We are back with another VGA card review, since the HIS RX 480 IceQ X2 Roaring Turbo 8GB has passed through our labs, which does feature the latest RX 480 GPU launched by AMD in late June. This new GPU is based upon the latest Polaris architecture and was built upon the 14nm FinFET technology process at GlobalFoundries.

RX 480 is also named Polaris 10 (or Ellesmere) and its main design focus is power efficiency with a TDP between 110 and 135W (in AMD OEM, stock form; the custom models are unlocked to use a maximum of 225W TDP); the GPU incorporates 5700M transistors, is featuring 2304 stream processors which are found across 36 Compute Units, while the card models can be found with both 8GB and 4GB memory configurations, sporting a 256-bit interface. The GPU is based on the 4th generation GCN architecture and technologies such as FreeSync, XDMA (for CrossFire support) are included.

Reference RX 480 model does come with a single 6-pin power connector but OC models from different manufacturers have implemented an 8-pin power connector in order to be able to attain higher performance without creating stability issues.

Regarding the display outputs, these have been upgraded too to DisplayPort 1.4, while HDMI is available with the 2.0b version, in comparison with the 390X which did feature DisplayPort 1.2a ports and HDMI 1.4a.

As advertised by AMD, these cards are meant to provide a very good gaming experience when 1920x1080 up to 2560x1440 screen resolutions are used, including DirectX 12 titles.

While the stock Radeon RX 480 does come with core clock speeds between 1120 and 1266MHz, the Turbo model from HIS has been overclocked to an impressive 1338MHz, while the memory has been left at the stock value of 2000MHz (8000MHz effective).

The new generation also meant for HIS a complete revamp of the outside packaging layer, so instead of the previous “Ice Cold” design we are getting a “Strong King Lion” logo, representing power and strength.

On the side of the box we will get to see a small product description, in different languages:

Nearby, HIS does list the package contents, and we do also get some more details regarding the company but also offered support:

If we switch the box on the back, we will get to see the significance of the new product logo, detailed features, system requirements but also a list of product technologies:

After removing the top cover, we will get to see a similar packaging as we have spotted with the R9 380X model: