 Large, powerful, expensive graphics cards are fun, but they often require a similarly endowed wallet in order to afford them. This can make the achievability of high-end gaming rather frustrating. Enter the RX 480, which may just be the remedy you've been looking for at the impressive price of around $200 USD a dose. Cooler Master's MasterCase Maker 5 features their freeform modular system allowing you to customize, adjust, and upgrade on your own. Make it yours at the link in the video description down below. Jokes about the new RX naming aside, the new Polaris architecture, named after what is commonly known as the North Star, features AMD's new and quite capable 14nm FinFET process, which should be especially helpful on the power consumption side of things. The fourth generation GCN architecture in the RX 480 features 2,304 stream processors running at a boost clock of 1,266 MHz for a peak performance of up to 5.8 teraflops. The default memory configurations will be 4GB of GDDR5 memory running at 7GBps on the reference config and up to 8GB of GDDR5 memory running at 8GBps on other possible variations. AMD has also stated that aftermarket configs may vary but will always feature memory clocks of 7GBps at least. All that memory will be running on a 256-bit memory interface with a bandwidth of 224GBps. In terms of features, we now have nanananana Wattman, Wattman. Okay that was lame and that almost fell but it's actually kind of cool. At first it looks like just a simple overclocking utility and it can be but it also has some other cool stuff as well like per voltage point frequency offsets like the ones we recently saw toted on the Nvidia 1000 series GPUs. This allows you to increase the normally linear frequency offset curve, specific amounts per voltage point being applied to the card. This results in more control over how your card works. Great. It also gives you a histogram of the last 20 minutes of your card's activity percentage, core clock speed, memory clock speed, temperature, and fan speed which should make it easier to identify issues. We'll have more fun with Wattman later when we get some aftermarket cooled cards. The card features a cooler reminiscent of the awesome looking aesthetic of the R9 Nano, but just more cheaply. There's more plastic incorporated in the design and in places where the Nano would have had shiny metal, the 480 features glossy plastic. It also features an extension beyond the slightly longer than a Nano PCB in order to add some more heatsink space and incorporating the fan. Due to this, the 6-pin PCIe connector doesn't sit at the end of the card which some people may not like. Overall, I think it's a pretty attractive card for this price point if you're going for something that isn't too in your face. Also note that naturally there will be aftermarket cards if you don't like it. For connectivity on the back there are three display port outputs compatible with DP1.3HBR3 and DisplayPort 1.4HDR. Then the HDMI port is HDMI 2.0B for 4K60 and HDR. Now for the current state of crossfire. Nvidia's SLI set up with the 1000 series and DirectX 12 was a public relations nightmare. AMD is going to be handling things in a very similar way, but leaning heavily on out of driver control like in explicit modes for link display adapter mode and multi-display adapter mode. Not much here is changing for the vast majority of users on the AMD side in a visible way. So just check out my video on SLI for more info. As much of it is crossover and it's probably going to be fine. But all the features in the world aren't worth an election in North Korea if the performance isn't up to par. So let's take a look at some numbers. AMD promised a high level of performance at a price point of just $200 and they mostly delivered on that. Performance at 1440p was mostly on par with the GTX 970 in current titles with the RX 480 breaking 40 FPS in all of our benchmarks with the settings cranked and even blew away the 970 in Hitman though that is a heavily AMD optimized title. The RX 480 is even capable of playable frame rates at 4K with the settings turned down a bit to around medium. Now this isn't a top end card, but it wasn't designed to be. The goal was to raise the bar at the $200 mark and given that the cheapest GTX 970 on the market at the time of writing this review was $260, AMD has put forth an extremely compelling card for budget conscious gamers who are looking for the quintessential millennium falcon of graphics cards. Something that isn't flashy but has it where it counts. Especially when you consider that it matches the GTX 970, a card that was considered the sweet spot for high end gaming until the 1070s release a few weeks ago and for significantly less money. I'd go even as far as to say if you don't have the cash for a GeForce 10 series and just care about raw performance rather than aesthetics or manufacturer exclusive features like Ansel or SMP or something like that, there's no reason to buy a GTX 970 anymore now that the RX 480 is on the market. The 480 was a smart move from AMD. Competing against Nvidia's 1080 would have been a little crazy. Shooting for the value option was smart as it fits something that people are actually asking for and beating out Nvidia's recently price dropped cards handily in the price to performance department was a perfect target for them to shoot for. Considering how their funds have been trending lately, hopefully the community agrees as well. The K7XX limited edition ruby red headphones which are featured over on Massdrop at the link in the video description. Massdrop has actually not just that but tons of cool products that you can check out. Everything from camping supplies to keyboards to audio products like the K7XX's that I'm showing off now. The concept over there is pretty simple. The more people commit to buy a given product, the lower the price of that totally authentic product from the manufacturer or an authorized distributor gets. Boom. When lots of people buy, price goes down. Spec wise, the headphones I'm featuring today are the same as the ones that I reviewed last year which you can check out over here with the only real difference being that this run uses red accents on the ear cups and on the headband. Like many drops, this is a limited time, limited quantity drop so if you want a pair you're going to have to act pretty fast. So check them out at the link in the video description if you're looking for a really nice open backed, comfortable pair of headphones. If you liked this video, like it! If you want a shirt, you can check that out in the video description down below and if you want to join the forum so you can hotly debate the hot or not specs of the 480, you can do that but like debate it in a friendly way or something I guess. If you want to see another video, check up here. That's our new 1070 review which is like nearly twice the price but pretty cool. I don't know how I want to outro this. I'm going to walk this way. Usually I walk that way. I don't know where I'm going.