AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB Graphics Card Review

[PAGETITLE=Introduction, About The RX 470 & Testing Notes][Top Ad] It sure has been an active summer for graphics so far. It all kicked-off in May, with the release of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080, which was quickly followed by the launch of the GeForce GTX 1070. Fast-forward to the following month, and AMD unleashed its Radeon RX 480, a card that saw NVIDIA leap into action to release the GeForce GTX 1060. As if that wasn't enough for a two-month span, both AMD and NVIDIA announced their brand-new Radeon Pro and Quadro workstation graphics cards at SIGGRAPH. Then, for good measure, and in advance of this review, we posted a look at 2560x1080 ultrawide performance of both the GTX 1060 and RX 480. Whew. It's been busy, and it doesn't look like things are going to be slowing down. On the test bench today is AMD's second Polaris-based release, the Radeon RX 470. The card comes in at $179 SRP, and it aims to become the ultimate "HD gaming" (1080p) card for the money. AMD Radeon Series Cores Core MHz Memory Mem MHz Mem Bus TDP Radeon RX 480 2304 1266 ≤8192MB 8000 256-bit 150W Radeon RX 470 2048 1206 4096MB 7000 256-bit 120W Radeon RX 460 896 1090 4096MB 7000 128-bit 75W Radeon Pro Duo 4096*2 1000 4096MB*2 1000 4096-bit*2 350W Radeon R9 Fury X 4096 1050 4096MB 1000 4096-bit 275W Radeon R9 Fury 3584 1000 4096MB 1000 4096-bit 275W Radeon R9 Nano 4096 1000 4096MB 1000 4096-bit 175W Radeon R9 390X 2816 1050 8192MB 6000 512-bit 275W Radeon R9 390 2560 1000 8192MB 6000 512-bit 275W Radeon R9 380X 2048 970 4096MB 5700 256-bit 190W Radeon R9 380 1792 970 4096MB 5700 256-bit 190W Based on the RX 470's specs, it's not hard to glean that it should prove just a bit slower than the top-dog RX 480. That makes it a bit of an odd model in AMD's current lineup, but that's not as odd as the pricing. The RX 480 4GB costs $200 SRP, while this RX 470 has an SRP of $180. It'd be nice to see some greater separation here, but AMD is in a bit of a rough spot since it's currently only catering to the $200-and-under market (minus the 8GB RX 480). Despite the odd pricing and minor specs difference, if performance scaling matches what we'd expect, then it kind of makes sense that this card would be priced at $180, $20 price difference be damned. Unlike the RX 480, which AMD produced a reference model for, the company is relying entirely on AIB vendors to craft cards around its GPU. A fleet of such cards can be seen below. An overclocked (+50MHz) XFX model is the one we received for testing. There's not much else to say about the RX 470, because we've known about the card for so long, and we know what to expect from its performance. So without further ado, let's just get right into testing - right after a quick look at our test system and methodologies. Testing Notes. When we need to build a test PC for performance testing, "no bottleneck" is the name of the game. While we admit that few of our readers are going to be equipped with an Intel 8-core processor clocked to 4GHz, we opt for such a build to make sure our GPU testing is as apples-to-apples as possible, with as little variation as possible. Ultimately, the only thing that matters here is the performance of the GPUs, so the more we can rule out a bottleneck, the better. That all said, our test PC: Graphics Card Test System Processors Intel Core i7-5960X (8-core) @ 4.0GHz Motherboard ASUS X99 DELUXE Memory Kingston HyperX Beast 32GB (4x8GB) - DDR4-2133 11-12-11 Graphics AMD Radeon R9 Nano 4GB – Catalyst 16.5.3 AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB - Catalyst 16.8.1 Beta AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB - Catalyst 16.6.2 Beta NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4GB – GeForce 365.22 NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X (First-gen) 12GB – GeForce 365.22 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB - GeForce 368.64 (Beta) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB - GeForce 368.19 (Beta) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB - GeForce 368.25 Audio Onboard Storage Kingston SSDNow V310 1TB SSD Power Supply Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid 1300W Chassis Cooler Master Storm Trooper Full-Tower Cooling Thermaltake WATER3.0 Extreme Liquid Cooler Displays Acer Predator X34 34" Ultra-wide Acer XB280HK 28" 4K G-SYNC ASUS MG279Q 27" 1440p FreeSync Et cetera Windows 10 Pro (10586) 64-bit Framerate information for all tests - with the exception of certain time demos and DirectX 12 tests - are recorded with the help of Fraps. For tests where Fraps use is not ideal, I use the game's built-in test (the only option for DX12 titles right now). In the past, I've tweaked the Windows OS as much as possible to rule out test variations, but over time, such optimizations have proven fruitless. As a result, the Windows 10 installation I use is about as stock as possible, with minor modifications to suit personal preferences. In all, I use 8 different games for regular game testing, 3 for DirectX 12 testing, and 1 for Vulkan testing. That's in addition to the use of three synthetic benchmarks. Because some games are sponsored, the list below helps oust potential bias in our testing. (AMD) - Ashes of the Singularity (DirectX 12) (AMD) - Battlefield 4 (AMD) - Crysis 3 (AMD) - Hitman (DirectX 12) (NVIDIA) - Metro: Last Light Redux (NVIDIA) - Rise Of The Tomb Raider (incl. DirectX 12) (NVIDIA) - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Neutral) - DOOM (incl. Vulkan) (Neutral) - Grand Theft Auto V (Neutral) - Total War: ATTILA If you're interested in benchmarking your own configuration to compare to our results, you can download this file (5MB) and make sure you're using the exact same graphics settings. I'll lightly explain how I benchmark each test before I get into each game's performance results. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Tests: Battlefield 4, Crysis 3 & DOOM][Top Ad] Battlefield 4. Thanks to the fact that DICE cares more about PC gaming than most developers, the Battlefield series continues to give us titles that are well-worth benchmarking. While Battlefield 4 is growing a little long in the tooth, it's still a great test at high resolutions. Once Battlefield 1 drops, we're sure to replace BF4. Testing: The game's Singapore level is chosen for testing, as it provides a lot of action that can greatly affect the framerate. The saved game we use starts us off on an airboat that we must steer towards shore, at which point a huge firefight commences. After the accompanying tank gets past a hump in the middle of the beach, the test is stopped. We start things off with some rather expected results. The RX 470 isn't that much slower than the RX 480 in the grand scheme, especially when we're talking 1440p resolution. At 1080p, the gap is widened a bit, but at least in BF 4, the RX 470 helped deliver better than 60 FPS on average. Crysis 3. Like Battlefield 4, Crysis 3 is getting a little up there in years. Fortunately, though, that doesn't matter, because the game is still more intensive than most current titles. Even though the game came out in 2013, if you're able to equip Very High settings at your resolution of choice, you're in a great spot. Testing: The game's Red Star Rising level is chosen for benchmarking here, with the lowest difficulty level chosen (dying during a benchmarking run is a little infuriating!) The level starts us out in a broken-down building and leads us down to a river, where we need to activate an alien device. Once this is done, the player is run back underneath a nearby roof, at which point the benchmark ends. At 1080p, the RX 470 dropped a fair bit on the minimum framerate, but it kept very close to the RX 480 on average. At 1440p, both cards offer indistinguishable performance differences, but that's only because the graphical settings are so high. DOOM. DOOM 3 was released a couple of months before Techgage launched (March 1, 2005, for the record), and it was a game featured in our GPU testing right from the get-go. For this reason, this latest DOOM feels a bit special, even though it follows DOOM 3 up eleven years later. As we hoped, the game proves to be more than suitable for GPU benchmarking. Testing: Due to time constraints, an ideal level could not be chosen for benchmarking. Instead, our test location starts us off at the bottom of a short set of stairs early on in the game, where we must climb them, open up a door, and then go to a big room where demons are taken care of and the benchmark is stopped. The RX 470 is no slouch in DOOM. Even at 1440p with High detail levels, the card delivers a smooth 50 FPS. At 1080p, the game is a piece of cake. A glorious gib-filled cake. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Tests: Grand Theft Auto V, Metro Last Light & Rise Of The Tomb Raider][Top Ad] Grand Theft Auto V. Does a game like this even need an introduction? Any Grand Theft Auto game on the PC is a 'console port', proven by the fact that it always comes to the PC long after the consoles, but Rockstar has at least done PC gamers a favor here by offering them an almost overwhelming number of graphical options to fine-tune, helping to make it suitable for benchmarking, especially at high resolutions. Testing: The mission Repossession is chosen for testing here, with the benchmark starting as soon as our character makes his way to an unsuspecting car. The benchmark ends after a not-so-leisurely drive to a parking garage, right before a cutscene kicks in. The 1080p graph above might seem a bit odd as the best-performing card is in the center, but that's due to the fact that the RX 480 somehow managed to deliver a better minimum result, and I weigh that a bit more heavily than the overall (no one wants a game that dips to 30 FPS or under). That said, in both of the 1080p and 1440p tests, the RX 470 delivered some rather impressive performance - 53 FPS at 1440p full detail is excellent. Metro Last Light Redux. Like a couple of other games in our stable, Metro Last Light might seem like an odd choice give its age. After all, the original version of the game came out in 2013, and its Redux version came out in late 2014. None of that matters, though, as the game is about as hardcore as it can get when it comes to GPU...

AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB Graphics Card Review

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Rob Williams