The new Radeon RX 470 and RX 460 graphics cards are shipping this August to add cheaper and lower power options to AMD's Radeon 400 series.
The RX 470 is based on a salvaged version of the Polaris 10 GPU, trading disabled CUs and lower clockspeeds for lower power consumption. It ships with 32 CUs enabled (2048 SPs), 4 fewer than RX 480. RX 470?s clockspeeds are set at 926MHz for the core clock and 1206MHz for the boost clock. Relative to RX 480, this is about 95% of the boost clock, but only 83% of the base clock. The card has a 120W TBP and AMD is pairing it with 4GB of GDDR5 clocked at 6.6Gbps. Other than the disabled CUs, the Polaris 10 GPU used in RX 470 is otherwise identical to RX 480.
AMD is targeting the RX 470 to replace the Pitcairn based RX 370 and RX 270 cards. The benchmark numbers in AMD's marketing materials call for anywhere between a 1.5x and 2.4x performance increase over R7 270. Overall then, AMD will be targeting RX 470 at the same general 1080p market as the 4GB RX 480.
The lowest power member of the Radeon 400 family, RX 460 marks the desktop introduction of AMD?s Polaris 11 GPU. This is the smaller of the two Polaris GPU.
The RX 460 ships with 14 CUs and 896 stream processors enabled. Compared to RX 470 clockspeeds are a bit more aggressive; the boost clock is about the same at 1200MHz, but the base clock is a much higher 1090MHz. Meanwhile the card is equipped with 16 ROPs, half as many as on Polaris 10.
The RX 460 is equipped with either 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 clocked at 7Gbps. This memory is in turn attached to the Polaris 11 GPU over a 128-bit memory bus.
The card is rated at sub-75W.
Compared to its direct predecessor, the Radeon R7 360, RX 460 is not as aggressive about performance as the other Polaris cards. AMD?s official guidance here is 1.2-1.3x the performance of R7 260X/360.
The Radeon RX 470 launches next Thursday, August 4th. Meanwhile RX 460 launches 4 days after that, on Monday, August 8th. Prices will be disclosed at launch.