Well once people saw the extra 4 GB on the board it wasn't long until some unlocked them. It doesn't seem too difficult. https://www.techpowerup.com/223913/...to-8gb-memory-unlock-mod-works-we-benchmarked
Sounds like the people who bought the $199 "4GB" reference cards got a great deal. Well, minus the power issues I guess.
Doom just added Vulcan support and you can see the 480 start to creep up behind the 980Ti and 1070 witha 40% jump in performance. This is one of the reasons I'm still a little hesitant to drop $400 on a 1070. Nvidia is the DX11 performance king but next gen is DX12 and that's where AMD shines. Rise of the Tomb Raider also came out with a DX12 patch. The Fury X gets about a 16% to 28% performance increase at 1440p. The 980Ti is neither hindered or helped by it.
While I don't think any final conclusions can be taken from Vulkan/DX12 games just yet I feel the same - buying for performance in DX11 is a little short sighted at this point. That said it's too bad AMD won't be offering a GPU I can upgrade to for at least 4-8 months. The only upgrade I'd consider now is a 1070 and they are overpriced as it is before considering the changing landscape DX12 and vulkan willbring.
Looks like the 480 is a decent Ethereum miner and can make $45.50 a month. It would pay for itself in about 5 months. https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/sapphire/radeon-rx-480-ethereum-mining/
Hardware Canucks revisited their RX480 8GB vs 1060 GTX 6GB comparison and retested 20 games. In just 5 months the 480 has caught up to the 1060 in DX11 and gotten slightly faster in DX12. http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...945-gtx-1060-vs-rx-480-updated-review-23.html