AMD Fires Back - Radeon RX 470 Review

[MrTeal]

What does the 950 have to do with the 4xx line up? I have a HD7770 that I would like to upgrade, but I dont want to spend more than 150.00. Clearly, it will be a long time, if ever, before the 470 reaches that price, and the 460 just does not seem like enough of an upgrade. Something in between at 130 to 140 would be ideal.

Are you power or size constrained? If not, a used 7970/280X would be $100 or less as a placeholder, and would be a pretty amazing upgrade from a 7770. Something to thing about until 14nm prices stabilize.

 

[SPBHM]

AMD needs to revisit this line and not make too many variations which in the end causes supply problems..

RX480 @ 8GB should be priced at 229$ (Up to 1440P gaming, maybe not at max)
RX470 @ 4GB should be priced at 179$ (Up to 1080P gaming, mostly at max settings)
RX460 @ 4GB should be priced at 129$ (Up to 1080P gaming, relaxed settings).

Get rid of the RX480 @ 4GB, and RX470 @ 8GB, it just causes supply problems and weird pricing. The RX470@4GB should be the sweet spot for Console ports given that Microsoft's Scorpio, and Sony NEO will perform about the same. Making the 4GB the default card also means that most games up to 1440P will still work with the Fury Line up (which only has 4GB).

I think this would make sense, they don't really need the 480 4GB and the 480 8GB is currently priced a little to high, to close to the 1060.

but, I think they should keep the 460 2GB at $99 (or less), because it's a good spot for the minimum card for decent gaming, and 2GB is still going to work for most games at medium-low, also the 460 is probably going to be the cheapest card with HEVC/VP9 acceleration and HDMI 2.0 so it's something worth buying even just as a basic graphics card or HTPC card I think, which don't really need 4GB

 

[mohit9206]

More like AMD Fires Blanks - Radeon RX 470 Review
At $200, i don't see the value.$200 for 8GB models would have been acceptable but 4GB should have been MUCH cheaper around $160.At this rate RX470 8gb models would be $240 and above.
Since everyone is quoting it,let me do the same thing.

I'd beg on the streets for $40 more if I had to for a 1060

 

[Bacon1]

More like AMD Fires Blanks - Radeon RX 470 Review
At $200, i don't see the value.$200 for 8GB models would have been acceptable but 4GB should have been MUCH cheaper around $160.At this rate RX470 8gb models would be $240 and above.
Since everyone is quoting it,let me do the same thing.

Why not the FULL quote?

Pricing of the Radeon RX 470 starts at $179. Performance-per-dollar of the RX 470 4 GB reference is nearly identical to the RX 480 8 GB, just at a lower price and less performance. At $179, the RX 470 is a decent option for 1080p gaming if you just can't save up enough money to afford any of the cards above the $200 mark. Another option would be the RX 480 4 GB if it makes a comeback with good market availability; the additional $20 will give you performance nearly identical to that of the 8 GB version. Last but not least, there is still the GTX 1060, which starts at $249 with no stock available, but has higher performance, better efficiency, noise and thermals. Don't get me wrong, the 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. However, the ASUS RX 470 is in my opinion slightly too expensive 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 had to for a 1060."

And they reviewed the worst and most expensive model.

 

[Erenhardt]

Are you power or size constrained? If not, a used 7970/280X would be $100 or less as a placeholder, and would be a pretty amazing upgrade from a 7770. Something to thing about until 14nm prices stabilize.

Retired hawaii miners are the way to go imho.

Also, funny how in pclols review 470 is faster than 480 and 480 is right behind 970. I guess amd can't be faster than nvidia in their wondergraphs. :whiste:

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Price already raised to $199.99 just hours after launch and before it is back in stock.

WTH!? That's some BS! I was going to get that, if it ever come back. But I won't now. Sure I could swing the extra $20, but I won't just from principle.

 

[mohit9206]

Why not the FULL quote?

And they reviewed the worst and most expensive model.

Reviewed the most expensive model and still gave it Highly Recommended award?How?Why?

 

[Unreal123]

Joker production is very Pro AMD and he thinks that RX 470 is the most pointless card released this year.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVJtDvrR27PQBcsVGZp3Law

 

[redzo]

It's marketing. Awards are now meaningless. People need a brain in order to read the damn review. TPU reviews are actually not that bad. As a rule, you should always check multiple sources reviewing the same product.

All their reviewed products end up with an award of some kind. Since not all models belonging to one aib are sent to a review site, marketing folks enjoy it since it drives sales and exposure up for that particular model. The review also gets an entry on the aib product website at the awards/prizes section.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Are you power or size constrained? If not, a used 7970/280X would be $100 or less as a placeholder, and would be a pretty amazing upgrade from a 7770. Something to thing about until 14nm prices stabilize.

Both somewhat. I have a dell xps with a 460 watt psu. Unless I could buy from someone I knew, I dont really consider used as an option. That is why I get upset at posters who denigrate anyone who is concerned about power consumption. (not you, but some others). It certainly does matter to me. I am sure a 1060, and probably a 470 or 480 would work, but it rules out a lot of previous gen AMD cards, specifically anything that requires an 8pln connector. I am in no big rush to upgrade. I will wait for prices to go down and see what the 1050 brings to the table. I am not that demanding, so something like 1280 shaders would be enough.

 

[raghu78]

AMD are stuck with a very uncompetitive Polaris architecture (atleast in its current implementation) as we can see this from the pricing compression of the P10 product stack. Ideally if P10 had been able to hit clocks of 1400 Mhz for Rx 480 while staying below 150w and 1300 Mhz for Rx 470 while staying around 120w AMD could have priced Rx 470 4GB at USD 199 and 8GB at USD 229. The Rx 480 4GB could have launched at USD 239 and the 8GB at USD 269. Selling a 232 sq mm die for < USD 200 (even if its salvaged dies) at this early stage of the node's life is painful from a cost and profitability point of view.

Right now AMD will sell every Rx 480/Rx 470/Rx 460 they make. But they desperately need a second revision to improve their perf and perf/watt so that when supply catches up with demand and when Nvidia has enough supply to flood the market with cheaper GP106 products and GP107 products AMD are not left relying on price cuts to move product. Polaris has been a disappointing launch partly because of the current state of GF 14LPP. AMD needs a way out of the WSA and GF need to be told they need to have a competitive node and robust implementation if they want AMD wafer orders.

 

[Final8ty]

Joker production is very Pro AMD and he thinks that RX 470 is the most pointless card released this year.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVJtDvrR27PQBcsVGZp3Law

No he is not his main rig is NV powered the last time i checked.
And it is still NV powered.
http://********/1KDHuIi

 

[obidamnkenobi]

No he is not his main rig is NV powered the last time i checked.
And it is still NV powered.
http://********/1KDHuIi

It tells us nothing. People use "pro AMD" to mean anything from; he's a paid company representative, to " said something positive about their product once".

Edit: watched the video and he makes the same mistake others in this thread. Comparing the 470 with a quite, custom coolers that you can/could buy for $180-200, to the non-existent 4GB 480 with a loud-as-hell reference cooler. Not fair comparison! What do custom 480s cost?

 

[Arachnotronic]

Joker production is very Pro AMD and he thinks that RX 470 is the most pointless card released this year.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVJtDvrR27PQBcsVGZp3Law

Joker Productions is definitely pro-AMD. I remember watching a video in which he compares the GTX 1060 and RX 480 and basically began spewing FUD about how NVIDIA will stop driver support for Pascal down the line and/or intentionally gimp performance in future drivers to make the argument that RX 480 is the better long-term buy.

 

[Arachnotronic]

AMD are stuck with a very uncompetitive Polaris architecture (atleast in its current implementation) as we can see this from the pricing compression of the P10 product stack.

I agree.

Ideally if P10 had been able to hit clocks of 1400 Mhz for Rx 480 while staying below 150w and 1300 Mhz for Rx 470 while staying around 120w AMD could have priced Rx 470 4GB at USD 199 and 8GB at USD 229.

Um, so you're saying if Polaris 10 were a totally different, better-designed GPU AMD could have gotten more for it? OK.

The Rx 480 4GB could have launched at USD 239 and the 8GB at USD 269. Selling a 232 sq mm die for < USD 200 (even if its salvaged dies) at this early stage of the node's life is painful from a cost and profitability point of view.

It's probably a bit painful, but the real problem is that the reference boards are over-engineered with a lot of power phases, traces to support 256-bit memory bus, 8GB of RAM, etc. The whole bill of materials cost is quite high but the performance puts a really low price ceiling on the products.

Right now AMD will sell every Rx 480/Rx 470/Rx 460 they make.

This statement is not very helpful. I would assume that AMD has a reasonable handle on demand and won't overproduce chips.

But they desperately need a second revision to improve their perf and perf/watt so that when supply catches up with demand and when Nvidia has enough supply to flood the market with cheaper GP106 products and GP107 products AMD are not left relying on price cuts to move product.

Second revision? At this point they would need an entirely new architecture because this is pretty much it. The process that they're using has been in mass production for quite some time, so don't expect miracles on that front. And, unless you think AMD is going to rework the entire physical design of the product to squeeze out more perf/watt, this is pretty much it, what you see is what you get with Polaris.

Anyway, supply of GP106 seems to be quite good, they seem to come in stock much more frequently than RX 480 cards do, and they are available from a much broader set of AIB partners than the RX 480s are. I do agree that as 1060 supply gets better, aside from sales to miners, RX 480 sales will not hold up well.

Polaris has been a disappointing launch partly because of the current state of GF 14LPP. AMD needs a way out of the WSA and GF need to be told they need to have a competitive node and robust implementation if they want AMD wafer orders.

Don't blame GloFo for this. NVIDIA spends a lot more in R&D on its GPU architectures than AMD does and this is the result. These projects also began years ago, so what you're seeing now is really reflective of the relative R&D spending that we saw in the ~2013 time-frame. Since then, NVIDIA has ramped up spending while AMD has cut spending (even as the latter spreads its efforts across a wider range of products while the former has actually put an end to entire product lines such as Icera baseband):

 

[Joepublic2]

Not to mention this doesn't help the devs of games a lot when they see a large percentage of people are nvidia as people cannot get amd cards to play it with and causes them to code for nvidia's side more as we see in some cases.

I would partially disagree. Every card sold is a GPU sold for AMD. What people are doing with them is a secondary concern to moving them in the first place. I bought a 970 partially for games but it was primarily to help me learn CUDA. There's a lot of things you can do with these devices now beyond playing games.

 

[Newbian]

I would partially disagree. Every card sold is a GPU sold for AMD. What people are doing with them is a secondary concern to moving them in the first place. I bought a 970 partially for games but it was primarily to help me learn CUDA. There's a lot of things you can do with these devices now beyond playing games.

The problem is when a large amount of the cards is one sided being used in the game as we see in the past and now with mining again.

 

[eRacer]

Was able to pick up a Sapphire RX 470 at Jet.com for $171.14 this morning for myself using the TRIPLE15 coupon code.

Would have rather bought the PowerColor RED DEVIL from newegg for $185 w/shipping but that went out of stock as I was completing the order yesterday morning and now it is $200 and out of stock.

 

[Piroko]

Joker Productions is definitely pro-AMD. I remember watching a video in which he compares the GTX 1060 and RX 480 and basically began spewing FUD about how NVIDIA will stop driver support for Pascal down the line and/or intentionally gimp performance in future drivers to make the argument that RX 480 is the better long-term buy.

Is it not allowed to own a product, generally like it but criticize its flaws? Am I not allowed to criticize price and power consumption of AMD cards because I currently own one? Is this some kind of running gag that I don't get?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Criticizing flaws is not the same thing as making unproven predictions about future performance.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Criticizing flaws is not the same thing as making unproven predictions about future performance.

Unproven predictions not only about future performance, but of malicious intent on the part of NVIDIA to artificially and actively gimp product performance.

 

[USER8000]

Joker Productions is definitely pro-AMD. I remember watching a video in which he compares the GTX 1060 and RX 480 and basically began spewing FUD about how NVIDIA will stop driver support for Pascal down the line and/or intentionally gimp performance in future drivers to make the argument that RX 480 is the better long-term buy.

Well considering my GTX660TI and stop-gap GTX960 now get mauled by the AMD equivalent cards,well its only FUD for those on computer forums who buy high end cards and upgrade every year.

Unproven predictions not only about future performance

So why has the HD7950/R9 280 done better than teh GTX660TI I had,or the HD7870/R9 270 done better than the GTX660 or the GTX960 is worse than the R9 380.

So you are going to personally guarantee that the GTX1060 will beat the RX480 for the next two years(at least).

No,because in 12 to 18 months time you will forget this conversation,when the GTX2060,and then make more excuses.

Its people like you who are putting me off Nvidia,instead of asking why this has been repeatedly happening for the midrange cards.

Cards like the GTX460 and 8800GT had decent longevity.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Well considering my GTX660TI and stop-gap GTX960 now get mauled by the AMD equivalent cards,well its only FUD for those on computer forums who buy high end cards and upgrade every year.

Do you think that this is a result of NVIDIA intentionally gimping their GPUs? I think NVIDIA's drivers are just more polished out of the gate while AMD's aren't, which means they can gain more performance over time.

Anyway, if NVIDIA is really intentionally crippling older generation cards, then that would be a really poor business move on their part.

 

[IEC]

I will point out that by definition, educated guesses ("predictions") of future performance cannot be proven, so calling it an "unproven prediction" is a tautological statement.

Whether de-prioritizing driver support and optimizations for older generations of cards can be considered intentional, malicious, or artificially gimping performance is also irrelevant, as it still has deleterious effects on relative performance of older cards vis-a-vis their competition.

Case in point: the past trends with Kepler cards losing substantially to formerly equivalent Hawai'i cards certainly gives pause to anyone who keeps their GPUs for > 1 year.

 

[Adul]

Do you think that this is a result of NVIDIA intentionally gimping their GPUs? I think NVIDIA's drivers are just more polished out of the gate while AMD's aren't, which means they can gain more performance over time.

Anyway, if NVIDIA is really intentionally crippling older generation cards, then that would be a really poor business move on their part.

I think its more that they are not intentionally gimping their drivers. They are just not optimizing them for newer games when new cards are out. Hence you begin to lose more and more performance as times goes on. Where as with GCN at least AMD's optimizations still work on older cards for longer periods of time.