AMD's suggested? price is 240 usd for 8gb model but here in europe it is 300+ euro, making it actually a worse deal than Geforce 970 which can be found at 250 euro.

That's because it only just released, price goes up because they don't have enough stock.

Amazon.FR for example is selling it for 260 Euro's, while Amazon.DE is 300 Euro's because they presumably have stock shortages. It'll go down soon.

We probably need to see what 3rd parties can do with it.

It does seem bizarre to see a few things though that they did/encountered.

The reference model gets quite hot, and uses about the same power as 970.

Overclocking is pretty close to nonexistent for most testers.

DX11 performance (most games still to this day) is a wash with stock 970s mostly, and great 970s that OC well will have a solid lead in those titles.

Now DX12 performance looks better, and the ability to get 8GB of VRAM for pretty cheap is good. Prices should come down after stock gets up. 970 launched similarly at the very beginning, we live in an era where game stores (even Newegg!) will scalp you on new hot cards. That will pass hopefully sooner rather than later.

I was able to get a 970OC with backplate, and it overclocks like crazy, so I'm definitely not changing to 480 like this, but if drivers and overclocking change considerably with aftermarket models and process maturity, it will at least be worth a look for my HTPC. My real gaming rig will go from 980ti to something like 1080ti or Vega depending on how that shakes out.

I do agree that 480 was overhyped for sure. And it's strange to me that they repeated some of the same mistakes that initially hurt 290/290X. Bad stock coolers, tons of heat, really immature drivers (290/290X fared mediocre against 780 level GPUs at the beginning, and picked up steam solidly over time).

Now bring on 1060! I want to see some real action in the $200-$250 range.

It's unfair to compare the 8GB RX 480 with the 4GB (or 3,5GB) GTX 970. Compare the GTX 970 to a RX 480 4GB. That one can be had starting at ~230€. Also at least in Germany most RX 480 8GB are only priced ~270€.

Yeah I was looking at picking up a 480 and then when I needed more power just getting another. But after it's out and hearing about it now I'm thinking I'll probably stick with Nvidia and just get a GTX 1070 or 1080 when I upgrade my PC.

What's most strange is that it draws more power than a Geforce 970 despite being a 14nm card compared with 28nm and coming out almost two years later.

What happened to "2.5x perf per Watt"?

AMD also only cooks with water. It competes with the 970 and soon the 1060 will hit, giving it even tougher competition. Yes it is true that AMD is usually performance/price king but they have also been very close to Nvidia in mid and low range GPUs when it comes to bang for your buck. And for the better price they're still behind Nvidia in power efficiency.

Hm, maybe I'll wait for the 1060 then if that's the case. 

It's actually NOT a bad card.
It's just priced badly.

If it was priced at $150 for the 4Gb and $200 for the 8Gb rather than starting both at essentially $50 higher than that... Then this would be an entirely different discussion.
Can't forget the early adopter tax on new hardware either which is driving the price up higher.

For future titles the RX 480 will fare better, it's shown to excel in Direct X 12 whilst still providing adequate performance in Direct X 9/10/11.

I think people were thinking this was some kind of 1440P/1600P/4k gaming monster based on TFLOP's alone, which was never AMD's intention... And based on that, had unreal expectations for where the product was going to be situated in AMD's lineup.

If you wanted great performance, Vega was where it was always at. Polaris is mid-range. Navi should shake things up as well.

http://www.mydealz.de/deals/computeruniverse-sapphire-radeon-rx-480-lite-retail-mit-8gb-gddr5-224-inkl-vsk-770087 it's not the first discount. I think the price will drop fast