Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
The Radeon RX 460 is a product that enters a very dense space populated by older products. Compared to the R7 260X obviously the card is showing good improvement. Next to that the new Radeon RX 460 will bring you all the features in video en- and decoding and connectivity anno 2016. These are nice pluses. Performance wise, it's all rather average though. In fact gaming with proper image quality settings in 1080 is merely do-able (high quality with a little AA). Modern games hover at that 30 FPS marker, slightly older games inbetween that 30~40 FPS on average. Obviously if you forfeit on AA levels etc you can gain performance and make this a viable gaming graphics card, but you will need to make compromises with a product like this. If you are in the market for a RX 460, please do buy the 4 GB version over the 2 GB version if you plan 1080P gaming, okay? If you are at 720P, 2 GB is fine and that model in fact offer very good value.
Performance
Performance wise you always need to place things into perspective, and the final sales price is the biggest variable that will determine the success of the RX 460. For 4 GB if you pick a product in the sub 139 USD space for a "premium" design card (and not a reference one). That other variable is of course your gaming resolution, and 1080P is by far the maximum domain for this card. You are looking at a product that competes in-between the GeForce GTX 950 / GeForce GTX 960 and for the Radeon side of things, this can be compared to say Radeon R9 370 performance, which is not bad overall honestly. Let's not forget about other features; the Radeon RX 460 and Polaris 11 overall will offer reasonable performance, Eyefinity features and PCIe gen 3 compatibility and all the other stuff like HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.4 with HDR support and so on. The Radeon RX 460 series is also proper compatible DirectX 12 and Vulkan product, and as our benchmark shows , it does shine exactly there.
Best Suited For?
Entry level gamers that play older games will gave a great time with the product value for money wise. Also if you are on a steep budget and are willing to forfeit in image quality, 1080P gaming will be possible. Again you need to forfeit and lower AA and complex texture quality settings and shadows. Another benefit is that at least the most elementary and arbitrary DirectX 12 Feature levels are supported in hardware. Even on very harsh-on-the-GPU titles you'll refrain from un-ticking graphics quality options to gain on frame-rate performance. In short, for the money it's all okay - but this remains a below average 1080P card.
Cooling & Noise Levels
We did not receive a reference card, but our STRIX edition from ASUS with the dual-slot two fan cooler did keep the product at roughly 63 Degrees C under load which is fine. The card does not downclock like it's RX 470 counterpart did. Noise levels wise things are okay, not incredibly silent under load, but definitely silent enough. The cooler is at ~39 DBa, that's OK. We have not had any issues with coil noise for this card.
Power Consumption
The board is rated at roughly 75 Watts TDP, that means when you completely stress it, that's the power consumption. Our measurements showed that the board TDP is indeed in that region, we measured a little higher but with some games also noticed lower wattage's. The move to 14 nm FiNFET obviously is testimony to a great perf/watt ratio. No complaints here really.
Overclocking
Our card was near impossible to overclock, so bad actually that we we did not even continue. The card however does come factory tweaked already.
Final Words
I don't know ... AMD might have sliced and diced away too much for the Radeon RX 460? I had hopes for a bit more bite in the 1080P gaming domain with proper image quality settings and based on that 4 GB of graphics memory. Effectively however the RX 460 is substantially and often more then half slower compared to the RX 470. Hey, perhaps that's my problem though in thinking that entry-level anno 2016 would have made bigger steps in performance. Now do not get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with this card as it is and remains cute entry level product, but it'll need to be cheap though. Also do want to point out that in DrirectX 12 and Vulkan titles the card definitely shines compared to the competition. But yes, it feels like the mainstream and high-end segment is advancing way more proportionally compared to what the RX 460 offers. At the 99~139 USD marker these cards we feel would sit at proper price (for this kind of performance and hardware). In EURO the prices get take a turn for the worse though, the MSRP for the 4GB card as tested today from ASUS is tagged at 169 EURO. ASUS improved on the design with a new cooler, the GPU tweaked and give it that ROG feel and design. Also thumbs up for the inclusion of a DVI connector. For the RX 460 I normally would say nice value for money, but the RX 460 lacks that little bit of bite in performance. Heat and noise wise I'd like to declare the product as fine, the ASUS DirectCU cooler kept the GPU at 63 degrees C which is great, and the noise level remains within specs as well. All in all we'll have to wait and see what market pricing will be like. Performance wise I'd really like to steer you to the RX 470 if you can afford it, as the Radeon RX 460 just might not be enough in that oh-so important 1080P space wheras I feel the Radeon RX 470 is a little gem.
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