Being the major sponsor of the PC presentation yesterday, it’s natural for AMD to show off new hardware. And show off hardware they did, with the AMD CEO holding up the Radeon RX 470 and RX 460 GPUs.
They didn’t show any hard data about the smaller Polaris boards, but after the conference they did.
We’ve finally got more raw data about the specs of the GPUs using AMD’s Polaris 10 and 11 chips. AMD had previously revealed that the Radeon RX 480 had 38 compute units (CUs), a 256-bit memory bus, DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 support, HDMI 2.0b support, 4GB/8GB models, and over 5 teraflops of computing performance.
None of that is new, but what was interesting in the release was the extra details provided about the RX 470. Read the fine print on this slide:
In case you can’t zoom in further, here’s the paragraph about the comparison between the RX 470 and the R9 270X:
Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of May 10, 2016 on the AMD Radeon™ RX 470 (110w) and AMD Radeon™ R9 270X (180w), on a test system comprising i7 5960X @ 3.0 GHz 16GB memory, AMD Radeon Software driver 16.20 and Windows 10. Using 3DMark Fire Strike preset 1080p the scores were 9090 and 5787 respectively.
Using Ashes of the Singularity 1080P High, the scores were 46 fps and 28.1 fps respectively. Using Hitman 1080p High, the scores were 60 fps and 27.6 fps respectively. Using Overwatch 1080p Max settings, the scores were 121 fps and 76 fps respectively.
Using Performance/Board power, the resulting average across the 4 different titles was a [performance] per watt of 2.8X vs the Radeon R9 270X.
The Fire Strike preset scores are also interesting. The default card in our office benchmarking PC is a Radeon R9 390X 8GB model from MSI. It’s a decent medium-range performer and a solid card for gaming at 1080p. It scored 11641 in Fire Strike (averaged over 3 tests), although I’m running the latest version of the Crimson software (16.6.1) and the 470 isn’t supposed to be a like for like replacement for the 390X.
AMD stressed in the fine print that the result wasn’t an average, but it’s good enough to at least give people an indication of where the card sits in the GPU hierarchy. Guru3D took AMD’s result, and slotted it into a table comparing it against just about everything else most people have:
I remember dropping $700 each on two NVIDIA GTX 780s when they launched, and it’s nice to know that I’ll be able to get slightly better performance now from a card retailing for around $US149.
Actually, that’s kind of ridiculous when you put it like that. And it gets even more ridiculous when you consider how much it costs for everything around the RX 470. A R9 290X costs just over $400 for a 4GB model, but the better overclocked models will set you back $500 or even $600. AMD’s only charging $US200 for the R9 480, and it would be staggering if the Australian price for those were higher than $500.
It’s all adding up to an incredibly interesting last six months of the year. NVIDIA’s targeting the top end of the market, while AMD is gunning very, very hard for the chunk of gamers playing on low to mid-range PCs, largely at 1080p.
Don’t forget that the NDA on AMD’s pre-Computex event expires at the end of this month. As we get closer to that date, expect more hard info — and benchmarks — to come out.
Comments
19 responses to “We’ve Got An Idea Of How Fast The Radeon RX 470 Is”
AMD’s pricing in Australia has mostly been better than NVIDIA in recent times and I hope they continue this trend.
$200 USD for a 480 makes me really hopeful for an affordable 480 here.
PC gaming was quickly fading away into luxury territory reserved for media fat-cats. I’m glad to see these new pricing structures. Makes it practical to own a VR capable PC without being irresponsible with money.
Im really hoping its sub 300AUD.
There’s nothing wrong with hoping, but it won’t be. It most likely won’t go for less than $399, the usual price here being twice what you’d pay in the US.
So then you just order it from the US. Their cards work just as well here as ours do =P
True, about $50 USD Postage,
Did a quick conversion = 336.07 AUD
Thats pretty dam good for something 390 performance levels
Yeah, I’ll take a 1080 instead thanks.
That’s like saying you’d take a Ferrari over a Honda Civic……
Of course anyone would prefer to have the ferrari, but quite honestly it is a luxury which just isn’t practical for >90% of people. On the other hand, even if you can afford a Ferrari, the Civic does just as good a job as a car for >90% of your driving needs, at a much lower price.
At least the Ferrari will get you laid, can we say the same about a 1080? lol.
I guess the analogy breaks down at that point, lol.
Though to be fair, generally speaking it’s safe to assume a ferrari driver has a sound financial portfolio and hasn’t, say, chosen to eat baked beans and 2 minute noodles for several months instead….
Plot twist: That’s why they can afford the Ferrari.
The performance is lower than a GTX970, which can currently be had today, of PLE, for under $500.
I’m not convinced it’s the value proposition to think it is.
Your mixing up the 470 and the 480. The 470 is about 970 performance. The 480 is close to the 980
This is the RX 470 they are talking about, which will probably be $200-$250 at most here and use less power, how is that not good value? If it were the RX 480 performing under a GTX 970 then i would agree with you.
You’re right, I missed that the pricing at the end of the article was for the 480 not 470, but I doubt the 470 will be 100-120USD, which is what it would need to be to be 200-250 in Aus.
I’m betting more in the 150-160USD range which (Due to Australia tax) will put it right on 300 AUD
Yeah thats possibly true, i was sort of going off the price of the R7 370. Im hoping it wont be $300 though because that will mean the 480 will be like 4$00 + more for the 8gb. Though over the last few months looking at the prices of the 370 and 380 it seems we dont get quite as screwed on them as other things, so im kind of hopeful for the new ones not getting too much of AUS tax.
That’s pretty amazing performance for US$150. I’m glad AMD are targeting this price range and performance. It benefits everyone – people wanting a decent gaming experience without having to break the bank, and it should also bring down the higher tier cards (especially from nvidia) when even more people opt out of that option because of the choices that are available to them.
I think I will reserve my final judgement for release, iv heard way too many rumors and promises and im having a matrix moment not knowing what to believe.
I really hope the new cards come in as good as AMD expects, consumers need healthy competition, its been almost 10 years since the glory days of really competitive hardware.
Look I get it that AMD get to spruik their stuff at this event because they are sponsors, but I find it really lame that at a full-on ‘trade-show’ that E3 is, that the stage isn’t automatically shared by both the major competitors.