AMD Launches the Radeon RX 470 and RX 460

Small cuts for the lowest of price points…

480470460DatesAMDRadeon

Today AMD is launching the Radeon RX 470 and RX 460 with planned retail availability on the 4th for the RX 470 and on the 8th for the RX 460. Based on AMD’s Polaris architecture both of these new GPUs will be slotting in below last month’s RX 480. The RX 470 will used a harvested version of the Polaris 10 die and the RX 460 will use a harvested version of the Polaris 11 die. Although we’re still waiting on the official word the RX 470 is expected to slot in around the $150 price point while the RX 460 will be about $100.

470specsAMDRadeon

The RX 470 loses four CUs, 55 GB/s of memory bandwidth, 4 GBs of RAM, 60 Mhz of clockspeed, and draws 30 less Watts of power compared to the RX 480. According to AMD’s internal benchmarks the RX 470 is between 1.5 and 2.4 times faster than AMD’s old Pitcairn-based Radeon R9 270. Overall the RX 470 looks like a pretty mildly cut version of the Polaris 10 die.

460specsAMDRadeon

The RX 460 is perhaps the more interesting of these two products as it’s the second Polaris 11-based GPU that AMD’s announced. The first being the Radeon Pro WX 4100 which uses the full 16 CU Polaris 11 die while the RX 460 uses a slightly cut-down 14 CU version. AMD expects the RX 460 to offer between 1.2 and 1.3 times the performance of the R7 260X which used Bonaire. It’s TDP is also less than 75 Watts which means that it will not require a PCI-E power connector.

AMD is not launching these graphics cards using a reference design like it did with the RX 480. Rather AIB partners will have their own custom version on sale when the embargo lapses.

460-laptopAMDRadeon

AMD’s also using a different tactic when it comes to mobile GPU branding this round opting to use the same names for the desktop and laptop parts without including an “M” or similar mobile optimized moniker. You won’t necessarily see the same performance when comparing mobile and desktop GPUs with the same product name because it will be up to OEMs to configure the TDP ceiling for a given design but the silicon will be the same.

Stay tuned for more on the RX 470 and RX 460 in the coming weeks.S|A

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Thomas Ryan is a freelance technology writer and photographer from Seattle, living in Austin. You can also find his work on SemiAccurate and PCWorld. He has a BA in Geography from the University of Washington with a minor in Urban Design and Planning and specializes in geospatial data science. If you have a hardware performance question or an interesting data set Thomas has you covered.