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AMD Radeon RX 480 Mobile

AMD Radeon RX 480 Mobile: A Hybrid of Power and Affordability in 2025

Overview of the mobile GPU for gamers and creative tasks

1. Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 3: The Foundation for Mobile Solutions

The AMD Radeon RX 480 Mobile graphics card is built on the updated RDNA 3 architecture, adapted for laptops. The fabrication process is 4 nm, courtesy of TSMC, which has allowed for a 15% reduction in power consumption compared to the previous generation.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3): Upscaling technology with AI-based frame interpolation support. In games like Starfield 2 or Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, FSR 3 boosts FPS by 40-60% without significant quality loss.

- Ray Accelerators: Second-generation hardware ray tracing. Compared to RDNA 2, computational speeds have increased by 50%, but it still lags behind NVIDIA's RTX 40 series.

- Hybrid Compute: Optimization for simultaneous gaming and background tasks (streaming, recording).

2. Memory: Speed and Size

GDDR6: A Balance of Cost and Performance

The RX 480 Mobile is equipped with 8 GB GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth is 448 GB/s, which is 18% higher than its predecessor, the RX 6700M.

Impact on Gaming:

- For 1080p/1440p, this is sufficient even for high-resolution textures in projects like Horizon Forbidden West PC Edition.

- At 4K, there may be limitations in games at ultra settings, but FSR 3 compensates for memory shortages.

3. Gaming Performance

1080p — Ideal Environment, 1440p — Comfortable, 4K — With Reservations

In tests conducted in April 2025 (driver Adrenalin 24.4.1), the card shows the following results:

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra, FSR 3 Quality):

- 1080p: 78 FPS

- 1440p: 54 FPS

- 4K: 32 FPS (with Fluid Motion Frames activated — up to 48 FPS).

- Apex Legends (Ultra):

- 1080p: 144 FPS

- 1440p: 102 FPS

- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (RT Medium):

- 1080p: 65 FPS (without FSR), 89 FPS (with FSR 3).

Ray Tracing: Enabling RT reduces FPS by 35-50%, but when used with FSR 3, gameplay remains comfortable.

4. Professional Tasks

Not Just for Gaming, But for Work Too

- Video Editing: In Premiere Pro, rendering a 4K video takes 20% less time compared to the RTX 4050 Mobile, thanks to optimization for OpenCL.

- 3D Modeling: In Blender, render cycles on the RX 480 Mobile are comparable to the RTX 3060 Mobile, but NVIDIA's CUDA acceleration is still preferred.

- Scientific Calculations: Support for ROCm 5.5 allows the GPU to be used for machine learning, but for serious tasks, it's better to choose cards with 16+ GB of memory.

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP 120 Watts: Requires Thoughtful Cooling

- TDP: 120 W (can be reduced to 90 W in energy-efficient mode).

- Laptop Recommendations:

- Chassis with a dual-fan system and heat pipes (e.g., ASUS TUF Gaming A16).

- Avoid ultrabooks — inadequate cooling will lead to throttling.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Battle of Prices and Technologies

- NVIDIA RTX 4050 Mobile (6 GB): Approximately 10-15% weaker in games without RT, but performs better with ray tracing (+25% to FPS). Price: $900-$1100 compared to $750-$900 for RX 480 Mobile.

- Intel Arc A770M (16 GB): Handles 4K better, but drivers are still unstable. Price: $800-$1000.

- AMD RX 7600M XT: Closest equivalent, but RX 480 Mobile offers 8% more performance for the same $800.

7. Practical Advice

How to Avoid Problems?

- Power Supply: The laptop should have a PSU of at least 180 W.

- Compatibility: Ensure the system supports PCIe 4.0 x8.

- Drivers: Regularly update Adrenalin Edition — for example, version 24.4.1 added FSR 3.5 support for 20 new games.

8. Pros and Cons

✅ Strengths:

- Excellent price-to-performance ratio in 1080p/1440p.

- Support for FSR 3 and Fluid Motion Frames.

- Energy efficiency for a mobile platform.

❌ Weaknesses:

- Ray tracing significantly lags behind NVIDIA.

- Only 8 GB of memory — this may not suffice for 4K gaming in 2025.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Is the RX 480 Mobile For?

This graphics card is an ideal choice for:

- Gamers who want to play at high settings in 1080p/1440p without overpaying.

- Students and creatives needing a balance between work and gaming.

- Travelers who value energy efficiency.

At a price of $750-$900, the RX 480 Mobile offers the best value for money in its segment, especially if you are not willing to pay for the "NVIDIA" brand. However, for professional tasks focused on rendering or 4K gaming, it may be worth considering more powerful models.

Prices are current as of April 2025 and refer to new devices in retail stores in the USA.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

August 2016

Model Name

Radeon RX 480 Mobile

Generation

Mobility Radeon

Base Clock

1000MHz

Boost Clock

1077MHz

Bus Interface

MXM-B (3.0)

Transistors

5,700 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

144

Foundry

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

2000MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

256.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

34.46 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

155.1 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

4.963 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

310.2 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

5.062 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

2304

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

100W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

5.062 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Quadro P4000

5.198 +2.7%

FirePro W9100

5.133 +1.4%

Radeon RX 480 Mobile

5.062

GRID M60 1Q

4.922 -2.8%

Radeon RX 570 X2

4.841 -4.4%