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Review: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro 4GB and 8GB OC

by Tarinder Sandhu on 29 July 2016, 14:01

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Rise of The Tomb Raider

Homepage: tombraider.com | Publisher: Square Enix | Developer: Crystal Dynamics

Awesome adventure, mind-boggling puzzles, intense action and breathtaking landscapes. We all know what to expect when Lara Croft sets out on a new mission, and Rise of the Tomb Raider is arguably one of the finest instalments in this hugely popular series.

Hold up, what's going on here, then? Why are the Sapphire cards almost 20fps faster at 1080p than the reference RX 480? The release notes of the Crimson 16.7.3 driver show there's a performance uplift compared to older drivers, but we didn't expect this much. This is the only game affected in the transition between drivers, and it feels as if it's been 'Vulkanised'.

The uplift peters out at higher resolutions, however, yet it still serves to show the importance of software optimisations. The improvements put the RX 480 on a much closer footing against the GTX 1060.