AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB Review

[Zaxx420]

I know it's still early in the game but I'm loosin any hope of seeing a custom 480 at $200. Just looked at the 470s at NewEgg....cheapest is several at...u guessed it...$200. Should be lots of competition eventually to reign in prices a bit...heh XFX is talking 7 skus. MSI has chimed in with 4..."By the end of the month.". :bangs head against wall:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20601206485&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=90

 

[elbert]

Good readup on the 8-pin PCIe for anybody who is interested http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13418

You know when AMD first introduced the 470 and 460 they claimed $150 and $100 respectively. I guess that is not the case unfortunately. However, the 470 does do surprisingly close to the 480, so the price can be justified. I see what the people on Jonnyguru mean now about the Asus coolers not being good. According to one member, sometimes the heat pipes don't even make proper contact.

This generation of GPUs has been a most interesting one.

We also know when AMD first introduced the 480 they claimed $200. Turns out that was half true, too.
Tomorrow's announcement, Tom's Hardware - PAY ATTENTION:

AMD releases the RX 479, priced at $198. It features 4095 MB of VRAM, 255-bit clocked at 1999MHz.
Base clock 1119MHz, boost clock 1265MHz, 31ROPs...
TDP 149W, PCIExpress 2.9 (!!!)

You get the point - the RX-470 priced as it is right now, is a pointless card.

I wouldn't say pointless as some chips come flawed thus turning parts of the chip off saves them money. Money which would otherwise be a total lose. The RX 470 performs on average about what a 970 does which isn't bad for $179 or even $199 for custom cards.

 

[3ogdy]

Good readup on the 8-pin PCIe for anybody who is interested http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13418

You know when AMD first introduced the 470 and 460 they claimed $150 and $100 respectively. I guess that is not the case unfortunately. However, the 470 does do surprisingly close to the 480, so the price can be justified. I see what the people on Jonnyguru mean now about the Asus coolers not being good. According to one member, sometimes the heat pipes don't even make proper contact.

This generation of GPUs has been a most interesting one.

We also know when AMD first introduced the 480 they claimed $200. Turns out that was half true, too.
Tomorrow's announcement, Tom's Hardware - PAY ATTENTION:

AMD releases the RX 479, priced at $198. It features 4095 MB of VRAM, 255-bit clocked at 1999MHz.
Base clock 1119MHz, boost clock 1265MHz, 31ROPs...
TDP 149W, PCIExpress 2.9 (!!!)

You get the point - the RX-470 priced as it is right now, is a pointless card.

I wouldn't say pointless as some chips come flawed thus turning parts of the chip off saves them money. Money which would otherwise be a total lose. The RX 470 performs on average about what a 970 does which isn't bad for $179 or even $199 for custom cards.

You're right about reusing flawed RX-480 chips. The 3 year old 3.5GB GTX 970 outperforms the RX-480 by about 10FPS on average. I was about to buy it both for my system and for other people but nVidia put me in a very difficult situation so I ended up being forced to get either the GTX 960, GTX 980 - or go for the AMD alternatives, of course.
GTX 970 is a nonexistent product for me.

 

[FormatC]

This is most likely an issue just with the Strix cooler, correct?

This is to 100% a Strix problem. It is as design issue on this custom PCB. It is stupid to place shunts and hot ICs in the near.

 

[Zaxx420]

It's prolly gonna take a few more weeks for this pricing cluster fk to sort itself out. As long as availability of 470s and esp 480s is hit n miss, retailers will take advantage. With the 480 pretty much MIA (unless you wanna pay $300) the 470 prices are bumped slightly. One look at the 470 page on NewEgg shows them at 480 prices more or less. Sapphire says the 4gb Nitro will retail at $179...this is looking like the most bang for the buck of the 470s...once they become plentiful. The conspicuous lack of 480s at msrp is driving up 470 (and 480) prices.

 

[Onus]

At that price ($180-$210), yes, it's a pointless card. It needs to come down, likely to around $160-$170; it would do well there.

 

[Retrogame]

With respect to the issues with the fans, I own a pair of R9 380's done by ASUS with their DirectCU II heatsink. The VRM temperature on those cards generally goes unacceptably high playing an intense game with the factory fan curves. I found setting the fans to a consistent level that's just below the audible threshold of getting buzzing and unpleasant noise resulted in much better thermal regulation of the whole package. Instead of using a fan curve, I would just set the fan to 49% before running an intensive game and leave it there. The default ASUS fan curves were programmed to actually allow the fans to turn OFF entirely and give you "0 db gaming" for when you're playing MMOs that don't need as much horsepower. It even says so on the box. Once the fans are set to a reasonable speed the Strix cards were perfectly fine in terms of thermal regulation and the VRM didn't hit 95 C any more, more like 75 to 80.

The 470 and 480 from this year seem to follow the same trend at least insofar as the heatsink design and the fan curves go.

As for the price point, it's a bit artificial. I think people might consider buying a 470 if it's on sale or there's a mail in rebate. Also, at least here in Canada, I can't even see any of the 4 GB variations of the 480 being listed anywhere, so in some markets, the "why buy the 470 because the 4 GB 480 is the same price" question won't happen, because the latter will not be available. Back in the R9 200 series heyday a couple years back, the reference designs were not sufficient to handle the Hawaii GPU's thermals so more exotic 3rd party designs from ASUS and MSI and Gigabyte carried the day. But I remember that did some wonky things to pricing too.

 

[psiboy]

"To AMD’s credit, its partners aren’t exploiting the lack of RX 480s to charge higher prices."

Not the case here in Australia! Most stores are asking stupidly high prices!

 

[InvalidError]

"To AMD’s credit, its partners aren’t exploiting the lack of RX 480s to charge higher prices."

Not the case here in Australia! Most stores are asking stupidly high prices!

That's not AMD's or the GPU board manufacturers' fault. That's the local distributors and retailers' fault. Artificially higher prices for all new GPUs are an issue worldwide, thanks to simple supply vs demand causing in-betweens to raise their prices however high they can yet still exhaust their supply with.

 

[elbert]

Will there be crossfire results? Will the 470 and 480 work together in crossfire? The possibility of the mix cards working with Valkan with doom for example is working toward this goal.

 

[mapesdhs]

Just curious, why isn't the 980 included in the performance charts? It was missing from other recent newer GPU reviews aswell.

 

[InvalidError]

Just curious, why isn't the 980 included in the performance charts? It was missing from other recent newer GPU reviews aswell.

Would that add any genuinely useful information to anyone buying an RX470? People looking at GTX980-class performance on a budget have already seen the RX480 and GTX1060. The RX470 can only be worse and of little or no interest to them.

As convenient as it may be to have the last five generations of GPUs from low-end to high-end from both companies on a single chart, that only clutters things up when the time to actually pick a new GPU comes up. Where practical choices are concerned, I much prefer charts that focus on models that are in the same general performance or price neighborhood. If the highest performance you see on a chart is not to your liking, you are shopping in the wrong performance/price range and none of the products being discussed are relevant to you.

 

[Bea_1_]

So Gtx970 is faster than Rx470.
not bad, got used Gtx970 for 160$ while rx470 cost 249$ here.

gtx970 @1545mhz i got more Fps in games than my fried whit her Rx480 saphire.

 

[-Fran-]

Fewer features? Can you elaborate on that, 17seconds?

Cheers!

 

[thor220]

Tom's, how many times do people have to tell you that your game selection sucks?

Project cars should not be used for any benchmark, ever. The reason is obvious.

 

[mapesdhs]

Just curious, why isn't the 980 included in the performance charts? It was missing from other recent newer GPU reviews aswell.

Would that add any genuinely useful information to anyone buying an RX470? People looking at GTX980-class performance on a budget have already seen the RX480 and GTX1060. The RX470 can only be worse and of little or no interest to them.

As convenient as it may be to have the last five generations of GPUs from low-end to high-end from both companies on a single chart, that only clutters things up when the time to actually pick a new GPU comes up. Where practical choices are concerned, I much prefer charts that focus on models that are in the same general performance or price neighborhood. If the highest performance you see on a chart is not to your liking, you are shopping in the wrong performance/price range and none of the products being discussed are relevant to you.

Problem is the 980 hasn't been included in either review. It should be in at least one of them.

 

[Fulgurant]

Yep, with a custom EVGA GTX 970 available for $150 (after MIR), there is really no reason to get a slower, more expensive RX470, with fewer features.

Linked product is a GTX 960 2GB.

 

[anbello262]

I guess they chose the 6pin connector so that common people will feel that it has "broader compatiblility" with low end PSUs that only have one 6pin plug.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I guess they chose the 6pin connector so that common people will feel that it has "broader compatiblility" with low end PSUs that only have one 6pin plug.

No they chose it because it's an 85W GPU when gaming and 100W in Furmark.

 

[littleleo]

Well it has been about a week since the release of the RX 470 and I have no stock at all. What little I did have sold out fast and I'm still waiting on the next shipments. Stock is not any better on the Rx 460 or the RX 480. I'm also waiting on the 1080s and 1070s but they seem to be easier to bring in. I got over 100 of those sold this week. I was expecting better product availability on the AMD RX 470 & RX 480 by now. Until inventory starts to really flow I don't see these prices dropping to the price points AMD advertised.

 

[mapesdhs]

In the non-tech world, people would be calling for an investigation into whether there was supply manipulation to hike pricing. In the tech world, nobody seems bothered...

 

[InvalidError]

In the non-tech world, people would be calling for an investigation into whether there was supply manipulation to hike pricing. In the tech world, nobody seems bothered...

With the number of tech companies including chip foundries that have had major launch slip-ups with 14/16nm processes, limited supply shouldn't be surprising anyone.

There isn't much that an investigation can do about product availability when the main reason there are no chips available for sale is that all existing 14/16nm fab-for-hire capacity is back-ordered for the foreseeable future, thanks to most of their fabs being over a year late to deliver first silicon. If AMD and Nvidia want to increase their existing wafer start orders, they have to hope other fab customers cancel their orders, offer to buy other companies' wafer start slots or book their orders and wait.

 

[Zaxx420]

Also heard that Apple (and other oems) is snatching up the vast majority of 480s...AMD gets to make bank right from the start and I'd imagine aib partners/retailers aren't the only ones cashing in on the shortage. This also rather conveniently makes it very easy for AMD to get rid of the probable abundance of chips that didn't quite make the grade with this more challenging (lower yield) process in the form of 470s...which people tired of waiting on the 480 are jumping on AND paying a premium for! It's win, win, win for AMD. If thats whats happening...lol

 

[InvalidError]

AMD and Nvidia sell chips on a contractual basis. A contract can be either for individual bulk purchases or a given weekly/monthly volume over some number of months. If board manufacturers want more chips than their existing contract(s) entitles them to (ex.: 20k chips/month + 5k option), AMD and Nvidia can sell more chips (if they have spare supply) on a separate contract.

Before Nvidia and AMD can offer such additional contracts though, they have to fulfill all existing obligations, then all options on those obligations - there is no point in signing a new contract at $120/chip when you still have an unclaimed or unfulfilled option for 5k more chips at $100 per on your existing contract.

 

[AndrewJacksonZA]

Carp. Sorry InvalidError, I *JUST* moved this to the main Polaris Megathread (it's a better fit there as it's a general question.)