Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 review: Polaris rethought and refined
The wait was worth it for custom Radeon RX 480 cards.
By Brad Chacos
Senior Editor, PCWorld | PT
Today's Best Tech Deals
Picked by PCWorld's Editors
Top Deals On Great Products
Picked by Techconnect's Editors
- Meet the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480
- Our test system
- The Division
- Hitman
- Rise of the Tomb Raider
- Far Cry Primal
- Ashes of the Singularity
- SteamVR and 3DMark
- Power and heat
- Overclocking
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Now for something completely different! Whereas Hitman adores Radeon GPUs, Rise of the Tomb Raider performs much better on GeForce cards. It’s also the single most drop-dead gorgeous PC game I’ve ever laid my eyes on.
We only tested the games DirectX 11 mode, as we haven’t had a chance to reevaluate the game’s DirectX 12 enhancements now that several patches have been released to fix its once-wonky implementation.
The Nitro+ RX 480’s overclock doesn’t provide much of a boost here. The GTX 1060 still reigning supreme in this Nvidia-favoring game. That said, the Nitro+ RX 480 still delivers frame rates far in excess of the 60 fps gold standard with everything cranked at 1080p resolution, and comes damn close to it at 1440p, too.
Next page: Far Cry Primal