The 1080p 60fps part isn't completely guaranteed going by those benches though, at least for a single card and going double ends up taking another free slot that could be used for another better card or something else. I dunno how long the 480 will even last going by those benches, the outcome doesn't look as good as originally hoped. 

I honestly have a lot less hope for their high end offering after seeing the benches for their mid/low end. AMD haven't really managed to take much of the high end market let alone pay any attention to it over the years. If they want to take some back then I'd imagine their high end would have to offer less power consumption while doing better than the 1080 or doing better but also being cheaper. I honestly don't know how they are going to go about this though as outputting above the 1080 while selling cheap isn't going to go well for them (unless they sell a lot), but at the same time underperforming against the 1080 but being cheap isn't likely to net them much of a win either, it;s got to be the same but slightly cheaper or greater but not priced at an insane price. 

I don't remember saying that ... 

I thought that there were gains to be had in culling ever since Graham Wihlidal's presentation ... 

Although it's extremely dependent on the GPU. If your not rasterizer or geometry performance bound then you should definitely see some gains like you do on AMD GPUs which were infamous for their mediocre triangle throughput and sub-ideal command processor that's known to choke on small batches or draws ... 

And the bonus for at least in the case of AMD is that they wouldn't exactly need to implement async compute if they weren't extremely geometry limited ... 

What do you (and other guys) think about the RX 480 against the GTX 970 or the GTX 780 Ti? I could get both the nVidia cards for <£200 on eBay, what would be the best option in performance alone, as they'd be cheaper than the 480?

I'll definitely wait and see what the price and performance of the 1060 is too, if that's around $300 and beats the 480 by a fair bit, I could pick on up in the US for $300 which is around £220.

EDIT: Even the 970 OC is around £200, that matches the 980 in performance doesn't it?

I wouldn't even make the Geforce 700 series an option at this point, it's getting old.

Anandtech is placing the Geforce 970's performance above the Radeon RX 480 4Gb and 8Gb cards.
So it's a no-brainer from a performance perspective... That is, if you care about Direct X 12 performance, AMD has the edge there... And if you intend to retain your card for many many years, I would go the AMD on that fact alone.

The 970 will also use more power though, anywhere from 20~ watts in games to 70~ watts in a "power virus" like FurMark. (Goes to show how good nVidia made the 900 series, even at 28nm.)

Depending on where the Geforce 1060 drops in the performance charts though, we may see AMD cut the price on the RX 480, might be worth waiting untill then unless you need the GPU sooner rather than later?

I called it weeks ago in another thread and got chastised for it, especially when I said power consumption was going to be near 150 watts.

It's a card for 1080P gaming.
It's less efficient than nVidia.
It's slower than nVidia.
It overclocks less than nVidia.

In the end though... It is going to be cheap, AMD is actually trying to sell people two of these cards against 1 nVidia 1080... In that aspect they are great.

I think many were under the impression it was going to be able to compete with the Geforce 1070 and do high-resolution gaming, because of how close the Gflop numbers were.

There are some great efficiency gains with GCN 4 though, especially with further improvement to it's colour compression and geometry performance thanks to better culling (Didn't you tell me that gains in culling weren't going to happen anymore, Fatslob? :P), which is good to see, just nVidia is still a few steps ahead.

Now the wait for Vega to see how AMD tackles the high-end.

Yeah, this is kinda embarassing for AMD, their 150W 14nm GPU is on par with nVidia's 150W 28nm GPU.

At least there's a good price...until 1060 drops in, that is.

So, the 970 OC will perform better than the 480 but consume more power?

There's no rush at all for me, my new PC hasn't even arrived yet. I'd rather get a newer card because obviously it'll stay relevant for longer but if an older card outperforms it then surely that'll stay relevant too?

I'll only be using it at 1080p and and willing to downgrade settings to get it to around 60 fps too.

Card looks to be fantastic value for money, would have preferred if it was maybe 10% higher performance but it is certainly the card that is going into the machines I am building in July for myself and a couple of friends. perfect for 1080p gaming and ok for 1440p and provides some capacity for VR while sucking less juice than previous gen offerings. No it doesn't compete with the 1070 or 1080 but then it was never meant to except in price where it slaughters both in bang for buck. I am just glad I don't have to get another Nvidia card!

Yeah, this is kinda embarassing for AMD, their 150W 14nm GPU is on par with nVidia's 150W 28nm GPU.

At least there's a good price...until 1060 drops in, that is.

I would argue that it's a bit early to draw that conclusion. Except for Tomb Raider the RX480 is on par or faster than a GTX 980 in DX12 benchmarks. Also the drivers for the GTX 9xxx series are much more mature.

We will have to see what the 1060 brings, but don't forget about the RX470 either.

In the majority of games today, yes the Geforce 970 will be faster.

Games of tomorrow (Aka. Direct X 12) is another matter entirely, where the Radeon 480 should have the edge...
The question you need to then ask yourself is... Does the Radeon 480 give you acceptable performance in every game that you are willing to play today? And is more performance in tomorrows games more important?

You can't ignore the fact that Polaris is new, it uses a new architecture... So expect performance gains thanks to improved drivers going forward.

I would revisit all this once you get your new PC and you start looking at GPU's, there might be price shifts soon which might change things for you... And there should be some custom Radeon 480's by then too, Hopefully one with dual PCI-E power and voltage adjustments.