AMD Radeon RX 460 Evaluation

We were given our first take a look at AMD’s cut-down Polaris 10 remaining week with the Radeon RX 470. With 11% fewer cores, a 5% decrease working frequency and an 18% aid in reminiscence frequency, the efficiency hit wasn’t just about as vital as we had expected. If truth be told, in our conclusion we known as it “almost an RX 480.”

Some reviewers have known as the Radeon RX 470 needless as a result of a trifling $20 extra buys the 4GB RX 480, however we discovered that the 470 may well be overclocked to check the 480. Moreover, the Asus RX 470 Strix card runs slightly cool and quiet whilst we have but to look customized RX 480 playing cards.

However nevermind all that… subsequent in line is a Polaris 11 phase that begins at best $109.

The brand new Radeon RX 460 could also be being unveiled via board companions because of this it must be to be had instantly. We now have the Sapphire Nitro RX 460 OC 4GB readily available for checking out, so let’s speak about what AMD hopes to succeed in with the RX 460 earlier than we get to the benchmarks.

We knew going into this overview that Polaris 11 could be a lot smaller than Polaris 10, which is a bit of complicated given the naming scheme. Merchandise in keeping with the Polaris 11 die can also be turning up in ultra-portable units as the facility draw is anticipated to be very low and we’re going to take a look at that in a while.

At the desktop, AMD hopes to seize the access degree eSports marketplace via offering applicable 1080p efficiency in titles corresponding to CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, Overwatch and Rocket League, as an example.

Normally, avid gamers on the cheap have grew to become to price efficient choices such because the GTX 950 and R7 370. Each price smartly below $200 with the GTX 950 beginning at $160 and the R7 370 at simply $150. It is believed that AMD is focused on a identical degree of efficiency for the RX 460 however at an much more sexy worth level.

Protecting that during thoughts and our expectancies in take a look at, let’s transfer on to take a look at this new GPU in higher element…

Sapphire Nitro RX 460 OC 4GB

Polaris 11 is any other GCN 4th era structure constructed the use of the 14nm procedure. As an itty bitty GPU, you would not be expecting the graphics card itself to be very huge. AMD’s reference card is somewhat small at simply 150mm lengthy, which is not for much longer than the gap from the I/O finish of the cardboard to the again of the PCIe connector, it is a baby-sized graphics card.

The reference card is coupled with an similarly small cooler so you’ll be able to safely think it runs sizzling and generates a excellent little bit of noise. That is the place our customized unit must excel regardless that to my wonder Sapphire crammed an incredibly huge graphics card within the field — one that appears very similar to their RX 470 and RX 480 Nitro fashions...

Measuring 220mm lengthy, it is over 40% longer than the AMD reference and given Sapphire’s outsized PCB, the cardboard stands 122mm tall.

Below the cooler, the RX 460 GPU is attached to 4GB of GDDR5 reminiscence clocked at 1700MHz for a knowledge fee of 7Gbps. Apparently, the reminiscence interface has been decreased to 128-bit vast which has slashed the bandwidth to only 112GB/s, a 47% aid from the RX 470 and actually that is even much less bandwidth than the R7 370 has to play with via somewhat a big margin.

In comparison to the R7 370, the RX 460 additionally has 13% fewer cores, packing 896 SPUs at the side of 56 TMUs and 16 ROPs. It is a huge 56% minimize in core configuration over the RX 470, so we expect an enormous drop in efficiency right here.

In comparison to earlier era AMD GPUs, the saving grace for the RX 460 is that it could function at as much as 1.2GHz and must by no means drop under 1.09GHz when gaming. That is as much as a 23% frequency spice up over the R7 370 which must assist in making up for having 13% much less cores.

Sapphire has manufacturing unit “overclocked” its Nitro RX 460 OC 4GB to a spice up frequency of 1250MHz, a trifling 4% overclock. However for the aim of checking out we’ve clocked the cardboard again to 1200MHz for an even comparability with the remainder of our reference-clocked lineup.

The AMD RX 460 reference card includes a unmarried HDMI output, DisplayPort output and dual-link DVI output, and this similar configuration is located at the Sapphire Nitro. On the reverse finish we additionally discover a unmarried 6-pin PCIe energy connector which is able to supply this RX 460 graphics card with greater than sufficient energy.