AMD's $199 Radeon RX 480 Graphics Card is VR-Ready

AMD has announced a new Radeon RX 480 graphics card priced at $199 and capable of "delivering VR capability common in $500 GPUs." The Radeon RX 480 is scheduled to launch on June 29, with a model that is certified to power the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

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The card is part of AMD's strategy to "dramatically accelerate VR adoption" and grow the market. It will be the first card to use a Polaris architecture-based processor. According to AMD, the company noted from the results of a survey that high costs represented the highest barrier to VR adoption.

The Radeon RX 480 specifications are:

TFLOPS	>5
CUs	36
Memory Bandwidth	256 GB/s
Data Rate (Effective)	8 Gbps
Memory Size	4/8 GB GDDR5
Memory Bit-rate	256-bit
Power	150 W
VR Premium	Yes
AMD FreeSync	Yes
Display Port	1.4/1.4 HDR

The announcement notes that AMD intends for Polaris architecture-based cards to bring VR-ready desktops and notebooks to market over the next ten years.

Three months ago AMD revealed the "most powerful graphics card in the world"--the $1500 Radeon Pro Duo, aimed at VR developers. While the price point is a far cry from the $199 Radeon RX 480, the card signifies AMD's heavy investment in virtual reality.

More recently, competitor Nvidia released the GeForce GTX 1070, a $379 GPU which the company claims is more powerful than the $1,000 GeForce GTX Titan X. We tested the graphics card in our recent review; see the results for yourself.