The XFX RX480 Black Edition features a reference design cooler with flair. While this may be disappointing to some looking for custom cooler designs, it allows XFX to push the design to its limits. To give the card a more premium feel, XFX has equipped the card with a simplistic, yet functional backplate, with a cut out for the gpu core similar to that of the ones seen on their higher end Fiji chips.
Display adapters include 3 display port 1.4 ports, and a single hdmi 2.0b port. Next we have 6pin power adapter sporting a massive 6+1 Power Phase, delivery a peak power output of 165 watts; which is at the very limit of the single 6pin adapter.
Under the hood the card sports a 1326mhz boost clock, which is a 42mhz over the Core Edition. The boost clock communicates over a 256bit bus with 8gb of gddr5 at the standard 8000Mhz effective clock.
This particular card absolutely loves being overclocked. The core clock hit a peak overclock of 1405MHz in synthetic tests. The memory overclocked surprisingly well too with an additional 200MHz. This translated into Frame rate increases across the board. For enthusiastic overclockers this board is a dream come true.
The reference cooler is the shortcoming for the card; The design is loud when at the one hundred percent mark that is required when overclocked. If you leave default fan profiles the card will thermal throttle and crash, and even at 100 percent the card hits high temperatures in the 90 degree Celsius range.
In conclusion,
If you are on a budget and enjoy tinkering with overclocking this card is right up your alley. However, while the fps numbers are astronomically high for the price point in some games AMD is yet to keep this consistent across all games. For pc gaming enthusiasts looking to just throw a gpu in and game without setting configurations, you may want to look into something that performs more predictably. I love the overclocking unicorn I got and am curious what numbers you guys are getting. Let me know in the comment section below.
