Radeon RX 480 versus GeForce GTX 970 – which should you buy?

The AMD Radeon RX 480 has been officially released, and it boasts a high level of performance at a lower cost than previous graphics card generations.

The Radeon RX 480 is built on AMD’s Polaris architecture, featuring a 14nm FinFet manufacturing process and increased power efficiency.

As AMD’s latest graphics card is aimed at the mid-range PC gaming market, we thought we’d compare it to the previous favourite in this performance bracket – Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 970.

The GeForce GTX 970 is a powerful card that allows for smooth gameplay at a resolution of 1080p, and according to recent benchmarks, performs similarly to the Radeon RX 480.

Check out the detailed performance comparison below:

Specifications

The Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTx 970 are based on two different generations of GPU architecture, namely Polaris and Maxwell.

Nvidia has since released it’s new GPU architecture, Pascal, which both the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 are built on.

Below are the specifications of the Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 970 reference cards.

Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 970 Specifications Comparison
	GeForce GTX 970	Radeon RX 480
CUDA Cores/Stream Processors	1,664	2,304
Base Clock	1,050MHz	1,120MHz
Boost Clock	1,178MHz	1,266MHz
Memory Speed	7Gbps	8Gbps
Memory Amount	4GB	8GB
Memory Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwith	224GB/s	256GB/s
TDP	145W	150W
Price	R5,299	R4,799

Benchmarks

The Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 970 are aimed at PC gamers seeking high levels of performance at a resolution of 1080p.

We have compared the average frames-per-second delivered by the graphics cards across a variety of games, using benchmarks from the same source, Guru3D, in order to maintain accuracy across measurements.

Below are the average frames-per-second for the GeForce GTX 970 and Radeon RX 480.

Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 970 Full HD Benchmark Comparison
Game	GeForce GTX 970 Average FPS	Radeon RX 480 Average FPS
Rise of the Tomb Raider	63	63
Fallout 4	88	86
Far Cry Primal	62	66
Grand Theft Auto V	79	84
Hitman	53	75
Total War: Warhammer	64	74
The Witcher 3	53	53
DOOM	91	94
Anno 2205	64	60
Thief	61	77
Battlefield Hardline	55	60
The Division	57	59
Average FPS	66	71

Verdict

Although the Radeon RX 480 is based on newer architecture and delivers better performance for its price, the GeForce GTX 970 still matches its performance in a few DirectX 11 games, with the RX 480 leading in most titles, especially those using DirectX 12.

The price difference is not too great, considering that the Powercolor Radeon RX 480 from Wootware is heavily discounted compared to competing products.

Overall, The Radeon RX 480 is the GPU to buy if choosing between it and the GeForce GTX 970.

However, if you are the owner of a GeForce GTX 970 and are looking to upgrade, you are probably better off buying a new Pascal card or waiting until the Vega launch, as the RX 480 only boasts an average increase of 5 frames-per-second over the Maxwell GPU.