ASUS STRIX GAMING RX 480 OC Graphics Card Review

John Williamson / 7 years ago

Final Thoughts

Price

At the time of writing, the ASUS STRIX GAMING RX 480 OC retails for £279.46 including shipping. This is quite expensive for an RX 480 model and priced dangerously close to blower style GTX 1070s which offer a giant leap in performance. Additionally, the XFX RX 480 GTR Black Edition costs £259.99 and has a faster 1338MHz engine clock. Another alternative is the PowerColor Red Devil RX 480 8GB costing only £229.99 and employs a really impressive 1330MHz peak core clock. As you can see, the ASUS STRIX GAMING RX 480 OC faces some hefty competition and I’d like to see the price about £10-30 cheaper.

Overview

The ASUS STRIX GAMING RX 480 sports a sophisticated, subtle design which looks identical to the company’s other offerings in the STRIX range. As a result, the graphics card has a premium feel which you’d struggle to experience on models from competing vendors. The product’s matte black finish, gorgeous backplate and intricate detailing can only be described as a magical combination. On another note, the small cut-outs help the vibrant RGB illumination to be displayed in a striking manner. ASUS’ Aura lighting is breathtaking and I particularly like the backplates ROG mould which can cycle through the entire colour spectrum.

As expected, it’s not just style over substance and ASUS included their reliable 6-phase Super Alloy Power II with quieter chokes, capacitors lasting over 90,000 hours longer than the industry standard and a 20% cooler DrMOS. The VRM design is exceptional and you shouldn’t encounter any problems running the card at the bleeding edge for a considerable amount of time. The GPU’s cooling solution utilises five heat pipes and a hefty aluminium heat sink arrangement. Additionally, the Wing-Blade patented fans feature a unique design with a greater surface area between the fans to improve static pressure. During idle usage scenarios, the graphics card runs in an idle 0dB mode and switches the fans off completely. Once stressed, the noise levels remain more than acceptable while keeping the core extremely cool.

In terms of overclocking, the ASUS STRIX GAMING RX 480 OC should be able to reach around 1360-1400MHz with a modest voltage boost. However, I did encounter some unpredictable readings and it was difficult to determine if the quoted clock speed was stable. Even when employing the OC mode, the clock seemed to fluctuate and struggled to maintain the ideal figure. Whether or not this is due to the software misreading the actual clocks, a driver issue or hardware limitation is unclear. It does impact on the overclocking performance though by a few frames, so this is something which I’ll have to investigate further. On a more positive note, the memory overclocking headroom was a vast improvement over the XFX RX 480 GTR Black Edition and teetered towards the 2200MHz mark.

The graphics card performs admirably throughout a wide range of titles and has enough horsepower to maintain a fluid frame rate alongside a 1920×1080 monitor. Not only that, the product can contend with 1440p gaming although you might want to reduce the settings slightly to make the frame dips appear less jarring. In many cases, the graphics card defeats ASUS’ premium version of the GTX 1060 and showcases its credentials as a good alternative. Of course, the GTX 1060 forges ahead in some games, so it’s pretty close on the whole. Taking the RX 480’s price point into account, it’s clear that mainstream users can now access a GPU which doesn’t make them feel like they should have invested more money for a higher end solution.

Pros

Competes with the GTX 1060
Excellent performance in DirectX 12 and Vulkan
Exemplary build quality
Good overclocking headroom
Gorgeous aesthetic design
Marvellous cooling solution
Premium components
Relatively quiet
Strong backplate
Stunning lighting system
Wonderful PCB layout

Cons

Costs more than other RX 480 models
Engine clock tends to fluctuate more than I’d expect

“The ASUS STRIX GAMING RX 480 OC is built to a remarkably high standard and has a fantastic VRM design. Also, the graphics card is pretty quiet, looks the part and provides a splendid PC gaming experience on a respectable budget.”

Editors-Choice