At a launch event in Australia earlier this week AMD talked about its Polaris architecture, launched the RX 480 and revealed the specifications for the Polaris 10-based RX 470 and Polaris 11-derived RX 470 GPUs. The new budget GPUs are aimed at 1080p or lower gaming and will allegedly be available for purchase sometime in August.
First up is the AMD Radeon RX 470. This GPU is based on Polaris 10 (like the RX 480) but has some hardware disabled (mainly the number of stream processors). Based on the same 14nm process the GPU has 2,048 cores running at not yet known clocks. Thankfully, AMD has left the memory interface intact, and the RX 470 uses the same 256-bit memory bus pairing the GPU with 4GB of GDDR5 memory on the reference design and up to 8GB GDDR5 on partner cards.
Speaking of the reference design, the reference RX 470 will utilize a blower style cooler that AIBs can use but AMD expects that partners will opt to use their own custom dual and triple fan coolers (as would I). The card is powered by a single 6-pin power connector though, again, AIBs are allowed to design a card with more.
This card is reportedly aimed at 1080p gaming at "ultra and max settings". Video outputs will include DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 HDR support.
Breaking away from Polaris 10 is the RX 460 which is the first GPU AMD has talked about using Polaris 11. This GCNv4 architecture is similar it its larger Polaris sibling but is further cut down and engineered for low power and mobile environments. While the "full" Polaris 11 appears to have 16 CUs (Compute Units), RX 460 will feature 14 of them (this should open up opportunities for lots of salvaged dies and once yields are good enough we might see a RX 465 or something with all of its stream processors enabled). With 14 CUs, that means RX 460 has 896 stream processors (again clock speeds were not discussed) and a 128-bit memory bus. AMD's reference design will pair this card with 2GB of GDDR5 but I would not be surprised to see 4GB versions possibly in a gaming laptop SKU if only just because it looks better (heh). There is no external PCI-E power connector on this card so it will be drawing all of its power from the PCI-E slot on the motherboard.
The reference graphics card is a tiny affair with a single fan HSF and support for DP 1.3/1.4 HDR. AMD further mentions 4K H.264 / HEVC encoding/decoding support. AMD is positioning this card at HTPCs and "eSports" budget gamers.
One other tidbit of information from the announcement was that AMD reiterated their new "RX" naming scheme saying that RX would be reserved for gaming and we would no longer see R9, R7, and R5 branding though AMD did not rule out future products that would not use RX aimed at other non-gaming workloads. I would expect that this will apply to APU GPUs eventually as well.
Naturally, AMD is not talking exact shipping dates or pricing but expect them to be well under the $239 of the RX 480! I would guess that RX 470 would be around the $150 mark while RX 460 will be a sub $100 part (if only barely).
What do you think about the RX 470 and RX 460? If you are interested in watching the whole event, there is a two part video of it available on YouTube. Part 1 and Part 2 are embedded below the break.
And:
470 will make many people
470 will make many people ignore cards over $200, both the RX 480 and GTX 1060 and also older Maxwell and 300 series cards. On the other hand if RX 460 is as fast as an R9 370, people who don’t spend more than $100 will be very pleased.
The RX 470 may take the best
The RX 470 may take the best price/performance metric, and should overclock nicely. I’m waiting to see some RX 470 benchmarks both single and dual card benchmarks. I’ll bet that AMD will not be restricting any cross-fire abilities on their Polaris GPUs, like Nvidia is doing with its GTX 1060/Pascal SKU. Hopefully both The Vulkan and DX12 APIs’ ability to manage GPU mult-adaptor will put an end to any dependency on driver support for multi-GPU usage from the few GPU makers.
The one interesting benefit of the new graphics APIs is that most of the development/R&D for better multi-GPU load balancing will be shifted from those few GPU makers to the many games/gaming engine developers and OS/API developers so there will be more investment in getting better Multi-GPU scaling and load balancing software/middleware to get the most out of all the GPUs plugged into a PC/laptop/other devices. The gaming engine makers specifically along with the OS/graphics API developers/maintainers and the games makers will be in competition with each other to get that maximum performance out of any and all GPUs on a computing platform so that competition is going to drive plenty of Multi-Graphics adapter innovation.
Hell even for MOBA and eSports gaming I’d like to see some under-clocked RX 470 benchmarks against some RX 460 benchmarks, just to see how much into the low power usage metrics and heat generated metrics the RX 470 could get relative to the RX 460. Just look at the R9 Nano’s performance/watt metrics that is obtained from lower clocks while still having the full complement of CUs/other units relative to the Fury X. That RX 470 under-clocked may still have some interesting performance metrics under-clocked relative to the RX 460 for MOBA/eSports gaming.
if the 470 used the same
if the 470 used the same cooler as the 480, it should be able to better sustain ‘boost’ clocks.
And thats the interesting part.
The RX 480 can run 5% slower because of power/TDP limits …
The RX 470 is only 10% slower on paper, but also get >10% headroom thermally and power wise.
So if the RX 470 is not throttled, the RX 470 might be able to almost match the reference RX 480.
From what I heard they won’t
From what I heard they won’t have a reference 470, just aib cards?
From the third paragraph of
From the third paragraph of the article:
“Speaking of the reference design, the reference RX 470 will utilize a blower style cooler that AIBs can use but AMD expects that partners will opt to use their own custom dual and triple fan coolers (as would I).”
“well under the $239 of the
“well under the $239 of the RX 480′..
I jut got my RX 480 from Amazon for $199..
so I would hope the 470 and 460 sell for indeed less than $240
side note, if the 470 was available , I would have picked it over the 480.
The reference 470 actually sound actually like a perfect product.
The MSRP for an 8GB RX480 is
The MSRP for an 8GB RX480 is $239. If you get a better dead that doesn’t mean it’s the regular price.
link to the amazon rx480, I
link to the amazon rx480, I can’t find it nowhere!
This makes comment number 9.
This makes comment number 9. If this is all the buzz AMD can generate for their bottom drawer performance cards, then they are not going to get many sales even if the price is affordable.
Is the 470 gonna honestly be 110 watts or will it boost to 175 watts? LOL
Looks like a winner in price/performance ratio through. A Chevy Cavalier would top a Ferrari in this too but which would you rather have. A 10 year old used car would also win this category even when compared to same model. It’s a bad metric to measure by. It’s only useful when comparing an apple to apple(red). Doesn’t compare to a lime(green). Can’t mix types.
Better metric is performance/watt. Can be used to compare all brands. It uses capability of product and not skewed price which is an uncontrolled factor. Price is influenced by things such as demand, brand recognition, age and rebating to name a few. Wattage used is largely static and built in.
Price only comes in at play if it’s your limiting factor. For example what is the best I can get for x amount of dollars. A card high in price/performance ironically doesn’t get you it. The bad value ones get it. You get what you pay for.
FWIW I used to be in that category. I used to buy $100-$200 video cards but had to upgrade sooner. A game came out where the old card was either not supported or ran like crap. I bought two $250+ cards. My last two were custom model 460 and 760, purchased at release for retail price. I’ve been pleased with the performance but now is time to upgrade soon. My advice is to save as much as you can and spring for the better card. You’ll spend less in the long run and have more fun gaming at higher frame rates instead of having to fine tune settings to merely run a game.
People do more with GPUs that
People do more with GPUs that just game, so AMD is the better option for less price for rendering and compute acceleration. I hate that the simple minded gaming GITs think that GPUs are only for gaming and nothing else and will still throw all of their dollars at Nvidia. It’s good that AMD is there with some consumer GPU SKUs that have more compute for other uses at a much more affordable price.
And Now that Vulkan/DX12 gaming is making use of AMD’s extra compute for gaming, and the VR gaming folks are stating that AMD’s fully in the GPUs hardware async-compute is the way to go for the low latency responce that VR gaming needs. Just look at That GCN compute go on Vulkan and DX12 even for those with older GCN generations cards. You are not going to see that with any of Nvidia’s older generation cards, those JHH fans get their older cards performance green goblin gimped so customers have to spend spend spend for the “new” pricy Goblin’s Kit!
You forgot to mention mining
You forgot to mention mining I’m trying to decide if I should build more rigs with 460s or less with 470s the watt to performance is the limiting factor, of course with the 460s 1 750w PSU would power 6 that’s really cool
You forgot to mention mining
You forgot to mention mining I’m trying to decide if I should build more rigs with 460s or less with 470s the watt to performance is the limiting factor, of course with the 460s 1 750w PSU would power 6 that’s really cool