peripherals . Naturally all this functionality should be available in one software suit , but at the time of writing once again it wasn ’ t . Since then however , there is a beta 1.03.48 AURA utility that combines all LED configuration under a single application , supporting some keyboards , mice , motherboards and of course graphics cards including this one .
Going back to performance . An unfortunate part to the RX480 STRIX , which affects all RX480 cards is the 9GHz limit on the memory frequency . Given that the memory ICs are known to reach far beyond that limit , it is a pity that there ’ s nothing that can be readily done to lift this cap . This small increase in maximum clocks would have come in especially handy again for those who would wish to extract as much as they could from this graphics card under LN2 . Not too much of an issue when using air cooling and playing games , as the performance limit on the GPU is not alleviated by a meaningful amount when the memory is overclocked . As you expect though , as the GPU frequency increases , the requirements on the memory bandwidth increase as well and this is where one would see the merits of the ability to run a much higher clock .
That said , it is a limitation imposed by AMD and not ASUS . So , while one remains confident that more could be extracted from this graphics card , it cannot be tested because of this limit . 9GHz was easy to reach and game stable so if you ’ re able to , you may as well create a profile with the memory at this frequency . I ’ ve yet to come across or read about an RX480 which cannot achieve this , so the odds are your particular sample will have no issue here either .
Finally , we get to what the future may hold for anyone purchasing this graphics card . As it is , one still leans heavily towards the GTX1060 simply because it ’ s marginally faster , the simpler driver to live with , and some features within GeForce Experience ( ANSEL etc .). Obviously , all those are concerned with gaming , which is ultimately what this card is for as well . On the flip side of that , it does seem as if AMD has NVIDIA ’ s number when it comes to titles that are capable of exploiting the latest APIs mainly DX12
36 The OverClocker Issue 40 | 2017