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  • VoraciousGorak - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Happy they didn't do a blower cooler on the RX 460. It would have been stupid of them to do so, but still, I'm glad they didn't, and the performance looks pretty solid for a low wattage card. My plan to outfit my gaming lounge with RX 460s moves forward.

    The RX 470 is a curious card; looks like it'll be clawing at the back of the RX 480 performance-wise, and AMD could hurt sales of their own higher-end card if they price it too far behind, but pricing it too close (especially with the specs as close as they are) runs the risk of an overcomplicated market.
  • LarsBars - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    It will be interesting to see if the RX 470 meets the bare minimum spec for VR. Obviously it won't be the premium VR choice, but it could be a bullet point to help sell more cards.
  • Eden-K121D - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    With good OC potential RX 470 could outsell RX 480
  • tipoo - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link

    Sounds like it's not great at less than 5% overhead for OC.
  • jjj - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Will be interesting to see how they price it. Smells like 179$ given the specs but would be too close to the 480 4GB and with very a large gap between 470 and 460. If they go lower,it could sell really well.
  • vladx - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    My guess is $159 for RX 470
  • fanofanand - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    They reduced the price of the 480 in India in response to the 1060. If they do that in more countries it would be very challenging to price the 470 at $179.
  • Nagorak - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Based on my experience in VR with a Fury X I think going with a bare minimum card would not make for a generally enjoyable experience. You run into enough games that are demanding/poorly optimized where you need the extra power.
  • Flunk - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    The RX 480 is already pushing the minimum requirements for VR, so it would have to basically be just as fast.
  • fanofanand - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    I doubt it, and even if it does I doubt they would market it that way. They called the RX 480 the "VR Card" so I think they want anyone interested in VR to be moving to the 480, not the 470.
  • Sttm - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Those 470 specs look a lot like my old 7970's. Same Steam Procs, Texture Units, SMPs, Core Clock, just the 470 has a 256bit bus compared to 384 on the 7970.
  • Sttm - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    ROP not SMP, where did I get SMP from...
  • silverblue - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    "and 99.5% of the ROP throughput"
    Surely 49.75%, as it has half the ROPs and a slightly lower boost clock?
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Apparently Math is harder than I remember...
  • D. Lister - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    "Interestingly, RX 460 does not ship with a fully enabled Polaris 11 GPU. AMD previously disclosed that Polaris 11 was a 16 CU part, whereas RX 460 only ships with 14 CUs enabled."

    To me it sounds like a yield-related issue with Polaris 11. On the other hand, if they price the 460 right, who cares about dormant disabilities, as long as it works reliably at the expected performance level.
  • Novaguy - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    It's also possible that any full 16 CU Polaris 11's with better power characteristics are being reserved for mobile applications. If so, it would be likely to challenge the 960M market, which Nvidia essentially has all to themselves.
  • jimjamjamie - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    That's what I'm thinking as well. Saving the fully enabled chips to get stuck into the mobile discrete market.
  • D. Lister - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    I suppose it is certainly possible that they may be keeping the top of the crop for other segments.
  • Malih - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    is it possible that Apple has ordered most of them for their next Macbook pros?
  • Scali - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Could it be that they're having trouble keeping it under 75W, and shutting part of the chip off was a better option than lowering the clockspeeds enough?
  • D. Lister - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Ouch, I hope not.
  • 0razor1 - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    I don't think so. If they were struggling to meet 75W, they'd go wider with lower clocks, as is what GPUs are good at- they'd keep the disabled bits intact and not laser them off ( assuming they don't want more 6950 'unlockings').
  • extide - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    No, it is always better to have a wider chip running at lower clock-speed and lower voltage if you ware going for efficiency. They did the exact opposite, so I doubt that's the issue. See my other post, but essentially I bet they are saving the chips for something else, like laptops, or Apple, or some other OEM.
  • fanofanand - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    This leaves the door open for a 460X. Could be yield related, could be leaving something for later like they did with the Titan.
  • fanofanand - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    They meaning Nvidia, I do not think AMD makes the Titan. Just to clarify. :)
  • extide - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    I don't think they are using the trailing X anymore -- they are using the 3 digits for Generation, Product Segment, then Revision
    So 480 is 400 series, 8 class for performance, and then the 0 means initial card, later they may sell a 485 being the revised or better card.

    There was a powerpoint slide a while back that explained all this, although it seems that particular slide hasn't been circulated very widely for some reason.
  • fanofanand - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link

    Good info! I was not aware of that change, anything to reduce the confusion is good in this market.
  • extide - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    I highly doubt there is a yield issue because think about it -- they are shipping fully enabled Polaris 10 chips all day long, and that's a bigger chip. My guess would be they are stockpiling the fully enabled Polaris 11 chips for something else (Laptops, Apple, etc)
  • mobutu - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    It's all about the price.
    Also, rx460 begs for passive cooling.
  • AndrewJacksonZA - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    +1, mobutu.
  • AndrewJacksonZA - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    (Regarding the passive cooling. Also, an edit button for comments. :-)
  • Vaibhav Sharma - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    It will be interesting to see where this rx 470 will stand against my r9 270x. I wished that 470 was targeted as the base card for vr instead of 480. Hopegully a middle card will come out that can do the job like 470x from amd or 950 ti from nvidia.
  • R3MF - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    A passively cooled 16CU version of Baffin would be interesting.
    As would a 16CU Baffin for the mobile market, an RX 470M if you will.
  • vladx - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    RX 470 looks like a win. Makes sense to pick this over upcoming 3GB GeForce 1050 unlike RX 480 which makes no sense to choose it over the 1060.
  • wolfemane - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Makes no sense how? If someone has a budget of $200 - $220 then the 480 is by far the card of choice over the 1060. On top of that there are plenty of sites showing the 4gb cards easily having the memory clocked to the speeds of the 8gb cards putting them performance wise exactly the same. So.... $200 for a card that's on par or slightly slower than the GTX 1060 which sells for $250. I'd say that is more then enough reason to go with the 480.
  • Nagorak - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Rx 460 definitely looks like AMDs path back into the mobile and el cheapo markets. I wonder how much if their lost markets share can be found there.
  • MagicBoyUK - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Hopefully some forward looking OEM has a low-profile RX460 in the works...
  • jabbadap - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    OEM? I think you mean AIB. I think at least sapphire will release one, they used to do low-profile cards in the past.
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    The RX 460 looks like the first GPU to come out of this new generation thus far that abandons the insanity of needing a dedicated power connector to simply draw graphics. It'd be nice if the reference card didn't occupy two slots, but maybe OEMs will pick up some of the slack there, but I doubt this is the half-height, single slot GPU we're all waiting to see.
  • fanofanand - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Insanity? If you don't want powerful graphics use the IGP.....
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    There's some space for video cards between IGP performance and the present day bottom end of the dGPU stack. Admittedly, that space would be much smaller if Intel could be bothered to offer more eDRAM equipped parts further down their processor stack. Since that isn't the case, it'd be nice if those other graphics companies would do a better job at filling in the gaps.
  • HOOfan 1 - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    They are claiming 74 FPS at 1080p and High settings on the RX 460 for GTA V.

    The RX 480 only gets 50 FPS at 1080p and Very High settings...and the RX 480 only gets 77 FPS at 900p with very high settings.
  • patel21 - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    not at 1080p. they are for 720p
  • HOOfan 1 - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Their endnote says,

    Slide 21: ...test system comprising of Intel Core i7 6700K, 8GB (DDR4-2666 MHz) memory, Radion RX 460 graphics... "The following games were tested at 1080p at the following settings:...Grand Theft Auto V (High Settings)
  • fanofanand - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link

    You realize there is a big difference between "high" and "very high" right?
  • defter - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    How can RX460 have an edge in power consumption over existing competition? Nvidia's 950 is available without external power plug and it reaches almost 50% of RX480's performance. With these specifications RX460 can't be faster than Geforce 950.
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Per NVIDIA's site, the GTX 950 requires 90 watts...

    Source: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/gefor...

    I understand there are a few boards that don't require a power connector, but I'd caution you against using benchmarks for a 90 watt card when that card is running in a way that reduces its requirement to 75 watts. There's probably a performance penalty that might be getting overlooked. With that said, the sans-external connector versions of the 950 are probably going to compete pretty well with the RX 460, but it might be a better idea to see what the benchmarks tell us since we're looking at smaller transistors.
  • defter - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Performance difference between normal 90W 950 and 75W 950 is very small: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_950/2...

    Even the 75W Geforce 950 was 8-9% faster than Radeon R7 370 at 1920x1080. RX460 has slightly more shader power than R7 370 but significantly less memory bandwidth and ROP power.
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    I stand corrected then. I was under the impression the wattage-reduced version of the GTX 950 was further behind in performance. Hopefully for AMD, the RX 460 is a little quicker than it looks like it will end up being...or cheaper as a sub-$100 USD initial price would put it into a different category.
  • fanofanand - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link

    Looks like $99 for the 2GB version $109 for the 4GB version. Definitely the sweet spot for a lot of developing nations.
  • Meteor2 - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    I don't know if this has been discussed, but will there be a GTX1060 preview?
  • HOOfan 1 - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Ryan Smith said it would be up last Friday. So, probably another week or more.
  • Meteor2 - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Ok thanks. :(.
  • defaultluser - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    "however even in that case the RX 470/460 series will always have the edge on features and power consumption."

    The RX 460 is massively missing their target. Many months back, AMD was touting Polaris 11 having GTX 950 performance in a bus-powered package. You guys are obviously forgetful of your own articles, so let me remind you what you posted seven months ago:

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9886/amd-reveals-pol...

    Since that point, many OEMs have produced bus-powered GTX 950 boards. You've been able to buy them in retail for several months now. So this mysterious vampire GTX 950 has already been replaced while AMD has been waffling.

    But the STOCK GTX 950 is about 50% faster than the R7 260X (yes, I accounted for the 10% clock bump over 7790):

    https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_950_S...

    So if the RX 460 is 30% faster than R7 260X, it is somewhere in-between GTX 750 Ti and GTX 950 performance. Not where AMD planned to be. And The GTX 950 is already priced at $130, has the same memory compression AND 128-bit bus, so it's ready to compete.

    So, how many years before we see the uncut Polaris 11? It took Tonga a whole damn year!
  • vladx - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    It's all about the price in that segment, if RX 460 will cost $99 it will be a resounding success.
  • kwerboom - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link

    Man are you off. Yes there are 75 W GTX 950's available, but $130+ is not the same as a $99 card or even a $109 card. The market segment that the RX 460 is fighting for is all about the price point. The type of person purchasing a graphics card 1) has a lower end, big box store computer that itself wasn't worth that much to begin with, 2) has an older, midrange computer that can't handle the performance of a more powerful card, 3) has an older, high end computer that is so long in the tooth that it isn't worth spending money on a more powerful card now days, 4) has an OEM computer with a crappy PSU, and/or 5) doesn't have the money for a better graphics card but still wants an upgrade.

    Also, yes there are $99 GTX 750 Ti's, but how long will that old model last? Also, a customer trying to get the most bang for their buck is going to want the newest, cheapest card they can get their hands on for the sake of longevity and lifecycle support. In that case, a GTX 750 Ti looks like warmed over seconds from last generation.

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