The first benchmarks have been posted for the upcoming Radeon R9 480 thanks to a chart that appeared thanks to data obtained from software benchmark maker Futuremark. These benchmarks may have used unreleased or even older drivers so these results shouldn’t be taken as final representation of the yet unannounced performance, but they do give a good baseline.
According to Videocardz.com three potentially different models of unreleased Polaris cards, each with the same clock speed but varying memory clocks. This could mean that these benchmarks were completed using the same cards with overclock enabled or separate SKUS that use the same clock speed. Videocardz postulates that the three cards represented 480, 480x and Crossfire configurations.
| AMD Polaris 10 Benchmarks | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Link | Memory | Core Clock | Memory Clock | Score |
| AMD Polaris 67DF:C4 — Radeon R9 480? | ||||
| http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11167781 | 8GB | 1266 MHz | 1925 MHz | 13160 |
| http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11167887 | 8GB | 1266 MHz | 1925 MHz | 16164 |
| AMD Polaris 67DF:C7 — Radeon R9 480X? | ||||
| http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11257751 | 8GB | 1266 MHz | 2000 MHz | 15524 |
| http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11263084 | 8GB | 1266 MHz | 2000 MHz | 18060 |
| AMD Polaris 67DF:C7 — Radeon R9 480X CROSSFIRE? | ||||
| http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11263252 | 8GB | 1266 MHz | 2000 MHz | 25803 |
Here are the basic specs for the supposed Radeon R9 480 as outlined in the original benchmarks:
- Core clock speed of 1266mhz
- Memory bandwidth between 1925 MHZ and 2000 MHZ
- 8 GB of memory standard across the board.
As for the final 3DMark 11 scores, these three cards ranged from 13160 to 25803. Performance wise that would put the highest performing configuration from Futuremark (presumed to a 480 crossfire config) to be just two thousand points below NVidia’s flagship 1080. The second model referenced in these benchmarks (presumably the R9 480X) is just 200 points shy of the Radeon R9 FURY and lastly, what is presumed to be the 480 reference card sits just below the R9 390x.
Polaris is the successor to the Graphics Card Next platform that AMD has been using for a few years now. The first set of benchmarks for competitor NVidia’s Geforce 1080 hit the web a few days ago and will be available next month. No release date or even a formal announcement of the R9 480 has yet to be made by AMD.
