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　　Our inaugural episode of Close to the Metal kicks of with big news — a full review of AMD’s new Radeon RX 480 video card.As the first hardware based on the new Polaris architecture, and AMD’s first new GPU of 2016, the card faces steep expectations. AMD has generally fallen behind its main competitor, Nvidia, in the last few years. The recent Nvidia GTX 1070 and 1080 saw widespread praise despite high pricing and limited availability.

　　The red team wants to use that to its advantage. The RX 480 starts at $200 with 4GB of GDDR5 memory, with an optional upgrade to 8GB quoated at $240. This positions the card at the “sweet spot” for gaming hardware. According to the Steam hardware survey, the vast majority of gamers are unwilling to buy cards priced much beyond the $200 price point.

　　Of course, Nvidia already has a well regarded video card at that price point. The GTX 960. Can AMD defeat it to take the throne of budget gaming? And if so, are there any downsides that might annoy gamers enough to keep them with team green? We’ll discuss all that, and more, as we give the AMD Radeon RX 480 the works.

　　This podcast features Matt Smith, Brad Bourque and Greg Nibler.

　　Close to the Metal is a podcast from Digital Trends that focuses on the geekier side of life. It tackles the topics PC enthusiasts argue over in language everyone can understand. Please subscribe, share, and send your questions to [email protected]. We broadcast the show live on YouTube every Wednesday at 1pm EST/10am PST.