AMD Teases Future Radeon RX 470 & Radeon RX 460 Cards
by Ryan Smith on June 13, 2016 3:30 PM EST
With the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo once again upon us, this week has been a flood of gaming hardware and software news. On the PC front, AMD is once again sponsoring PC Gamer’s PC Gaming Show, and while the company isn’t making quite as large of a presence this year – having just announced a bunch of tech at Computex – AMD is still attending E3 to tease a bit of hardware. Announced in a press release that’s going out at the same time as the PC Gaming Show starts, AMD is very briefly teasing the next two Polaris-based Radeon cards: the Radeon RX 470 and the Radeon RX 460.
AMD previously teased the Radeon RX 480 back at Computex, and with that card not shipping until the end of this month, the RX 470 and RX 460 are even more brief teases, essentially amounting to AMD confirming that they will exist.
As you can assume from the numbers, the RX 470 and RX 460 will slot in below the $199 RX 480. AMD’s press release specifically notes that the RX 470 is a “refined, power-efficient HD gaming” card. Whereas the RX 460 is a “a cool and efficient solution for the ultimate e-sports gaming experience.” These are no further details such as performance, specifications, or pricing, so this is a true teaser in every sense of the word.
Based on their admittedly short descriptions, it sounds like the RX 470 and RX 460 will slot in to very similar positions as the R7 370 and R7 360 respectively, as these are the same markets AMD pitched those cards at. This would make the RX 470 a budget 1080p card, while RX 460 is pitched specifically at MOBA players and the like, as those games have relatively low system requirements. Lower-end cards of this nature have also proven very popular in China, where MOBAs are especially popular and the pricing is better aligned with what most consumers can afford.
For what it’s worth, those cards launched at $149 and $109 respectively, so that may give us a ballpark idea of what to expect. Note that AMD only has two Polaris chips – the larger Polaris 10 and the smaller Polaris 11 – so it’s not clear how AMD may split these up. Historically, Radeon x60 cards have been based on chips that have been prevalent in smaller, mid-performance laptops.
On that note there’s one last passage from AMD’s press release I want to point out. In reiterating their talking point about bringing “console-like” performance to thin and light laptops, AMD’s release mentions that Polaris offers “exceptionally low power and low-z height.” Like everything else, no further details are provided, but I don’t suspect this is the last we’ve heard of this point. Having seen a very early Polaris 11 last December it’s definitely a small chip, and it sounds like AMD focused not just on package size, but thickness as well. Z-height is not something I’ve previously paid attention to, so I’m not immediately sure how thick AMD’s last-generation chips were, or whether this has been much of a problem on a competitive basis.
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Yojimbo - Monday, June 13, 2016 - link
What will be AMD's highest performing single GPU card? How will it perform compared to the 1060? What's NVIDIA's cheapest card?descendency - Monday, June 13, 2016 - link
There will be an RX 490? or something like Fury X II. The card released earlier (RX 480) is equivalent to a GTX 460. These are like GTX 450... and GTS cards.Rampart19 - Monday, June 13, 2016 - link
FYI the RX 480 is faster than a GTX 970, for cheaper. AMD isn't going to try to compete with Nvidia on the high-end at first because the quantity of of $300+ GPUs sold is not nearly as large as the $100-$200 range. AMD needs to regain some consumer trust and show that they have the ability to produce capable cards. So they have to go for where the most quantity is: the mainstream and budget segments.Meteor2 - Monday, June 13, 2016 - link
Obviously both companies are taking different approaches to introducing FinFET cards, which is great for them and us. AMD's approach is where the volume is and I suspect will be the most profitable path.bill.rookard - Monday, June 13, 2016 - link
They don't have the hardware out yet, but it's going to be Vega. They have the Polaris 10 and Polaris 11. Polaris 10 is 'big' Polaris, 11 is 'small' Polaris, and they range from about 1024 SPs on the smaller P11s, to 2560 SPs on the P10s. Vega 10 is going to allegedly be (yikes) 4096 SPs.Absolutely huge.
And it will feature HBM2. Personally I'd like to see a full-fat Vega 10 GPU paired with 8GB-16GB of GDDR5x memory. That would be siiiiiccckk.
wiak - Monday, June 13, 2016 - link
hmm pretty sure the 1060 and RX 480 (possibly 480X) will be close, btw you have to remember nvidia will lose more making a 1060 out of pascal chips than amd out of polaris 10 chipsso if nvidia has good yield on pascal chips they might need to sacrifice those chips for 1060
most people buy >$300 cards
am pretty sure the cards less than $300 will be around 80% of the market.. most laptop chips are based on those cheaper and smaller chips due to power usage/temperature
anyway just my taughts
Macpoedel - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
I doubt Nvidia will use GP104 to make the GTX 1060. It'll probably be a GP106 and historically those have been 1/2 of a GP104. Can't see why Nvidia would only use that part for GTX1050 this time around. If there would be a more cut-back version of GP104, it would probably be used in a GTX1060 Ti and cost around $250.Drumsticks - Monday, June 13, 2016 - link
The way I see it, AMD had two choices: compete in $200-300, where Nvidia could drop the 1070 to like $349, or completely own the $100-250 market. Nvidia is selling a 750 Ti at $100 I think. The 460 and 470 will destroy everything south of $200.The 1060 will compete with the 480, but I don't see it competing very well in anything DX12.
Shahnewaz - Monday, June 13, 2016 - link
- Says AMD's flagship are mid-range- Says he can't wait for the GTX 1060
Makes perfect sense. -_-
Wreckage - Monday, June 13, 2016 - link
AMD's flagship is mid-range the 1060 will prove that. Currently NVIDIA has the 3 top chips on the market. Anyone who thinks AMD will gain any significant marketsharet is new to this game. The 1060 will probably outsell the 480 3 to 1.