AMD's budget (under $200) Polaris-based graphics cards are coming next week, and the leaks are starting to appear online. In the case of the Radeon RX 470, AMD is expecting that most (if not all) of its board partners will be using their own custom coolers. Thanks to Chinese technology site EXPReview, we finally have an idea of what an RX 470 will look like – or at least what an XFX-branded RX 470 will look like!
The website posted several photos of the alleged (but likely legitimate) XFX RX 470 "Black Wolf" graphics card which will probably be branded as the XFX RX 470 Double Dissipation in North America. This is a dual slot card with dual fan cooler that measures 9.45 inches long. Three copper heat pipes pull heat into an aluminum heatsink that is cooled by two 80mm fans that can reportedly be removed by the user for cleaning (and maybe user RMA replacement like Sapphire is planning). The card also features a full backplate and LED-backlit XFX logo along the side of the card. The design is all black with a white XFX logo.
Video outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.0b, and one DL-DVI which seems about right for this price point.
The card is powered by a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector and the card will use AMD's RX 470 GPU and 4GB of GDDR5 memory. The RX 470 features 2048 cores, 128 texture units, and 32 raster operators, This is essentially a RX 480 GPU with four less Compute Units though it maintains the same number of ROPs and the same 256-bit memory bus. We do not know clockspeeds on this custom cooled XFX card yet, but overclockers may well be able to push clocks further than they could on RX 480 (there are less cores so the chips may be able to be pushed further on clocks), but it is hard to say right now. I would expect out of the box clocks to be a bit above the reference RX 470 clocks of 926 MHz base and 1206 MHz boost.
You can check out all of the photos of this card here.
Stay tuned to PC Perspective for more RX 470 and RX 460 news as we near the official launch dates!
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I get the feeling that the RX
I get the feeling that the RX 470 is going to be the real sweet spot for Polaris.
Rumors going about as well that you might be able to upgrade the RX 470 to an RX 480 but unlocking the software disabled CUs like with a 290->290X, and also with Fiji chip’s like the Fury.
I still want some RX 470
I still want some RX 470 options with 8 pin power, and most of the power supplied by the 8 pin. That should give plenty of overclocking headroom. Hope there will be some dual RX 470 benchmarks coming under Vulkan managed multi-GPU, for games that are optimized for Vulkan and Linux.
Not excited about this. I had
Not excited about this. I had an XFX card literally go up in smoke. In my experience they also seemed to run hotter than any other brand. Hopefully that changed since they appear to be moving away from the metal shroud.
I still hold a special place for Sapphire cards though. Show me a Toxic 490 edition and I’ll hand deliver my money to their bank.
Hmm, that’s pretty awful.
I
Hmm, that’s pretty awful.
I had an XFX R9 290X 8GB and it was a good card.
Granted, raising the power limit and adding more voltage – the two fans honestly couldn’t keep up with the temperature, it would just start throttling – but never did it combust, lol.
Although I do have a Sapphire HD Radeon 6850 that is still going strong to this day.
A sample size of one card
A sample size of one card doesn’t really tell you much. I’ve personally had great luck with XFX. The only card I had die was a Powercolor HD3870. It had a bug where updating the driver caused the fan to stop spinning. Luckily on mine I noticed the problem and reverted the driver, but I built a machine for a friend who didn’t know about the issue, and he burnt his up.
Anyhow, I personally feel that XFX is the top of the heap as far as AMD based cards, because they specialize in them.
Wow, that’s one heck of a
Wow, that's one heck of a driver update! Good thing you noticed!
FWIW my XFX 6950 unlocked and is still going strong to this day though it's always been resistant to memory overclocks. Taking the heatsink off and putting on the waterblock was interesting as not all the screw holes lined up perfectly as they should have (just sliiightly off far enough I couldn't use them), but other than that no complaints and it's not really XFX's problem since their reference heatsink fit lol.
I like Sapphire though, I had a 3850 for awhile. It ended up dying (would not output any video – could see it in the OS if i installed another GPU but could never get any of the display outputs to work heh) on me but at that point it was way past time to upgrade anyway!
Software controlled clock
Software controlled clock speed optimizers can be hindered by overall computer performance, heavy loads can cause it to misread the maximum potential clock speed of the graphics card at any given moment. XFX’s True Clock however is hardware controlled clock speed performance optimization so it’s always running at peak performance all the time.
AMD CrossFire technology lets
AMD CrossFire technology lets you connect multiple graphics cards to amplify your system’s graphics processing capability including enhancements that set a new standard of consistent and smooth gameplay. As sophisticated as the Polaris architecture based graphics cards are, the software that powers the cards is equally as sophisticated. Radeon™ Software delivers the ultimate in performance, features and stability to help ensure an exceptionally smooth and fast out of the box experience.
Spambot that actually uses
Spambot that actually uses superscript … or is that you, Red Team?
Luckily on mine I noticed the
Luckily on mine I noticed the problem and reverted the driver, but I built a machine for a friend who didn’t know about the issue, and he burnt his up 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.1