AMD and its board partners will officially launch the first Polaris 11 GPU and the Radeon RX 460 graphics cards based around that processor on August 8th. Fortunately Videocardz.com got a hold of an image that shows off Sapphire's take on the RX 460 in the form of a factory overclocked and custom cooled RX460 Nitro OC. This gives us a hint at the kinds of cards we can expect and it appears to be good news for budget gamers as it suggests that there will be several options around this firm $100 price point that are a bit more than the bare necessities.
In the case of Sapphire's RX 460 Nitro OC, it uses a custom dual fan cooler with two copper heatpipes, an aluminum fin stack (that is much larger than reference), and two 90mm fans. Display IO includes one DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort. The card itself uses a physical PCI-E x16 connector that is electrically PCI-E 3.0 x8. The x8 connection will be more than enough for this GPU though it also enables partners to cut costs.
Clockspeeds are not yet known, but the Polaris 11 GPU (896 cores, 56 TMUs, 16 ROPs) will be paired with 4GB GDDR5 memory.
It is encouraging to me to see custom cards at this price point out of the gate with the full 4GB of memory (AMD allows 2GB or 4GB versions). Gamers that simply can't justify spending much more than a hundred dollars on a GPU should have ample options to choose from and I am looking forward to seeing what all the partners have to offer.
Are you looking at Polaris 11 and the RX 460 for a super budget gaming build? What do you think about Sapphire's card with the company's custom cooler?
A RX 460 with passive cooler
A RX 460 with passive cooler would be nice to see as a card for living room PCs as well. Maybe Powercolor?
Or at least a single slot
Or at least a single slot one. The PCB under that cooler is probably half empty, like in the case of Sapphire 460 dual
http://videocardz.com/62685/xfx-and-sapphire-radeon-rx-470-460-pictured-up-close
Also this must be the first time I see a graphics card with half of the pins of the PCIe bus missing. At least I don’t remember any other.
Seems a bit overkill, no?
Was
Seems a bit overkill, no?
Was there a Polaris 11 demo running SW: Battlefront at something like 35W?
No, one stock fan will always
No, one stock fan will always be a bit louder at high RPM than two running at lower RPM.
FWIW, it is good to note that
FWIW, it is good to note that Polaris 11 itself only has a PCIe 3.0 x8 connection — it is not simply limited on this particular board, all Polaris 11 implementations will be 3.0 x8.
I figured all boards would br
I figured all boards would br x8 but good to know.
Doesn’t that potentially
Doesn’t that potentially create an issue for people trying to use this card in old boards (as one might expect given the price of this part) with only PCIe 1 or 2 support…since they too would have half the bandwidth?
I understand that at PCIe 3.0 speeds, x8 is enough, but what about half or a quarter of that speed?
It’s not a high end card.
It’s not a high end card. Also in an old system, the other parts of the system – hard disk, system memory type, CPU – will be bigger bottlenecks than the PCIe bus.
the PCB is longer than a
the PCB is longer than a reference rx 480 lol
Judging by the general non
Judging by the general non existence of aftermarket 480s STILL…the 460s and 470s should make it out…say…octoberish?
Or this week. You really
Or this week. You really never know until they’re released. Even if there are plenty to sell, there’s always a possibility of discovering a hardware issue right before it comes out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the aftermarket 480s have been held back so they can sort out the power issue.