rise of the Tomb Raider, Ultra, SMAA, DX12 | 59.8 | 61.2 | 66.6 | 75.1 | 69.7 |
| The Witcher 3, Ultra, Post AA, No HairWorks | 60.5 | 61.2 | 55.6 | 68.4 | 60.7 |
| 2560×1440 (1440p) | RX 480 4GB | RX 480 8GB | R9 390 8GB | GTX 1060 6GB | GTX 970 4GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assassin’s Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA | 31.0 | 33.8 | 33.7 | 37.4 | 32.7 |
| Ashes of the Singularity, Extreme, 0x MSAA, DX12 | 40.7 | 42.7 | 46.2 | 41.2 | 35.9 |
| Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA T2x | 41.8 | 43.1 | 48.7 | 47.7 | 43.8 |
| The Division, Ultra, SMAA | 38.1 | 39.0 | 37.8 | 39.9 | 36.1 |
| Far Cry Primal, Ultra, SMAA | 40.7 | 42.3 | 46.7 | 45.0 | 39.6 |
| Hitman, Ultra, SMAA, DX12 | 52.2 | 55.0 | 56.8 | 48.1 | 41.5 |
| Rise of the Tomb Raider, Ultra, SMAA, DX12 | 41.7 | 43.0 | 46.0 | 49.2 | 46.1 |
| The Witcher 3, Ultra, Post AA, No HairWorks | 43.5 | 45.3 | 42.9 | 48.2 | 31.9 |
As we can see, the performance of the 4GB Radeon RX 480 is similar to that of the 8GB Radeon RX 480, this performance is expected knowing its memory works at a lower frequency, but if we reach the same frequency overclocking it is expected to have almost the same performance.
Since there is no significant loss in performance, it is easy to see that with 4GB of VRAM we can play any game without problems at 1080p and 1440p. With 2K games we can see that all were run on Ultra and Extreme settings and still the 4GB of memory did not create any bottlenecks, where the 3.5 + 0.5GB of the GeForce GTX 970 do take their toll.
In summary
The Radeon RX 480 4GB is the best option in terms of performance/price ratio, the problem is that the real price for our country is still unknown, but if it’s about 50 euros cheaper than the GeForce 1060 GTX it’s a pretty good alternative. Yes, we will have 2 GB less of memory, but as we have seen, with 4 GB you can play any 1080p and 1440p title on Ultra quality without any performance loss.