Six Generations of $200 Radeon GPUs Compared

[Steve]

A few weeks ago we published our latest feature in the 'Then and Now' series, testing and comparing six generations of flagship GeForce graphics cards. Since then many of you have asked for an AMD version, however the wait for next-gen Vega parts could be longer than anticipated.

So we decided to ditch high-end GPUs and considering we do have AMD's latest $200-250 offering on hand -- the Radeon RX 480, that is -- run the same exercise for past mainstream Radeon GPU releases.

The RX 480 may not be as drool inducing as a Pascal Titan X or even the GeForce GTX 1070, but it doesn't cost nearly as much either, which means this is what most people will end up buying. Whereas the GTX 1070 will set you back some $400+, the 4GB RX 480 should eventually sell for just $200.

Read the complete article.

 

[Bigtruckseries]

I'd never take a Radeon over an EVGA built card.
I absolutely love my Titan X 12GB and until Radeon builds a comparison product - better - I just can't consider them.

 

[fktech]

Will a fast GPU improve my typing speed? Think not, a gamers paradise though for a great price.

 

[Joray K Joseph]

I'd never take a Radeon over an EVGA built card.
I absolutely love my Titan X 12GB and until Radeon builds a comparison product - better - I just can't consider them.

I think you are a little confused. EVGA is an AIB and AMD Radeon is a graphics card manufacturer, 2 different things. EVGA just sells Nvidia cards so that Titan X you have is just an Nvidia card that EVGA slapped their name unto.

 

[Blakey]

I'd never take a Radeon over an EVGA built card.
I absolutely love my Titan X 12GB and until Radeon builds a comparison product - better - I just can't consider them.

I think you are a little confused. EVGA is an AIB and AMD Radeon is a graphics card manufacturer, 2 different things. EVGA just sells Nvidia cards so that Titan X you have is just an Nvidia card that EVGA slapped their name unto.

Don't know where you got that information from, but you are completely wrong.

EVGA, MSI, Asus etc do lot more than just slapping there name on it, for starters the only bit that is Nvidia is the GPU Chip itself (hence completely different board designs)

As for the article, interesting to see the power usage has gone up so much, would love to see a Nvidia counterpart to this article.

 

[failquail]

As for the article, interesting to see the power usage has gone up so much, would love to see a Nvidia counterpart to this article.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1191-nvidia-geforce-six-generations-tested/

 

[failquail]

Hmm, the link went wonky

https://www.techspot.com/article/1191-nvidia-geforce-six-generations-tested/

 

[risc32]

Interesting comments...... did tmz link people here?

 

[Blakey]

Hmm, the link went wonky

https://www.techspot.com/article/1191-nvidia-geforce-six-generations-tested/

Thanks mate, I have seen that though. I was referring to a $200 comparison.

However after looking as the power consumption on the Nvidia comparison for 1080, 980 etc anyway it is a little embarrassing to see how Rx480 is using the same power as GTX 980 (a card that performs the same-ish but is 2 years old) and only 20 watts less than a GTX 1080 (a card that performs 2x better) I also noticed the AMD test was running Overwatch, Nvidia Test was running much much harder to run games like Crysis, interesting..

 

[madboyv1]

Hmm, the link went wonky

https://www.techspot.com/article/1191-nvidia-geforce-six-generations-tested/

Thanks mate, I have seen that though. I was referring to a $200 comparison.

However after looking as the power consumption on the Nvidia comparison for 1080, 980 etc anyway it is a little embarrassing to see how Rx480 is using the same power as GTX 980 (a card that performs the same-ish but is 2 years old) and only 20 watts less than a GTX 1080 (a card that performs 2x better) I also noticed the AMD test was running Overwatch, Nvidia Test was running much much harder to run games like Crysis, interesting..

Well for the sake of these midrange cards they tested them with games that were more likely to be played in that category, most of them with reduced graphics fidelity as well which is often the norm for cards not on the upper echelon. If Techspot was testing sub $250 cards from Nvidia they would probably do the same.

For what it's worth it, to see one or several cards perform well at a certain graphics setting means that if the user wishes to, they instead can use that headroom to increase those graphics settings (like moving from the medium preset to high preset, or enabling AA).

 

[CaptainTom]

Based on these results it isn't crazy to conclude that a $500 - $650 card is coming from AMD 40% stronger than the Fury X.

Just can't come soon enough...

 

[CaptainTom]

I'd never take a Radeon over an EVGA built card.
I absolutely love my Titan X 12GB and until Radeon builds a comparison product - better - I just can't consider them.

SAPPHIRE builds cards with FAR higher build quality than anything I have seen from EVGA.

In fact I consider EVGA to be the worst in terms of build quality AND reliability when it comes to Nvidia cards. LOL.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Choice of price point makes an interesting comparison. Another approach which I should like to see is the progression of the top-end 128-bit cards. 128-bit uses significantly less power and may now be using only power from the PCI-e slot. The changes in FPS, bandwidth, power and price would be really interesting to see... leading up to the GTX 1050 and RX 460, which may replace the GTX 750 Ti???

 

[Adhmuz]

I'd never take a Radeon over an EVGA built card.
I absolutely love my Titan X 12GB and until Radeon builds a comparison product - better - I just can't consider them.

I think you are a little confused. EVGA is an AIB and AMD Radeon is a graphics card manufacturer, 2 different things. EVGA just sells Nvidia cards so that Titan X you have is just an Nvidia card that EVGA slapped their name unto.

Don't know where you got that information from, but you are completely wrong.

EVGA, MSI, Asus etc do lot more than just slapping there name on it, for starters the only bit that is Nvidia is the GPU Chip itself (hence completely different board designs)

Actually I thought it was a common known thing that nVidia isn't letting anyone make Titans, all Pascal based Titans cards are nVidia only with no third party vendors allowed to make their own version, at least not yet. The butt-hurt on the EVGA forums is quite comical over the issue, a whole lot of people claiming nVidia is killing the enthusiast market by not allowing EVGA to make Titans...

However you are correct in the fact that EVGA does make their own cards for all other nVidia based cards (GTX 1070/1080s) but still also have reference versions for those who want to buy an "EVGA" card and put their own waterblock on it, essentially just EVGA firmware and branding but still just an nVidia card.

 

[EndlessWaves]

However after looking as the power consumption on the Nvidia comparison for 1080, 980 etc anyway it is a little embarrassing to see how Rx480 is using the same power as GTX 980 (a card that performs the same-ish but is 2 years old) and only 20 watts less than a GTX 1080 (a card that performs 2x better)

The power consumption tests were done on different games with additional hardware in the AMD system so they're not perfectly comparable.

Besides, arguing which 150W graphics card is more efficient is like arguing which 5 litre performance car has better fuel economy. PC Graphics cards are all hugely wasteful at the moment and I can't wait until we get back to the 30-50W high end cards of the early 2000s

 

[Adhmuz]

The power consumption tests were done on different games with additional hardware in the AMD system so they're not perfectly comparable.

What are you talking about? The test system are identical...

Nvidia: Test System Specs

Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.50 GHz (Skylake)
Asrock Z170 Z170 Extreme7+
G.Skill TridentZ 8GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3000
Samsung SSD 850 Pro 2TB
Silverstone Strider Series ST1000-G Evolution
Nvidia GeForce Game Ready Driver 368.39
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

AMD: Test System Specs

Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.50 GHz (Skylake)
Asrock Z170 Z170 Extreme7+
32GB (4x8GB) DDR4-3000
Samsung SSD 850 Pro 2TB
Silverstone Strider Series ST1000-G Evolution
AMD Crimson Edition 16.8.2 Hotfix
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

 

[Avenger001]

I'd never take a Radeon over an EVGA built card.
I absolutely love my Titan X 12GB and until Radeon builds a comparison product - better - I just can't consider them.

Yeah but these are all 200$ mid-range cards. This has nothing to do with high end. Its great to have a card like the titan x for anyone who can afford it for sure but very few people will go that route.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Choice of price point makes an interesting comparison. Another approach which I should like to see is the progression of the top-end 128-bit cards. 128-bit uses significantly less power and may now be using only power from the PCI-e slot. The changes in FPS, bandwidth, power and price would be really interesting to see... leading up to the GTX 1050 and RX 460, which may replace the GTX 750 Ti???

That end hasnt moved at all. the 460 is the same as the 750ti perf/watt, with a few blows traded here and there.

 

[lripplinger]

So out of curiosity, how relevant is this testing though? This was done on a high end consumer test bed which is find and dandy. But what kind of bottleneck might occur for people still running old systems? How much of a hit might these numbers take on an old Core 2 Duo for example?

 

[treetops]

Whats the point of benching at medium quality?

 

[jauffins]

I'd never take a Radeon over an EVGA built card.
I absolutely love my Titan X 12GB and until Radeon builds a comparison product - better - I just can't consider them.

Sigh.

 

[Jackatron]

Good article. I still have 2 7850s and they mostly still do the job at lower settings, but games without crossfire support are getting annoying so considering a 1060 or 480, not sure I want to spend as much as the 1070 since I'm sure I'll just be playing on a 1080p monitor.

 

[Redwoodz]

Hmm, the link went wonky

https://www.techspot.com/article/1191-nvidia-geforce-six-generations-tested/

Thanks mate, I have seen that though. I was referring to a $200 comparison.

However after looking as the power consumption on the Nvidia comparison for 1080, 980 etc anyway it is a little embarrassing to see how Rx480 is using the same power as GTX 980 (a card that performs the same-ish but is 2 years old) and only 20 watts less than a GTX 1080 (a card that performs 2x better) I also noticed the AMD test was running Overwatch, Nvidia Test was running much much harder to run games like Crysis, interesting..

Good luck bud. $200 from Nvida = crap gpu's for the most part with a few exceptions.

 

[bigboxes]

Actually I thought it was a common known thing that nVidia isn't letting anyone make Titans, all Pascal based Titans cards are nVidia only with no third party vendors allowed to make their own version, at least not yet. The butt-hurt on the EVGA forums is quite comical over the issue, a whole lot of people claiming nVidia is killing the enthusiast market by not allowing EVGA to make Titans...

However you are correct in the fact that EVGA does make their own cards for all other nVidia based cards (GTX 1070/1080s) but still also have reference versions for those who want to buy an "EVGA" card and put their own waterblock on it, essentially just EVGA firmware and branding but still just an nVidia card.

Or maybe he doesn't really own a Titan X. Fanboys all around.

 

[Lionvibez]

However after looking as the power consumption on the Nvidia comparison for 1080, 980 etc anyway it is a little embarrassing to see how Rx480 is using the same power as GTX 980 (a card that performs the same-ish but is 2 years old) and only 20 watts less than a GTX 1080 (a card that performs 2x better)

The power consumption tests were done on different games with additional hardware in the AMD system so they're not perfectly comparable.

Besides, arguing which 150W graphics card is more efficient is like arguing which 5 litre performance car has better fuel economy. PC Graphics cards are all hugely wasteful at the moment and I can't wait until we get back to the 30-50W high end cards of the early 2000s

I don't think we will ever get back to that wattage level on gpu for the highend.