AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB

An excellent card for Full HD gaming, but wacky pricing at the time of review makes it a hard sell.

AMD Radeon RX 470 – Performance and Benchmarks How we test: I tested the Radeon RX 470 in our in-house test rig. It represents a fairly typical gaming PC and consists of the following components: Motherboard: Asus Z170-Deluxe Processor: Intel Core...

That said the RX 470 is a fantastic card, with great performance. With this AMD is off to a great start in a fresh new direction. This card can run anything on Ultra at 1080p great, plus it is VR ready. If you do plan on getting one, the RX 470 should...

While I'd still suggest saving and getting an RX 480, this is still...

If you’re in the market for an affordable graphics card, built around a modern GPU with strong DX12 support and all of the latest display output technologies, the AMD Radeon RX 470 should be on your short list of considerations. NVIDIA may tweak pricing on its mainstream GeForce GTX cards or may even have a Pascal-based GTX 1050 up its sleeve that could alter the landscape somewhat, but as it stands Radeon RX 470 is a great value for gamers looking for a graphics card in the $180 price range.

But here in the real world, the price is wrong. There’s simply no reason to buy a Radeon RX 470 over a Radeon RX 480—unless my bizarre conspiracy theories wind up becoming reality. Skip a pizza, pocket the extra $20, and buy the RX 470’s higher-performing cousin instead... if you can find one. If you can’t, and RX 470s are available en masse, then well—it’s still a great, affordable card in a vacuum.

Other than that the Radeon RX 470 4 GB/8 GB is obviously a little gem for the gamer on a budget, it's great for 1080P owners and doesn't shy away from 2560x1440 either. A nice plus is the relative lower power consumption. The Polaris 10 architecture seems very sound and proves it can deliver big-time whilst remaining in line power consumption wise, we do think it is merely a small iteration over GCN Generation 3, the die-shrink with 14nm FinFET is the biggest benefit in terms of relative performance and wattage.

Don't get me wrong, Radeon RX 470 is a great value proposition that sits right at the top of our Performance per Dollar charts, but there is also a lot of competition in this segment. The ASUS RX 470 is slightly too expensive in my opinion though at $209, a better price would be $199 or $189 - if they fix that noisy cooler with a BIOS update. When I asked our head of news "What would you buy if you had $210?" he responded "I'd beg on the streets for $40 more if I have to and buy 1060."

Ultimately, the RX 470, and this card in particular has what it takes to be a very strong mid-range contender but it all depends on how the pricing settles in the coming weeks. AMD needs to keep just the right amount of separation between this and the RX 480. If it can do that, it's onto a winner.

The Sapphire Nitro+ RX 470 OC has an impressive 1260MHz boost clock which provides a wonderful performance boost over the reference model. Also, the stunning design exudes a premium feel and adds an elegant touch to any system build.