AMD’s Radeon RX 470 does a solid 1080p60 but at a confusing price

AMD has made it clear that it wants the low end of the graphics card market, and now it’s time to see how committed it is to that strategy.

In July, the company revealed the Radeon RX 470 and 460 chips that are meant to fill out its latest video-card offerings. The 480, on the high end, is a solution for 1080p gaming and virtual reality. The 470, however, drops the VR capabilities in favor of a slightly lower price, but AMD promises that it can still pump out most games running on their highest settings at full HD and 60 frames per second. But with a starting price of $180, the 470 might not make a lot of sense when the 480 is only $20 away and the significantly more powerful Nvidia GeForce 1060 is right in the same range as well. That comparison is even stranger when you consider that the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 470 4GB that I tested sells for $210. That’s … $10 more than the base-model 480.

With that pricing in mind, let’s look at how the 470 delivers on AMD’s big talk.

What you’ll like

It does exactly what it’s supposed to do

AMD positioned this newest Radeon as its HD-gaming solution, and the card nails this. I decided to throw a bunch of games at the 470 all running at 1080p with maxed-out settings (unless otherwise noted), and the card handled just about everything I threw at it.

The system here is running on an Intel Core i5-4690K and 16GB of G.Skill DDR3 memory. I also have the MSAA set to a demanding 4X.

Above: The 470 can do 1080p60 just fine.

Image Credit: Jeffrey Grubb/GamesBeat

While GPU-intensive games like The Witcher 3 struggled on Ultra, I was able to get close enough to 60 on the High options. After some tweaking, I was able to turn just about everything except for some shadow and reflection stuff back up to Ultra while maintaining the framerate.

Everything else was close enough to 60 with no tweaking that it’s obvious you’ll get 60 FPS out of this card in just about any new release as long as you’re willing to fiddle with a superfluous option here and there. You’re not locked into 60, but it’s close enough.

What you won’t like

It doesn’t compare favorably to its closest neighbor

The fact that the RX 470 does almost exactly what it’s supposed to do shouldn’t be a negative, but AMD has handcuffed this card so that it doesn’t make sense. Its biggest competitor is the RX 480, which is going to get you consistently better performance for just a few bucks more.

I tested each card with Rocket League, Doom, Bioshock Infinite, The Division, Dying Light, Hitman, Dark Souls III, GTA V, Fallout 4, and The Witcher 3 on max settings at 1080p. I got more than a 10 percent improvement from the 480 … so why would I spend $180 and up on the 470?

Above: The 12-game test was kind to both cards, but the 480 is a better deal.

Image Credit: Jeffrey Grubb/GamesBeat

Conclusion

I think what has happened here is that AMD was so aggressive with the 480 that it didn’t leave itself any room in the bottom of the market for its two other base cards. The 470 is an excellent GPU — it really is — but it’s in a nook on the price-to-performance scale that almost demands you consider the 480 or even the 1060 instead. With that in mind, I wouldn’t recommend the 470 at its current price. Maybe if you stumble across it at $150 in the future, that’s something I’d jump on. But we don’t even know what the price of the 460 is yet. And it’s likely that AMD will try to hit that with its card for esports players.

Finally, I would say that the AMD doesn’t look completely silly here. All the 470 really does is hammer home just how good a deal the RX 480 is. At $200, that device is phenomenal, and now you have a frame of reference of exactly how decent a bargain you’re really getting that card even if it means the 470 is a video card without a home.

The RX 470 is out now. AMD provided GamesBeat with a sample card for the purposes of this review.