What the f*** is wrong with GPU pricing? - XFX RX 460 Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,502 words · ~7 min read
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we don't usually focus on $100 video cards it just doesn't seem to be what
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you guys want I mean seriously in the last year of graphics card launches our
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most successful video covering them is lonus being all like holy to a $5,000
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cuadro m6 th000 and our second most
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popular is the launch review of the 1080 a card most viewers can't afford not
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knocking you guys it's just really expensive and not a great value compared
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to its little brother the bottom line is that it seems like the internet would
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rather watch us react to a Lamborghini than give a square level-headed review
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of a Civic but that won't stop us and we're back at it again with a review of
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the rx460 a video card designed for mainstream and Esports games at 1080P
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and aimed squarely at the1 100ish dollar
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price point the sort of I guess I'll need to address the absolute mess that
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is graphics card pricing these days
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cooler Masters master case maker 5 features their free form modular system
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allowing you to customize adjust and upgrade make it yours at the link in the
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video description let's begin with the look at
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graphics card pricing that I promised the current AMD RX product stack
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officially goes from 99 for a 2 gig
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rx460 all the way up in pretty well spaced increments to 23 $39 for the 8
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gig rx480 but this is all according to the suggested price list that they give
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to us when we're sent a card for review which is the only pricing reference we
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have when making a video for a card before its release so in our launch
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reviews when you see a price to Performance comparison these are the
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numbers we're using they're official they're supposed to represent the
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Baseline price for this GPU and they should be correct fortunately we're a
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bit late on this car and it's already available in stores which gives us the
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opportunity to ask why the when looking at newegg.com is there only one single
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card in AMD's entire RX product stack
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that is at MSRP a reference RX 48 8 gig
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and I'm not just going after AMD about this NVIDIA GTX 1080 no cards on NewEgg
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at 599 GTX 1070 no cards at 379 from any
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brand I'm just mad about it because some people make purchasing decisions based
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off priced performance graphs it makes sense and we make some of those graphs
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based on the numbers that they give us which has resulted in them being
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unintentionally misleading this isn't good for me then it's especially not
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good for you but enough about that let's dig into Polaris 11 in its desktop
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flavor the rx460 it's a fourth generation gcn architecture chip on
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global foundry's 14 nanometer finfet process it's got 14 compute units and
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896 stream processors with reference
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boards running at a boost speed of 1200 MHz and a memory speed of 7 gbits per
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second with a Peak Performance of 2.2 Tera flops less than half of the rx470
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but still a lot better than the 100ish dollar cards we've seen in the past it
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comes with two or 4 gigs of gddr5 RAM
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depending on the variant you purchase with a rated total memory bandwidth of
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112 GB per second on a 128bit interface
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the suggested ports are one DisplayPort 1.4 connector one HDMI 2.0b connector
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and one DVID connector a fairly future proof Loadout and typical board power is
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below 75 Watts meaning that like the Beloved 750ti a great upgrade card at
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the time for folks with pre-built systems it doesn't need an extra
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connection from the power supply and can daintly sip on it 75 watts of power
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through the motherboard which brings us to the specific variant we have today
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the XFX Double dissipation 4 GB Radeon
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rx460 with a metal card extender and
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added PCIe power six pin connector two large fans and a whopping 20 MHz Factory
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overclock it also features easily removable fan Clips but not easily
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removable fans confused so was I XFX has
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a technology called hard swap detachable fans which features these same clips and
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fans that connect by touching contact points instead of being directly wired
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in a really great feature which looks the same on the outside as this one but
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when you remove these these fans they just kind of dangle there cool I guess
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but not as cool but when's the last time you thought to yourself gee I sure wish
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I could hot swap my computer fans anyways let's talk about benchmarks in
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directx11 with Crisis 3 and Rise of the Tomb Raider it Trails the r9270 and the
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GTX 950 but does unsurprisingly wreck
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the 750 Ti moving up to dx12 however we
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see a bit of a different story it edges much closer in Tomb range and actually
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beats all but the gtx950 in ashes of the
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singularity and you can check out my dx12 and Vulcan video here to learn more
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about why moving on we have some new additions to our test lineup that I
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specifically included because of the positioning of this card Dota 2
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Counter-Strike GO and OverWatch all of these are mainstream games and
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relatively easy to run but because there is a highly competitive component
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serious players are still willing to buy a dedicated video cards they don't see
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any dips or stutters in the game and the most interesting story here isn't
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necessarily where this card slots against others in the list it's more the
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fact that it's theoretically anyways a
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very lowcost option which manages to play all three of these games at near
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100 FPS or above with medium to high settings that makes the rx460 a great
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choice if those are the kind of games that you really want to play and based
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on the kinds of views that our value AMD builds from 2 years ago have that's
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probably a lot of people but the conclusion of this video isn't that
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simple because this card costs $150 only 30 less than the MSRP for the
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ARX 470 a much faster card making it
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much harder to recommend not that those cards are actually available at MSRP
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anyways Mass drop in a nutshell they take eager buyers lots of them and eager
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companies with products to sell and they connect them and the idea is that the
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more people agree to buy the product the lower the price goes that is to say to a
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limit unfortunately you will not be able to get the red scarf 2 custom keyboard
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that we're covering today for $0 but you
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will definitely be able to get a better deal on it so this is the virgin
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virgin this is the version C of the Red
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Scarf 2 it is designed without the 10 function keys of its predecessor and
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features a unique 68 key layout it
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consists of a PCB and a CNC aluminum
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case plate and feet and allows for customization of the lighting layout
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including ISO and ansy it's fully programmable allowing the user to
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utilize the unique layout as they see fit and there are a variety of choices
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of anodized aluminum colors it comes in black gray red or silver you can also
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add a set of standard layout blank or laser etched front printed PBT key caps
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in cherry profile and the lighting can be controlled via a remote so to check
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out this one and other drops check out that link in the video description Mast
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drop has all kinds of great stuff everything from keyboards to camping
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gear so you can be a keyboard Warrior or a weekend
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warrior anyways guys thanks for watching if you lik the video like it if you
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disliked it dislike it get subscribed all that fun stuff if you want to buy a
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card that probably isn't this one check out the Amazon link the video
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description down below you can also see the link to buy our shirts down there
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those are those are cool if you want to discuss the value propositions of
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different cards and maybe the pricing in your area we can't talk about the
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pricing in every different country here but I know there's crazy stuff going on
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all around the world not just in the states and we're even Canadians and
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there's crazy stuff going up here too so yeah let us know on the Forum and I'll
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see you guys next time watch this video which is our review of the rx470 a
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probably more sensible card to buy