A few weeks ago nosotros 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 await for next-gen Vega parts could be longer than anticipated.

So we decided to ditch loftier-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 exist as drool inducing as a Pascal Titan Ten or even the GeForce GTX 1070, but it doesn't price nearly as much either, which means this is what most people will terminate upwardly buying. Whereas the GTX 1070 will prepare you back some $400+, the 4GB RX 480 should somewhen sell for just $200. As history has shown u.s., once supply improves you lot can wait the RX480 4GB models to hitting and maybe fifty-fifty dip beneath that official $200 MSRP.

This got united states thinking, what has $200 bought yous previously from the reddish team? We're talking release 24-hour interval MSRPs here, then discounts applied over the lifetime of the product weren't considered, such equally the Radeon R9 280 which launched at $250 but eventually sold for as little equally $200.

So keeping that in mind, last generation'due south $200 choice was the Radeon R9 380, a card nosotros crowned as the all-time mainstream option for 2022. Before that was the R9 270X which also landed at exactly $200.

In 2022, the Hard disk 7000 series didn't characteristic a $200 selection, instead you lot had the Hard disk drive 7790 at $150 or the Hard disk 7850 at $250. Therefore, nosotros have selected the more than expensive Radeon Hard disk 7850 for this comparison.

A similar situation is found when looking at the HD 6000 serial, which offered the HD 6850 for $180 or the 6870 for $240, so again nosotros went with the more expensive selection. The pricing strategy wasn't much dissimilar for the Hd 5000 cards, though it was the Hard disk 5830 that went for $240.

Radeon HD 5830 Hard disk drive 6870 Hard disk 7850 R9 270X R9 380 RX 480
Codename Cypress LE Barts XT Pitcairn PRO Curaçao XT
(Pitcairn XT)		 Antigua Pro
(Tonga Pro)		 Polaris 10
Architecture TeraScale ii TeraScale 2 GCN 1st gen GCN 1st gen GCN third gen GCN 4rd gen
Fab 40nm 40nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 14nm
Transistors (Billion) 2.one ane.7 2.viii 2.8 5.0 5.vii
Dice size (mm2) 334 255 212 212 359 232
Cores 1120 1120 1024 1280 1792 2304
TAU 56 56 64 80 112 144
ROP 16 16 32 32 32 32
Memory 1024MB 1024/2048MB 1024/2048MB 2048/4096MB 2048/4096MB 4096/8192MB
Bus width 256-bit 256-fleck 256-bit 256-chip 256-bit 256-scrap
Bandwidth 128 GB/south 134 GB/southward 153.half-dozen GB/s 179 GB/southward 182 GB/s 224/256 GB/due south
Release engagement Feb 25, 2022 Oct 22, 2022 Mar 19, 2022 Aug viii, 2022 Jun 18, 2022 Jun 29, 2022
Price at release $239 $239 $250 $200 $200 $200

Earlier we leap to the benchmarks, the table in a higher place will give you a good overall perspective of GPU specs, launch price, and the release date itself. The Hard disk drive 5000 serial was starting time to evangelize DirectX 11 support, which is why we didn't become back further than this generation. This serial and its successor were built using the aging TeraScale microarchitecture.

TeraScale was a VLIW SIMD architecture, while Nvidia use a RISC SIMD architecture, similar to TeraScale's successor Graphics Core Adjacent (GCN). Both 2022 and 2022's mid-range HD 7850 and R9 270X featured kickoff-generation GCN, then mid-2015 brought the third-gen GCN R9 380 and so this year we received the fourth-gen GCN RX 480.

With the exception of the Hd 7850, we have seen a steady increment in cadre count from AMD's mid-range GPUs over the years. Memory bandwidth has also increased steadily and the biggest jump can be seen nearly recently from the R9 380 to the RX 480.

Test Arrangement Specs

  • Intel Core i7-6700K @ four.50 GHz (Skylake)
  • Asrock Z170 Z170 Extreme7+
  • 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4-3000
  • Samsung SSD 850 Pro 2TB
  • Silverstone Strider Series ST1000-G Evolution
  • AMD Cerise Edition sixteen.viii.2 Hotfix
  • Windows 10 Pro 64-scrap

Benchmarks: Tom Clancy's The Division, Overwatch

Showtime up, allow's take a look at the operation of these mid-range GPUs using Tom Clancy's The Division with the medium quality preset in play. The Radeon Hd 5830 was expert for just 19fps while the 6970 was 26% faster, which was still just 24fps. From the 6870 to the 7850 nosotros see a rather large 38% heave in functioning to 33fps.

Beyond that we start to run into very playable performance as the R9 270X achieved 54fps. That is a massive 64% boost over the 7850 and bluntly nosotros didn't expect that. Nosotros believe the massive difference is downward to the fact that the 7850 only has a 1GB retentivity buffer while the 270X has twice that.

The R9 380 was 33% faster than the 270X which is another prissy gain and this pushed the average frame rate to 72fps. Despite that one of the biggest gains we see is the movement from the 380 to the RX 480 as AMD'south latest mid-range offering was an impressive 47% faster.

You have to paw information technology to Blizzard for making highly enjoyable games that run on just almost annihilation. Overwatch might not have the visuals of Rise of the Tomb Raider or Battleground 1, just it still looks remarkable in my opinion and it simply makes it all the more impressive to meet the HD 5830 striking an average of 49fps at 1080p.

Even with the 5830 able to deliver playable results, the 6870 went on to deliver a 45% heave for an boilerplate of 71fps. The 7850 was 35% faster still with an average of 96fps and didn't appear to exist hindered by its 1GB frame buffer in this championship. With the 7850 performing equally it should, the R9 270X was merely 17% faster this time.

The R9 380 provided a further 35% performance leap, reaching an average of 151fps. Nonetheless, the RX 480 was good for almost 40% more performance again at 210fps -- impressive stuff from AMD's latest mid-range offering.