AMD Polaris GPU release date, news: Radeon RX 480 CrossFire beats GeForce GTX 1080 benchmark score by 1%

Jackie Villegas Monday, June 20, 2016

Promotional image for the AMD Polaris architecture | AMD

Ahead of its release later this month, performance results for the AMD Polaris-based Radeon RX 480 have hit the internet.

The new performance results, as revealed by Video Cardz, which conducted a few tests of the highly anticipated GPU, showed AMD's new video card beating the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 by a single percent in 3DMark FireStrike benchmarks.

When the Radeon RX 480 was unveiled at Computex 2016 earlier this month, AMD also revealed its CrossFire setup against a GTX 1080. The Radeon RX 480 CrossFire was shown to offer better efficiency and graphics performance than the GTX 1080.

But because of issues with image quality, the results became controversial. AMD later addressed the issue by providing the full specs for the new graphics card.

Now, Video Cardz has tested the Radeon RX CrossFire performance and found that the benchmark results coincide with those of AMD's.

The AMD Radeon RX 480 CrossFire scored 181%, beating the single-card Radeon RX 480 by 81% and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 by 1%.

TechFrag notes that while the benchmark results are impressive, the scores should not be taken as conclusive of the GPUs' overall gaming performance.

According to WCCFTech, the new AMD video card offers a base clock speed of 1080 MHz and a a boost clock speed of 1266 MHz. Test results indicate that the graphics card draws roughly 100W of power in normal game settings and as much as 150W in higher settings.

The RX 480 gets its power supply via a 6-pin PCIe connector. Custom variants of the graphics card will get 8-pin PCIe connectors or 6-pin PCIe power connectors.

AMD's Polaris-based RX 480 has three DisplayPorts and one HDMI 2.0 port. It measures over 9 inches long and has an aluminium fin array heatsink for heat dissipation.

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is expected to retail at $199, while the 8GB version will cost $229. Custom cards will cost more. AMD recently unveiled two other Polaris-based GPUs, the Radeon RX 470 and the Radion RX 460, which are geared for different market segments.

The Radeon RX 480 will be available by June 29.