Gadgetory

earlier this month AMD released their first plus 11 part the RX 416 like the RX for 80 gamers have the option of two different memory configurations for the RX 460 though they aren't for given a key but options rather than graphics cards featuring this GPU will come with either 4 gigabytes or 2 gigabytes of memory for our launch day review we have the sapphire nitro model on hand which came loaded with 4 gigabytes of vram the only issue with this being the 4 gigabyte models feature an MSRP of 140 dollars while the 2 gigabyte models come in at 110 price the 110 the Ark's 460 is decent value as it comes in at similar cost per frame is the more expensive rx for 70 however the 4 gigabyte model at 140 dollars is horrible value at roughly just 20% cheaper than the rx 470 it's a little over 40% slower the choice then seems obvious get the 2 gigabyte model and be done with it that said if you ask the question should I buy the 2 gigabyte or 4 gigabyte rx 460 on a tech forum or even the youtube comments section you'll quickly find yourself in murky waters on my own rx 460 review a few brave souls ask that very question and a torrent of answers poured in many of them backed by strong opinions on the matter you'll hear things like 2 gigabytes isn't enough for 1080p gaming anymore avoid the 2 gigabyte model as it won't last four gigabytes is future proof and so on rather than just assume I know the answer I want to do some in-depth testing and a range of games to find out if there really is a difference if there is under what conditions and does the evidence suggests that the larger model will see you off into the future with that let's jump into the benchmarks for this test I've dropped my sensible sky core i3 test machine and gone for the skylight core i7 machine to remove any possible system bottlenecks that might shape the results both the RX 460 models have been clocked according to the AMD specification this means a core frequency of 1.2 gigahertz and a memory frequency of 17 50 megahertz the graphs have been labeled with the maximum memory allocation seen when testing when the 4gb RX 460 model this provides a rough indication as to how much via Ram might have been used and I've done my best to test these games at 1080p using realistic quality settings ideally I like to target 60fps though given the settings used this wasn't always possible in some games I didn't relax the settings too much in order to achieve a 60 FPS average and while we're there doing so would come with a certain degree of criticism as it would appear as though I'm trying to avoid filling the vram so keep that in mind when you're seeing average frame rates dipping down the console levels of performance if the two gigabyte and four gigabyte cards do deliver the same performance when forced to such low frame rates it's safe to assume there'll be no difference with the relaxed settings targeting 60 FPS performance first let's start with the witcher 3 again that doesn't even exceed 2 gigabytes of vram when run at 1080p using the high quality settings with hair works disabled here we saw no more than 1.7 gigabytes of memory allocated during our test you might think this is a pointless test then given it doesn't exceed the capacity of the 2 gigabyte model I find this a very valid test as The Witcher 3 is very well-put-together title boasting incredible visuals not only that but at 1080p using the high quality settings the RX 460 is only good for a little over 30 fps naturally gamers are going to want to reduce the quality settings further for us to me the more desirable experience and doing so will reduce the memory capacity requirements Mirror's Edge catalyst might be an extreme memory Pig when using the hyper quality settings but that won't fly here even with the medium quality settings we weren't able to achieve a 60 FPS average still 50 FPS on both the 2 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte models is very playable note the maximum memory allocation seen here was 1.9 gigabytes the massively popular online first-person shooter overwatch is one game you wouldn't expect to be very demanding on the memory and well it isn't in fact the 2 gigabyte model came out slightly ahead after taking the average of three benchmark runs but one to two FPS is well within the margin of error using the medium quality settings we reached a 60 FPS average and just one point seven gigabytes was the maximum memory allocation seen the two gigabyte model was 1/2 FPS slower here but again that's considered to be within the margin of error grand theft auto 5 saw an allocation of exactly two gigabytes using the high quality settings at 1080p here both the two gigabyte and four gigabyte models provided exceptional performance pushing well beyond 60fps another game to allocate up to 2 gigabytes of memory was the division using the medium quality settings both models averaged 52 FPS which allowed for very smooth gameplay out of interest I cranked up the quality settings too high and ran the test again the memory allocation only increase to 2.1 gigabytes and this wasn't enough to upset the to cuba card as it again provided the exact same performance the latest game to be featured in this comparison is Deus Ex mankind divided using the medium quality settings the RX 460 is only able to average 34 FPS at 1080p as you can see the 2 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte models provided the exact same experience although the performance of both RX 460 models is weak when using the medium quality settings we decided to check the high quality performance here the average framerate dip below 30 fps and yet the 2 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte models deliver the exact same performance Assassin's Creed syndicate is known to be a bit of a memory hog and we can see that when using the medium quality settings at 1080p here we find a maximum allocation of 2.7 gigabytes which is quite a bit more than the 6 games we've already looked at despite that the RX 460 performs much the same with either 2 gigabytes or 4 gigabytes of memory when looking at the average frame rate that's said if we look at the frame time results here we see the 2 gigabyte model does start to lag behind a bit the 1% data isn't that bad and really either is the point 1% data that said the bigger variants here does mean the gamers will see slightly choppy performance at times of course with an average of just over 40 fps some games would want to reduce certain quality settings which will somewhat alleviate the strain on the VM Middle Earth shadow of mordor was tested using the very high quality preset which saw a memory allocation reach 2.6 gigabytes the average and 1% frame time performance was much the same on both the 2 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte models however the 0.1% performance of the 2 gigabyte rx 460 took a serious nosedive that said when playing the game I honestly couldn't tell these cards apart the to give our model certainly didn't appear to suffer from frame drops boosting the quality preset to ultra saw the game maxed out the 4 gigabyte rx 460 with an allocation of 3.9 gigabytes this did see the average performance of the 2 gigabyte model fall away and again the frame time performance also suffered the 4 gigabyte model did play noticeably better than the 2 gigabyte model now still if you're a gamer who targets 60fps and it has to be said that the 2 gigabyte rx 460 will work just fine in this game surprisingly Star Wars Battlefront allocated up to 2.9 gigabytes worth of VRAM during our test using the high quality preset at 1080p yet despite that we saw similar performance on both models in fact here the two GUI card came out slightly ahead Far Cry primal is another game that provided surprising results with the HD texture pack enabled along with the very high quality settings the game allocated up to 3.6 gigabytes of vram yet despite this both the two gigabyte and 4 gigabyte rx4 60 models delivered similar results while the in-game performance was indistinguishable Batman Arkham Knight allocated up to 3.4 gigabytes of vram using the high quality settings though do note that the game works options were disabled the 2 gigabyte model did provide slightly slower performance though it has to be said I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the two models here although slow out the 2 gigabyte model didn't appear to suffer any stuttering issues finally we have doom and this game is in no way two gigabytes of vram friendly note frame time results aren't included here due to the way I have to test on the Vulcan API although the experience on the two gigabyte card wasn't horrible is the frame rate never dipped below 31 fps it wasn't nearly as smooth as it was in the four gigabyte model in fact the four gigabyte version was almost 50 percent faster when comparing the average frame rates and more than twice as fast from looking at the minimums this is the shocking performance variation especially given the game never called for more than 3.1 gigabytes of vram it's worth noting by lowering the shadow quality to at the lowest value the average frame rate of the 2 gigabyte card jumped up to 66 FPS with the 61 FPS minimum so what can we conclude based on these results well a good number of things really something I'd like to point out right off the bat is the fact that I did test using a high-end core i7 test system and while the results are valid I almost regret this decision now the impact of having to swap data out of the vram to the system RAM or page file is less than when using a high-end system complete with high clocked ddr4 memory and SSD storage so therefore while still valid I am keen to recreate this comparison in my core i3 test rig to see if the results change much this is something I plan to do over the next week and if the results are different expect a follow-up video with that little disclaimer out of the way what did we find regardless of the test system use what we can walk away knowing is that for the most part the RX 460 is going to deliver the exact same performance with the true gigabyte or 4 gigabytes via Ram an over 90 percent of the games out there games such as The Witcher 3 Mirror's Edge catalyst overwatch rise of the Tomb Raider Grand Theft Auto 5 Tom Clancy's the division Far Cry primal Batman Arkham Knight and Star Wars Battlefront for example all played exactly the same on both the 2 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte rx 460 models most of these games were tested with the average frame rate well below 60 fps this means that those targeting 60 fps with even lower quality visuals certainly won't find a performance difference between these cards Middle Earth shadow of Mordor and Assassin's Creed syndicate are examples of games that do see a slight performance advantage in favor of the larger 4 gigabyte card though both were tested with averages south of 60fps new near the case with the 2 gigabyte model noticeably slower in fact the only exception through my testing was doomed this game looks to require at least a three gigabyte frame buffer for optimal performance though I should point out that two gigabyte RX 460 was still able to deliver playable performance and with a few tweaks was able to maintain over 60 FPS at 1080p so this is hardly a deal-breaker given the data at hand I find it very difficult to recommend the 4 gigabyte rx 460 to anyone it just seems like a waste of money for a little extra cash and we're talking around 40 us yeah you can land yourself a considerably more powerful graphics card in the RX 470 AMD is targeting eSports game is with the rx 460 and if you find yourself predominantly playing titles such as Counter Strike global Offensive rocket League dota 2 and overwatch for example then without question get the 2 gigabyte model as for future-proofing I personally don't subscribe to that theory if you're buying a sub $200 graphics card for to last generation after generation the new standards aren't particularly hard to begin with but that I mean you'd have no problem reducing a few quality settings to achieve playable performance down the track spending 20% more now to enjoy almost no performance advantage simply doesn't make sense to me I kind of mentioned the logic behind spending at least $30 more and what would otherwise be a 110 dollar graphics card game potentially nothing put that $30 in the bank it'll come in handy in the year or twos time for their next year for you upgrade anyway that's how I view the situation tell me do you agree or am i bonkers let me know in the comments I'm your host Matt as always and I'll see you guys next time youtubers like me depend on your support to continue improving the quality and content our videos to support the channel directly consider becoming a patron to also get access to a heap of cool rewards and exclusive giveaways also don't forget you can check prices and buy the products I looked at in this video through the Amazon links in the video description below thank you kindly for supporting me and the hardware unbox channel it means a lot to me and I really do appreciate it and in return I'll continue to work as hard as I can to keep producing the content you enjoy