The specifications and gaming performance of two of the most-anticipated budget graphic cards of 2016 have been revealed. The new Polaris RX 470 and 460 cards target the 1080p and eSports market respectively, and will be released this August.
AMD’s higher-end offering comes with 2048 stream processors (clocked reportedly at 1206 Mhz), 32 compute units with 2048 shaders and a 256-bit memory bus. Having the new GCN 4.0 architecture, the 14-nm card will provide 4 GB GDDR5 memory clocked at 7 Ghz and performance of up to 5 TFLOPS (and a bandwidth of 224 GB/s) at a TDP of 110 watts. As a result, it will require an external 6-pin PEG connection. It reportedly also has 5.7 billion transistors like the 480.
For connections you have the trusty DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 HDR. Pricing is obviously the same at $149 for the 4 GB variant. This is just about ideal for a card which is said to provide 60 fps+ consistent performance in 1080p at high in most AAA titles of 2016.
This 14-nm card targets eSports enthusiasts and offers 1024 stream processors with GCN 4.0. It has a 128-bit memory bus, more than 2 TFLOPS of performance (and memory bandwidth of 112 GB/s) and 14 compute units with 896 shader units. (It was reported that this card had 16 CUs earlier). It also has Polaris 11, the first card to do so.
It also offers 2 GB worth GDDR5 memory. It has a low TDP of 75 watts which means like cards such as the GTX 750 Ti or new special edition of GTX 950, it would get enough power from the PCI-E connection alone to require an external connection. Coupled with its small footprint, it looks to be an idea card mini builds.
In terms of hard performance figures, the card is twice as fast as the R9 260X in Overwatch, and 1.7 times in DOTA 2 and League of Legends. Its $99 tag will give it an exclusive underdog status.
Both of these cards are expected to be out by August though, like the RX 480 launch, you might want to wait a bit until driver issues are resolved and teething issues are nixed out. Seems about the hardest thing I’ll do all year.
Images courtesy of PC Advisor and WCCFTech
