Asus Rade on RX 480 STRIX OC Edi tion 8GB
Www.asus.com $300
The Strix line is Asus’s flagship when it comes to graphics cards and this RX 480 shows what it’s all about—premium quality and oodles of extras, including a protective metal plate covering the whole back and a three-fan cooler. This makes it reassuringly hefty but you’ll need to make sure your case has enough room for this oversized 118mm-tall by 300mm-long card.
Into that backplate is set an illuminated Republic of Gamers logo while the fans are backlit with RGB lighting too. There are also two four-pin fan headers on the edge of the card, providing a potentially convenient power point for other case fans. Talking of power, you’ll need one eight-pin power cable to provide the 175W this card needs.
All those add-ons don’t come for free—you can pick up 8GB RX 480 cards for $250—but the $50 premium for this one seems good value for such a wealth of extras. However, when it comes to overall performance the AMD RX 480 GPU at the heart of this card struggles when set against the GTX 1060. That card has a comfortable lead in our tests and, in fact, it’s nearly 50% faster in Titanfall2. With it being essentially the same price, it’s the clear choice, especially as it does all that while consuming 50W less power. 70%