AMD Fires Back - Radeon RX 470 Review

[ViRGE]

There are still listings for them on newegg for $199 (OOS obviously) but they seem to trickle in every few days.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131693&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-Veeralava%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=6202798&SID=

Do they? Nowinstock seems to indicate that reference 4GB cards haven't been in stock for weeks. The one 4GB card they show to have been on sale recently was the Sapphire custom, which went very quickly. And I haven't personally seen any other 4GB cards. But I admit NIS is hardly perfect.

 

[boozzer]

If $20 is make or break your budget of $200, you probably shouldn't be buying a GPU in the first place. $180 makes no sense with a $200 480 available.

but it is 100% fair price though. 87% performance for 10% less in price.

20$ difference, everyone should get the 200$ 4gb 480.

 

[antihelten]

As I explained here, the "up to 2.8x increase in performance/watt" was always a fictional number for gaming. According to AMD's own footnotes the 2.8X number only applies to 270X owners who "play" torture test apps like FurMark and are upgrading to a reference-like RX 470 card that adheres to a 110W TDP that will also be used to only "play" torture test apps like FurMark.

At least the RX 470 makes some large performance/watt improvements over Hawaii.

The efficiency numbers from AMD were not based on FurMark or anything like it. The 2.8X number for the RX 470 was based on an average of 3DMark, Ashes, Hitman and Overwatch.

 

[SketchMaster]

I too am disappointed in the price of the card. I do believe that part of it is due to the extremely high demand, mostly for mining.

I second the motion they should just make dedicated mining cards. Stripped down cards with no video ports or required architecture and lower RAM count (doesn't effect hashcount), just number crunchers. Price it lower than a full GFX card while still making a decent profit and see if that keeps the miners from buying up all the cards. Granted, if you don't have enough chips to keep up with demand you'll still be out of stock, but at least the miners will be attracted to the lower $/perf numbers of a mining card.

My $0.02

 

[Elfear]

I too am disappointed in the price of the card. I do believe that part of it is due to the extremely high demand, mostly for mining.

I second the motion they should just make dedicated mining cards. Stripped down cards with no video ports or required architecture and lower RAM count (doesn't effect hashcount), just number crunchers. Price it lower than a full GFX card while still making a decent profit and see if that keeps the miners from buying up all the cards. Granted, if you don't have enough chips to keep up with demand you'll still be out of stock, but at least the miners will be attracted to the lower $/perf numbers of a mining card.

My $0.02

Problem is there would be much less residual value that way. As it stands, if mining tanks there is a 2nd hand market for the mining cards because they can still be used for gaming. A dedicated mining card would be worth almost nothing if mining became unprofitable. Miners are less likely to invest with that risk.

Back OT - Looks like AMD has poor stock again and with no reference card or official MSRP, it allows AIBs to charge what the market will bear. Sucks for people looking for a good deal.

 

[eRacer]

The efficiency numbers from AMD were not based on FurMark or anything like it. The 2.8X number for the RX 470 was based on an average of 3DMark, Ashes, Hitman and Overwatch.

There are two critical numbers needed for an accurate and fair measurement of "performance/watt"...performance and watts. The "performance" was determined from the benchmarks you listed. However, the watts used for the calculation do not come from measured power draw from the benchmarks above.

Rather than using actual power draw, AMD simply plugged in 110W for RX 470 and 180W for Radeon 270X. As shown here the 270X power consumption in gaming is far less than the 180W board power AMD used in the calculation. It takes a torture test application like FurMark to drive 270X power consumption to near 180W.

Since 270X performance/watt in gaming is far better than what AMD stated, their claim of "up to 2.8x performance/watt" improvement over 270X is essentially a lie.

 

[Headfoot]

Since 270X performance/watt in gaming is far better than what AMD stated, their claim of "up to 2.8x performance/watt" improvement over 270X is essentially a lie.

I believe the original claim was for Polaris as a whole. My guess is that the optimum case where they determined the "2.8x" figure was the slowest, most cut down small die Polaris 11. They later made different more specific claims that weren't all the way up to 2.8x

 

[eRacer]

I believe the original claim was for Polaris as a whole. My guess is that the optimum case where they determined the "2.8x" figure was the slowest, most cut down small die Polaris 11. They later made different more specific claims that weren't all the way up to 2.8x

It was not for Polaris as a whole, or a cut down Polaris 11. It is specifically RX 470 vs Radeon 270X.

 

[Bacon1]

Here is the actual slide and what games they tested for the perf/watt

 

[sirmo]

Personally I am impressed with Polaris 10 efficiency.. I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Of Course a stripped down architecture like Maxwell/Pascal will be more efficient in certain tasks.. but Polaris is a huge improvement over previous generations of GCN.

Vega with HBM2 will be beastly in that department.

 

[eRacer]

Personally I am impressed with Polaris 10 efficiency.. I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Of Course a stripped down architecture like Maxwell/Pascal will be more efficient in certain tasks.. but Polaris is a huge improvement over previous generations of GCN.

A $179 RX 470 offers great performance/$. Power consumption and performance/watt are reasonable, even if not as good as what NVIDIA offers. These cards are going to be quite popular for gaming and mining.

So why essentially lie about how efficient Polaris is? Why not use more credible numbers? AMD and Raja take a credibility hit for no good reason at all. That is what is confusing.

 

[sirmo]

A $179 RX 470 offers great performance/$. Power consumption and performance/watt are reasonable, even if not as good as what NVIDIA offers. These cards are going to be quite popular for gaming and mining.

So why essentially lie about how efficient Polaris is? Why not use more credible numbers? AMD and Raja take a credibility hit for no good reason at all. That is what is confusing.

They are not lies, it's a cherry picked stat. Every manufacturer does that.

A lie was the demo of the 1080 FE card at 2100 Mhz running at 67C for instance. Or that 970 had 256-bit 4Gb of VRAM. Or that Async Compute was a Maxwell feature. Those are actual lies if you're looking for something to be outraged about.

 

[SPBHM]

the 470 is good perf/$
the disappointment is mostly caused by the over optimistic rumored $150 price

but they need to sort supply, and their partners need to start asking a little bit less extra for some custom models I think...

also if possible it would be good if they had a "465", because from the 460 to the 470 it looks like a huge price and performance gap

 

[obidamnkenobi]

I got a Powercolor reference 480 for $240 and there was a variety of cards in stock yesterday at $240 according to nowinstock. The card isn't too hard to find as it's in stock multiple times a day.

At that price, the 470 for $180 is a great deal if you can actually find it. The 480 @ $240 was the best perf/$ card on the market (well, the $200 4gb version was, but that's not been seen for awhile) and if you can get a 470 for $180 that will be the best perf/$ on the market. It'd be a fabulous card for anyone with a 1080/60 Hz monitor and it'd still be useful if you upgraded to a 144Hz Freesync monitor as you'd still have smooth gaming, albeit at the lower end of the monitor's range.

I've read some new and old reviews now and agree. The 470 for $180 is a pretty good deal, i. e. the red devil card. Once available.

A custom card with good, quite cooler with performance near 970, and well above 380. The latter has gone for $150, but this is just few bucks more for latest greatest and better performance. And below my $200 paid threshold. I'm getting one once it's back in stock.

The sapphire cards at $210+ though I don't really like.

 

[eRacer]

They are not lies, it's a cherry picked stat. Every manufacturer does that.

It's not even cherry picked as the watts don't even correlate with the games tested. It is similar to calculating the performance/watt of a highly overclocked 200W aftermarket GTX 970 by using the highly clocked performance numbers, but substituting the 145W reference card TDP in for the actual reading of 200W.

A lie was the demo of the 1080 FE card at 2100 Mhz running at 67C for instance.

I consider this stunt deceptive and was completely unnecessary to aid GTX 1080 sales.

 

[Sonikku]

So here's the way I see it. the 470 is a terrible value when weighed against the $200 480's that no longer exist at retail. But when weighed against what actually does exist at retail, the price is in line with what has been happening with the skewing of new gpu pricing all over the spectrum this cycle.

 

[HOOfan 1]

So here's the way I see it. the 470 is a terrible value when weighed against the $200 480's that no longer exist at retail. But when weighed against what actually does exist at retail, the price is in line with what has been happening with the skewing of new gpu pricing all over the spectrum this cycle.

I think we have the same problem nvidia is having with the 10x0 series.

I don't think people would have whined as much if the 1080 came out across the board at $699 instead of having a 2 tier pricing structure. the 780 Ti came out at $699, and the 980 Ti came out at $649, and the 1080's performance was a bigger boost from the previous top dog than those cards were, and the 980 Ti was even praised as a decent value compared to the Titan X.

Now AMD has the same problem, they announced the 4GB RX 480 at $200, and the card is barely available at all, let alone for $200. So the RX 470 swoops in and takes that $200 spot, at a slight performance decrease. If the 4GB RX 480 and it's $200 price point never existed, then the RX 470 would seem like a great deal.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

So here's the way I see it. the 470 is a terrible value when weighed against the $200 480's that no longer exist at retail. But when weighed against what actually does exist at retail, the price is in line with what has been happening with the skewing of new gpu pricing all over the spectrum this cycle.

But that's not apples to apples. The (non-existent) $200 480 is only with the loud reference cooler right? The 470s are custom with (mostly) better coolers. Equivalent custom 480s cost more than 200.

 

[Madpacket]

Hmm, I'm not surprised of the price and given the use of Hynix memory compared to Samsung on the reference 480's these cards won't be as good for Ether mining (even performance per watt). As a miner I won't bother with these 470's unless they hit $229 CAD or less.

The 470 will make for a good 1080P gaming card once prices settle down though. $149.99 was probably the planned launch price for the 4GB model but miners would swoop those up even faster so I get why AMD priced them higher.

AMD could solve this in a few ways. They could create a "Crypto" card that focuses primarily on enhanced mining and power efficiency but also works "OK" as a gaming card.

So imagine a $400.00 card that hashes at 40Gh but has the gaming performance of a 470/480 with similar power consumption. That would push all the miners towards those cards and leave the 470/480's for the gamer's. The miners would be happy as they would have a faster mining cards and could still sell them after ROI for a decent sum if they perform on par with a 480.

How would they do this? I don't know. I'm not an computer engineer but look what they were able to do with the Fury Nano WRT power consumption. This was the ideal mining card (aside from the price) due to performance per watt.

I can't speak for others but for me performance per watt is the most important metric followed by price and then actual performance.

Of course this would all take engineering resources in a somewhat risky field but I think it's pretty safe to assume mining isn't going to go away. Even when Ethereum eventually switches to Casper (Proof of Stake vs. Proof of Work) there will be other coins to mine.

 

[Sonikku]

Yep. And I think the $150 price point may have even been the plan before the 480 launched. But when you can't keep the 480 in stock even in price gouged screwball add in variants then it would be crazy not to charge more for the barely cut down younger brother. Even at hawked prices every last one of the 470 is now sold out. The goal is to make money, not to bestow the best value in entertainment possible for beloved PC gamers.

 

[Adul]

They are not lies, it's a cherry picked stat. Every manufacturer does that.

A lie was the demo of the 1080 FE card at 2100 Mhz running at 67C for instance. Or that 970 had 256-bit 4Gb of VRAM. Or that Async Compute was a Maxwell feature. Those are actual lies if you're looking for something to be outraged about.

I am still pissed about the 970.

 

[Enigmoid]

The 2.8x is perf/ TDP. NOT perf/W.

Same mess AMD pulled with kabini/beema etc.

Here are my calculations using AMD's footnote performance numbers.

I mislabeled a number of things but using AMD's performance numbers, 470 is 74% faster than the 270X. For the 470 to be 2.8x as efficient, it must only use 62% the power of the 270X. The 270X uses approximately 125W in games. For the 470 to have 2.8x the perf/W it would need to only consume ~78W. If we instead use perf/TDP the 470 should have a TDP of ~120W, which it does.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Here is the actual slide and what games they tested for the perf/watt

nvm

 

[philipma1957]

I got 1x Rx 470 on the way today at 209 the sapphire 4gb card.

It will go in a mining rig. Basically ordered it just to have one.

At this point I have capped out my power/heat numbers until the fall and cooler weather arrives.

1x rx 470
9x rx 480
4x r9 390

14 cards about 2500 watts and 365mh of hashpower

 

[escrow4]

If you think its bad in the US, over here in Australia:

RX 480 8GB: $420 (local, around $320 USD)
RX 470 4GB: Tentative $380 (local, around $295 USD)
GTX 1060: $450 for aftermarket (local, around $340 USD)

I'm not holding my breath. There is an R9 390 for $270 USD equivalent but the hardware decoder is older. Bleh. GPU makers have gotten greedy and those idiot miners are not helping.