Leaked benchmarks for AMD Radeon RX 480 hits minimum VR spec for $199

[JEMC]

shikamaru317 said:

JEMC said:

We still don't know the factory card performance and you're already thinking about the performance of the custom, overclocked, cards? You think too much (and that comes from a guy that started looking for a card replacement 3 years ago...).

Also, the 480 will also get custom overclocked cards. And there's the chance of custom 480 cards costing the same as a reference 1060. And an overclocked 480 could end up being close to 980 performance, specially if they overclock the memory too as I saw one review where it was clear that the 480 was memory bandwidth limited (although I doubt they'll do it, they never overclock the memory).

Finally, I've also heard the same, but we got reviews of the 1080/1070 before launch. It wouldn't be that surprising to see the same with the 1060.

I always overthink things xD

Ultimately I care about price/performance ratio more than performance, so AMD is definitely still a contender in my eyes. I can't see 1060 matching $200/$230 like the RX 480, it'll probably be something more like $240/$270 in which case AMD stil has the advantage in my eyes, especially if they improve their drivers soon. That being said, noise is also a concern for me, my current build is designed to operate under 40 decibels and it has kind of spoiled me, so 1060 could have the advantage there since the 120w TDP will likely mean a lower fan speed is required to cool it compared to the 150w RX 480. In the end this may be a tough decision for me, but fortunately it's not one that I have to make for awhile, I will probably be grabbing one of these during Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales in November.

I also have a "quiet" PC (P183 case and Noctua CPU cooler) and care about noise.

Luckily for us, most AIB partners made silent cards during the last gen, and I see no reason why they wouldn't make it again. As for noise while gaming, that's a different story, but without water there will always be noise.

And TDP is an unknown factor as we don't really know how much power will custom 480/1060 use.