Sapphire is about to launch the first modification of AMD’s graphics adapter – the Radeon RX 480. The new-comer, entitled Radeon RX 480 Nitro OC, is already available for preorder at the price tag of $322. The PCB, as well as the integrated cooling system, employs a modified design. The ‘OC’ postfix implies that the card has been overclocked to provide for a better performance.



Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro OC comes equipped with AMD Polaris 10 GPU (14 nm, FinFet, GCN). It features 2304 stream processors, 32 ROPs & 144 TMUs. The presumptive GPU clock frequency might achieve 1350 MHz. At the same time, memory subsystem hasn’t been modified: 8 GB of GDDR5 are supposed to run at 2.0/8.0 GHz (base/dynamic) frequency.


The 2-slot cooling system employs a few heatpipes, a large aluminum heatsink, a stiffening plate at the reverse side, and a couple of 100-mm fans. The latter are able to operate in passive mode when GPU temperature is low. Moreover, the model boasts the …

Currently, the situation with the total dominance of NVIDIA in the segment of top-end graphics solutions has developed. AMD is unlikely to present its progressive Vega accelerators shortly. But a series of mid-level video cards based on GPU Polaris has already been developed. Their second generation is presented, so let’s start studying the new products.


Polaris 20 Based Video Cards

The updated line of video cards includes four models: Radeon RX 580, Radeon RX 570, Radeon RX 560 and Radeon RX 550. They are direct successors of similar models of the RX400 series; in particular, the Radeon RX 580/570 replaces the Radeon RX 480/470. So, let’s consider the changes in the new video cards in this review.


The Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 570 are based on the Polaris 20 graphics processor which has no major changes with respect to Polaris 10. This is the development of the AMD GCN architecture and its fourth implementation. The GPU counts 36 Compute Unit (CU) computational …

Dell is glad to announce the upcoming release of tower-like and rack-mount lineup of workstations that is characterized by the support of up to 1 TB DDR4 RAM. Dell Precision Tower 5810/7810/7910 and Dell Precision Rack 7910 house the latest Intel Xeon processors, as well as the latest professional graphics from AMD FirePro and Nvidia Quadro series. Due to this, the greenhorns are able to ensure the highest performance in various areas, starting from complex industrial computing and finishing with animation.



Tower-type workstations come with an advanced Thunderbolt 2 interface that guarantees up to 20 Gb/sec data transfer speed. In its turn, rack-mount 2-U model totally supports for visualization on the Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX hypervisor basis. It is also equipped with an Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller, ensuring a reliable remote supervision over data center even when there is limitation of access towards the equipment.


The list of advantages offered by …