Sapphire NITRO+ RX 470 Review - The 1080p Sweet Spot?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,247 words · ~6 min read
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with the blitz of cards promising good performance at 1440p and smooth VR
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experiences many of us that don't have the coin for higher reses monitor or an
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HTC Vive might be left wondering where the newer gen cards focused on good old
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1080p gaming are AMD has answered that
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question first by rolling out the new Radeon rx470 under the banner of its #
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better red marketing campaign and no AMD isn't calling for the Communist Uprising
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against the NVIDIA bourgeois but rather focusing more heavily on the
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bang for the buck rather than every ounce of possible performance with its
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current Polaris architecture so does the rx470 have the potential to be the
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weapon of choice for the 1080p proletariat let's find
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out G fuel is the sugar-free Alternative Energy beverage to maintain focus and
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endurance over long days and gaming sessions save using the code Linus at
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the link below so the rx470 is quite
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similar to its much B Hood Big Brother the rx480 both use a Polaris 10 series
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GPU though the 470 has 32 compute units
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and 2048 stream processors a bit less
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than the 36 and 2304 of the 480 both use
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conventional gddr5 memory with the 470 having a rather standard complement of 4
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GB with a bandwidth of 211 GB per second
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at only 120 watts of typical board power
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the card should also be well suited for lower-end power supplies with Headroom
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to spare at 280 wats of power draw from the wall it still has a little bit of
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catching up to do in terms of matching NVIDIA's current power efficiency but at
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280 Watts you can get by with a very cheap but well-built power supply just
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fine this specific version of the rx470 we have on the bench today is a ni inro
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plus aftermarket cooled card from Sapphire it features a dual BIOS switch
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in the top leftand corner of the card which allows you to switch between quiet
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mode with a low tuned fan profile or boost mode with a Max clock speed of
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1260 instead of The Quiet modes 1206 the
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button right next to that switch is for Led modes which can do basic mode
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changes on the Fly to Your lighting system on your card or you can just use
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the upcoming tricks 3.0 software to do more specific alterations to the RGB
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LEDs you can even remove the dual 95mm dual bearing fans by just removing one
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screw each allowing you to clean or replace them with ease the Sapphire
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version comes with two HDMI 2.0 and two
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display Point 1.4 ports while the reference Edition adds the third DP
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connector at the expense of one HDMI and speaking of which if you're more
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interested in the reference version it looks virtually identical to the 480 but
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but unlike the 480 which was build as a VR for the masses card the 470 is being
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marketed as a brilliant HD gaming for all there actually hasn't been a card
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released yet under $200 at launch that can max out new
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titles at 1080p so can the rx470 be the
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first let's Dive Right into our Benchmark results to find out starting
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off with rise of the Tomb Raider at very high presets the 470 got 64 FPS in dx11
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and 67 in D X12 at 1080p we saw
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similarly strong results in Hitman with our settings maxed out with the card
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even breaking the 70 FPS Mark in dx11
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moving on to the classically punishing title Crisis 3 we can find that yes the
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480 can run Crisis 3 at 60 FPS with very
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high settings in HD 66 frames to be exact but there's a more interesting
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question to be answered as well with this card how well does it take
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advantage of Vulcan the new open- source API that AMD is backing fairly heavily
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well there are only three games currently out that we're aware of with
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vulcan's support the most recent of which is Doom although it's not exactly
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the hardest game to run Vulcan definitely gave us a performance
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increase with the rx470 pushing 107
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frames per second with Vulcan as opposed to 86 with openg GL 4.5 Doom doesn't
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support direct X in case you are wondering notably it beat out the more
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expensive GTX 1060 which managed 101 FPS
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in Vulcan and speaking of expense cost is the only area where we felt the rx470
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fell a little short don't get me wrong at $180 for the reference Edition it's a
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very good bang for your buck card and definitely not what I'd have called
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expensive however at only $20 cheaper
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than the more powerful rx480 the pricing
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is more than a little confusing this card really should have been a bit
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cheaper to be a more enticing option however at $70 less than NVIDIA's
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current mid-range offering the GTX 1060
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the rx470 may even undercut a possible
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upcoming GTX 1050 only time will tell but at least
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for now if you want to slay just about anything at 1080p without paying a ton
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of extra for compute cores that you simply don't need there isn't much
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reason to go with something else even if you're not chomping at the bit to tag
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all of your tweets with # better red
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Mast drop has brought back their drop for the ant lion mod mic 4.0 which has
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been a community favorite for a long time now speaking of which lonus has a
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review of The Mod mic which was posted two freaking years ago at this point but
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if you do want to see his review of that product you can check it out up here the
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main idea behind the mod mic is a way to turn your awesome audio file headphones
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into a gaming ready headset without sacrificing the awesome audio quality
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that your headphones have it attaches via a magnet system so it's easily
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removed when you don't need it and the magnets actually attached to the
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headphone with 3M Adhesive pads so if
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you ever want to remove it you won't have any sticky residue on your beloved
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headphones you can learn more about the antl mod mic 4.0 and any other drops on
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Mop at draw. SL
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lt- ant lion and or you can just click
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the link in the video description down below like the video if you liked it dislike
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to do that check out our shirt Link in the video description down below as well
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uh check go on the Forum if you want to talk about new graphics cards try to
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keep it civil I know everyone wants to defend their purchasing decisions but
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let's let's just try to keep this on a Level Playing everyone everyone's just
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trying to enjoy computer games we should just keep it that way and just don't
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worry about it I don't even know why I'm still talking I'm just going to leave
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