Introduction

Radeon RX 460 Market Segment Analysis Radeon

R7 370 GeForce

GTX 950 Radeon

RX 460 ASUS RX

460 STRIX OC GeForce

GTX 960 Radeon

R9 380 Radeon

RX 470 Radeon

R9 380X Radeon

R9 390 GeForce

GTX 970 Shader Units 1024 768 896 896 1024 1792 2048 2048 2560 1664 ROPs 32 32 16 16 32 32 32 32 64 56 Graphics Processor Pitcairn GM206 Baffin Baffin GM206 Tonga Ellesmere Tonga Hawaii GM204 Transistors 2800M 2940M 3000M 3000M 2940M unknown 5700M unknown 6200M 5200M Memory Size 2 GB 2 GB 2/4 GB 4 GB 2 GB 2 GB 4 GB 4 GB 8 GB 4 GB Memory Bus Width 256 bit 128 bit 128 bit 128 bit 128 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 512 bit 256 bit Core Clock 975 MHz 1024 MHz+ 1200 MHz 1256 MHz 1127 MHz+ 970 MHz 1206 MHz 970 MHz 1000 MHz 1051 MHz+ Memory Clock 1400 MHz 1653 MHz 1750 MHz 1750 MHz 1753 MHz 1375 MHz 1650 MHz 1425 MHz 1500 MHz 1750 MHz Price $150 $120 $110/$140 $140 $170 $165 $180 $210 $260 $265

The one genre of games that kept the PC alive as a mass-gaming platform in the wake of reasonably powerful new-generation consoles is MOBA, and there are the other multiplayer genres that make up today's e-Sports scene, which is meeting as much commercial success as sports in general. One of the key characteristics of these MOBA games is their playability on entry-thru-mainstream graphics hardware. Some of these even work on integrated graphics, though with low details, and quite a few can be maxed out at 1080p with sub-$200 graphics cards. AMD's bottom-up approach to this generation of consumer graphics cards with its Radeon RX 400 series is now addressing this segment with the new Radeon RX 460.Priced at just $109 (MSRP), this card draws console gamers over to the PC platform, letting them convert their drab Dells to 720p gaming machines since they can't exactly master MOBA games on consoles with their input limitations. The card relies on the PCI-Express slot for all its power and can hence be installed into any machine with a PCI-Express slot, although ASUS (the card in this review) didn't pledge its reputation on that and went ahead with giving this card an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector. Its power draw is under 75W, which means practically any OEM desktop power supply has the juice for it.The Radeon RX 460 is based on AMD's second silicon implementing, its "Polaris" architecture, and bears the ASIC codename Polaris 11 "Baffin". This chip is tiny thanks to the 14 nm FinFET process it's built on. The chip features 896 stream processors, 56 TMUs, 16 ROPs, and a 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface, holding either 2 GB or 4 GB of memory, which has it address two key sub-$150 price-points. You get most of the feature introduced with this generation, including modern display connectivity support.In this review, we have with us the ASUS Radeon RX 460 STRIX, featuring a simplified version of the company's DirectCU II cooler, 4 GB of memory, and a factory-overclock. The card features a price tag of $139; its 2 GB variant is expected to be priced at $109.