Gadgetory

the recent weeks about the rx4 7 the Sapphire Platinum Edition card turned out to be mostly correct that is what this is right here this is the 470 available as of today it's a $180 card that we're reviewing in this video the price point plants it 20 dollars cheaper than the 4 gigabyte rx 480 or 60 dollars cheaper than the 8 gigabyte model of the 487 T cheaper than the GTX 1060 partner model cards some of them anyway looking at you ASIS and the card is targeted at 1080p gaming with ultra settings hitting hopefully 60fps from what and ease of marketing text has promised and these are exports 17 rx 460 our partner only cards so you won't find reference models of these on the shelves that means that pricing clock rate in coolers will vary partner to partner as one might expect the model that we have is running what is effectively a reference are X 480 cooler just with a new color for sapphires platinum line here's a look at the specs table for the RX 470 which we published initially in our our X 480 review and have updated the RX 470 is a cut-down version of what we saw at the 480 Ellesmere chip still running 5.7 billion transistors but now on 32 see use instead of that 480 s 36 to use and that lands the RX 470 at 2048 stream processors down from 2300 for on the RX 480 the RX 470 has a recommended clock rate range of 926 megahertz core and 1206 at megahertz boost we observed the sapphire platinum card boosting at maximally to about 1215 megahertz and the GPU runs 128 TM use and 32 ROPS which sheds light on the decision to limit the card to 4 gigabytes and a gigabyte model would likely become limited elsewhere in the pipe before memory the memory subsystem of the RX 470 is mostly the same as the our X 480 including memory compression and low-level technology but the memory itself is of a lower spec so the color compression is all there DCC all of that's there but the RX 470 is running an actual memory clock of 1750 megahertz for the model we have with the whole rx 470 range spanning six point six gigabits per second to seven gigabits per second so we're not hitting that 8 mark that the 480 hits the card is still on a 256 memory interface and uses gddr5 with a bandwidth of 211 gigabytes per second as for TDP the RX 470 is targeting a 120 watt TDP which just as a reminder isn't the actual card power draw in terms of watts it is actually more of a measurement of the thermal requirements for the card for the GPU so you can't look at this 120 watt TDP and go okay that's comparable to Nvidia's whatever cards might be 120 watt TDP it doesn't really work that way it's just a reminder there so 120 watt TDP it's a 10 watt climb from what was initially unveiled in May at the press event for Polaris and for more information on the architecture itself you can check our article link through the description below or just view our rx 40 review where we break down the whole thing with more depth in terms of this card here the design is pretty simple so there's a back plate from sapphire and that's been added to effectively again a reference cooler for the RX 480 the reference cooler when we tore it down has a very simple and cheap aluminum heatsink inside of it just aluminum fins with a copper cold plate no vapor chambers or a copper heat pipes or anything like that so very simple cooling technology on this particular model let's get to the test and you can see the bench we use on the screen now and we're starting with thermals which are more important than probably often thought and then we'll move on the power and fps testing check the article into the description below for our full testing methodology and additional charts not found here with thermal sapphires rx 470 Platinum Edition isn't that impressive given that it's using a reference arts for you heat sink the card operates at 53 Celsius delta T over ambient and 7.59 idle a fair bit reduced from the rx 480 reference as a result of the lower TDP GPU the reference 480 just as a note sits at 50 6.3 Celsius a load and here's a look at the chart as plotted against time it's the same data but presented in a way that shows the ramp up as our in-house automation kicks in switching over to some more unique endurance charts we see a better look at real-world performance with frequency versus temperature plotted against a two-hour burnin at the bottom the arcs were seventy exhibits almost identical endurance performance to the artist 480 reference card were seen fluctuating frequency as a means to restrict the temperature to a 77 Celsius ceiling each time temperature hits 78 Celsius on the GPU diode the clock rate is throttled until the clock returns to a 76 to 77 Celsius value and that's what's producing this choppiness because the fluctuations are never more than 100 megahertz the impact the gameplay is mostly undetectable by the user but 1% lows and 0.1% lows will occasionally be improved by different cooling solutions depend on what card you're using and we just saw that with the MSI our X 480 gaming X and the hybrid 480 that we built ourselves and here's a look at a similar chart but with the fan rpm percentage plotted the fan sticks around 46% in its out of box configuration making for a tolerable mix of noise and performance on this card and also note that the blower fan of the RX 470 Platinum Edition maxes out closer to 4,000 rpm rather than hitting the 5200 RPM of the our X 480 reference card this next chart is a measurement of apparent power draw in volt amps note that this is a measurement of total system power draw not individual card draw so we're mostly comparing Delta's here with the RX 470 in the test bench we see about a 222 volt amp draw load and about 80 volts amps idle the our X 480 version of the bench sits at around 240 volt amps load and for reference the gtx 1060 is about 220 volt amps just below the RX 470 let's move on to FBS testing again full methodology linked in the description below we used the new as of today unreleased drivers for the RX 470 they are 16 8.1 drivers so that's what was used for testing we did not have the same crashing issues and instability that we saw in 1673 on 16 8 1 so these were stable for testing starting with GTA 5 GTA 5 performs at 77 FPS average on the arch 470 when run at 1080p it was very high in ultra settings effectively maxed out in the graphics tab with no advanced graphics options enabled the our X 480 runs at 85 FPS average for the 8 gigabyte model or a difference of 10.2 percent between it and the 470 low frame rates are acceptable between both cards now that AMD has resolved GTA stuttering with its driver updates and the GTX 1060 EFI runs at 95 FPS average a percent difference of 20 point 9 with the RX 470 the GTX 970 SSC the EVGA super-super clocked model places ahead of the RX 470 at 89 f PS average just for point of reference the RX 470 was pushing fifty three point seven FPS average at 1440p more or less playable in GTA 5 though it's point one percent low metrics were at 31 fps and 36.3 for the one percent Louis black ops three is optimized well for its level of visual fidelity and also generally post results that are favorable toward Andy this reinforces the fact that graphics cards are very development dependent when it comes to extracting performance at 1080p the RX 470 is capable of hitting at 116 FPS average retaining fairly tightly timed at one percent low and 0.1% low values at 94 and eighty five point seven FBS respectively that places the RX 470 above the pre overclocked GTX 970 SSC buy a couple frames and just under the gtx 1060 founder's edition card the RX 480 reference card performs at 132 FPS average with a maasai variant at 144 average so black ops 3 proves to be somewhat clock sensitive with these cards depending on the settings and that's shown with a IV partner models against the reference cards because performance in black ops 3 is optimized for high graphics we decided to test 1440p playability on the RX 470 and the card pushes a high average of 17.3 fps and that's about even with the GTX 970 SOC and not far from the 1060 F II but falls on its 1% and 0.1% low values this is precisely why we measured those 0.1% numbers if you were to simply take the average the fact that the game stutters to a point of being mostly unplayable especially a multiplayer would be entirely overlooked because the averages smooths out these values watch are what are 1% and 0.1% low is a video for more on this testing methodology Doom recently received its anticipated Vulcan patch touted at both the recent Nvidia and AMD press conferences and we've been working on building up a new test database with that game our original launch tests for doom are not comparable to these results as the game optimization and drivers have changed substantially note that we're also hoping to revisit doom Vulcan testing with exploration of addition settings within the game like TSS a a but we're still working through the other content first let's start with OpenGL only test with OpenGL and the game at 1080p ultra settings we're seeing a performance output of 75 that seven FPS average on the RX 470 and that's what's sustaining lows of 58 and 55 FPS the RX for 80 runs at 85 FPS average a difference of 11.6 percent between the 470 in the 480 and the 2 cards have comparable lows between them with the same settings the GTX 10 at 60 F ecard performs at 98.3 FPS average a difference of 26% between the 1060 F II and the RX 470 that changes it with Vulcan enabled the RX 470 now operates at 98.7 FPS average effectively tied with the gtx 1060 and a few FPS behind the 1060 game in Ex the arch 480 runs a little more than 10 FPS faster than the rh 470 and ahead of the 1060 gaming X in terms of average framerate output here's 1440p with OpenGL and doom we're seeing a 50 point seven FPS output on the RX 470 and the RX 488 gigabyte card is at 57 FPS average the gtx 1060 founder's edition is at 66 FPS average and when we switch over to vulcan the performance wanes the RX 472 60 4.8 Everidge and that's a difference of 24.4% compared to the RX 480 the gtx 1060 fe4 reverence is now at lower slightly lower positioning in the hierarchy just below the RX 470 with its 63 FPS average neros Edge catalyst at 1080p ultra has the RX 470 exceeding 60 FPS average delivering on and these marching claims and promises with a 65 point 3 FPS output against the RX 488 gigabyte reference card there's a difference of nearly 13% and still both cards have issues with 0.1% little frame times landing around 30 fps and the gtx 960 SSC runs slightly faster in 0.1 percent lows but an overall lower average the gtx 1060 for comparison sits at 82 FPS average and 56.7 0.1% lows but is obviously more expensive than the rx we're 70 by quite a bit 1440p post similar results with the RX for 70 struggling to sustain a playable frame rates and a 0.1% lows are below 20 fps producing noticeable choppiness and stutters during gameplay and making it for an overall unplayable experience but again the card was built for 1080p not for 1440p moving on to overclocked in the process of overclock in the RX 470 is effectively identical to what we showed in our how to overclock the RX 4 80 guide Polaris hasn't changed of course between the two cards so really it's the same wot man stepping process that we showed previously the RX 470 we ran into OC limitations pretty early in the process as shown by this stepping chart that's on the screen now we settled it with an OC of 1250 megahertz core and 1800 megahertz on the memory which is the limitation in watt man that's the maximum amount we could push this memory we were able to dial voltage back to 11 60 millivolts and produced a peak GPU power draw of 164 watts compared to the stock clocks 110 watt GPU power draw and that's a fairly big jump but one that is expected with the extra 50% power target and note when I say GPU power draw here I mean as drawn and shown by techpowerup by the GPU specifically that does not include other board components like memory here's a look at some of the framerate changes with that OC applied as usual we're seeing a couple percentage points win in most games with more clock sensitive titles exhibiting obviously more change still the Rh 470 didn't see that far 12 50 megahertz from a gaming clock rate of 1215 megahertz measured and that's it's really just not a big game that we get out of the overclocking process it is more stable though at 12 50 megahertz fixed as opposed to the boost variability of the stock setup the RX 4 70s MSRP is $180 from Andy but we don't know what the partner cards will be priced at just yet if we receive those prices before this video is uploaded but during post or something we'll put it in a title card but otherwise check the link description below for the article I'll detail that as soon as we have partner card pricing but the MSRP target is 180 dollars and that's what we're gonna go off of here at $180 to running 20 less than the 4 gigabyte model the RX 480 and we're getting about a 10% difference not percent change % difference performance of the 484 gigabyte card and the 474 gigabyte card if you want to look specifically at the differences between 4 and 8 gigabytes on the RX 480 check our video for that on the channel it's relevant in some cases but not all it just it depends on what games you're playing how vram intensive they are and things like that if you want it to push 1440p it might be worth looking at the 480 even the 4 gigabyte model though again kind of push you towards the 8 gigabyte one or the 1060 cheaper AIB partner cards at 6 gigabytes but if you're really trying 1440p the 4 gigabyte RX 4 80 will get you a couple extra frames that is kind of a make or break in a few specific cases but otherwise it's this card for the most part is a better value GTA 5 at 1080p it showed about a 10% difference the same is true for Mirror's Edge catalyst same is true again for black ops 3 and when we did push 1440p we sometimes see serious detriment for the 470 in its 1% and 0.1% lower frame time is specifically the 0.1% low frame times though with black ops if you go look at that chart but that's only in some titles the arch for 70 presently faces no competition in its price bracket assuming it can indeed be had for $180 and for 1080p gaming if you're considering the 484 gigabyte we'd suggest that you go for 74 gigabyte or 488 gigabyte instead or of course the GTX 1060 and skip the 4 gigabyte 480 almost entirely as for sapphires Platinum Edition of the card so-called Platinum Edition I'm really not big on the heatsink this is the same cooler that shipped on the reference are X 480 so we'd advise as we did then against the purchase of this card the heatsink is about as cheap as it gets and thermal thresholds trigger around 78 Celsius frequently achieved and that results in spurious frequency output when he plotted against time MSI ACS XFX everyone else have I even have other 470 cards but we haven't yet received them that we do have a few on the way so the 470 Platinum Edition all it is it's a reference for a tea cooler painted silver with the same cooling components inside of it as a platform the RX 470 is one of the best price to performance cards available on the market today if you're looking these $200 price point and that's really mostly because it has no competition so looking at last gen which mostly current cards in this price point are at this point you have the 380 X which this handily outperforms in most cases and does outperform in all cases and you also the gtx 960 4 gigabyte and 2 gigabyte cards even against the SSC 4 gigabyte 960 this one is a faster option the RX 470 of course and for Nvidia there's no current gen stuff that's in this price bracket yeah obviously that will change because these this is still an evolving market we're not considering the used market that's up to you to consider if you want to look at that it's too volatile for review purposes but that's certainly an option as well but not when I generally recommend so that really just leaves the rx 470 as the main option in this price point other than Andy's own competition which would be the 4 gigabyte rx 480 and that card at this point knowing the price of this one is just really oddly positioned you're kind of in a gtx 950 scenario where it just doesn't quite fit at its launch price so we would be looking at 4 cards that you should consider in the sort of current 180 to 250 ish dollar price range you'd be looking at a 470 if you're trying to save some money you're just playing 1080p or a 488 gigabyte card or a 1066 AAA card which is the only one by the way so those would be the three options I would steer you toward if you're trying to spend that amount of money we've done reviews of all of them there's three only real options right now you can read all the reviews or just look through the charts make the decision yourself all the numbers are there page filings of personal video as always if you wanna help us out directly link the description below for more information thank you for watching subscribe for the next video on the 460 and I'll see you all next time you take one today we're reviewing the RX 470 this is a new video card that's silver thanks for watching if you dislike this video you know what to do if you like this video hit that like button we also have these shirts available for just $20