AMD might have just changed the game of mainstream video cards as they officially reveal the $200 Radeon RX 480 powered by their Polaris architecture which beats the GTX 980.
NVIDIA might have taken the high-end market but they could certainly lose the mid-end mainstream video card battle as AMD's new Radeon RX 480 can churn out more power compared to the once-all-powerful GTX 980 for a significantly lower price.
The Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 GPUs have been teasing fans for a video card that would have the highest value in the market. AMD has used their new 14nm FinFET technology to make it possible.
During the company's livestream event at the Computex 2016 in Taipei, AMD revealed their first Polaris video card. The Radeon RX 480 is claimed to have the performance of today's $500 video cards for just more than half of the price, PCWorld has learned.
The new card is expected to beat the GTX 980 in terms of power and value. No exact numbers and benchmarks are available yet, but the card has more than five TFLOPS and only has a power usage of 150W.
AMD's new Radeon RX 480 powered by Polaris will come in both 256-bit 4GB and 8GB GDDR5 VRAM, Ars Technica reported. It would also support HDR video and the AMD FreeSync technology.
Users will be able to make use of the card's HDMI 2.0b and DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 outputs. The card only requires one 6-pin connector compared to the previous gen cards that required two.
Another focus of AMD is the virtual reality market. Since their new card surpasses the required GTX 980 to run the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive VR headset, it would be cheaper and more affordable for even the average consumers to experience VR.
The company even claimed that two of their cards can beat the NVIDIA GTX 1080, which costs around $700, without even going past the $500 cost. It is now up to NVIDIA to release the GTX 1060, which is sadly not even able to outperform the GTX 980.
AMD is set to launch the Polaris Radeon RX 480 on June 29 with a $200 price tag. It would be a great start for those who have been considering to buy a GTX 980 which is more expensive and inefficient with power consumption.