AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB Review

GTA V, Hitman, Metro & Project Cars

GTA V

The Radeon RX 480’s advantage over the 470 shrinks to 11% in GTA V; both cards can easily be considered playable.

GeForce GTX 1060 and 970 secure the top two positions, which make sense since they’re also pricier than the AMD competition. In fact, the 970 is so much more expensive that you should avoid it altogether, given what Polaris- and Pascal-based boards sell for.

Hitman

Polaris shines in Hitman; the Radeon RX 480 takes first place, 14% faster than RX 470. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 fares similarly. At $250, though, that’s quite a premium for comparable performance.

You can see how a card like the RX 470 would make a solid upgrade if you’re currently on a 2GB board, or even a first-gen GCN-based card like the R9 280X.

Notice how the 2GB GeForces run in DX11 mode? Both cards crashed at the same point in our benchmark with DirectX 12 active.

Metro: Last Light Redux

Surprise! Radeon RX 480 is 13% faster than RX 470 once more, while both cards trail competing GeForces. Although you’ll find Radeon R9 380s for less than $200, you can see they take quite a performance hit in a graphics-bound game like Metro. In this case, it’s worth paying more for a playable experience, particularly if anti-aliasing and maxed-out settings are important to you.

Project CARS

It looks like a more taxing anti-aliasing method helps close the gap between AMD’s and Nvidia’s graphics cards compared to past reviews. On this page of our GeForce GTX 1060 review, Nvidia’s latest enjoyed a 50% lead over Radeon RX 480. That gap is down to 19% as we increase the graphics workload.

Meanwhile, Radeon RX 480 is 12% quicker than RX 470, which does deliver playable performance through our benchmark replay.


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Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • cknobman
    Uhhhhhhhh, were are all the charts?
    Reply
  • AndrewJacksonZA
    An issue: The Ashes and Battlefield 4 graphs are not displaying.
    Reply
  • n0ns3ns3
    Well ...
    Until I see at least 5 games on Vulcan and 10 on DX12 of different types, I'll not jump into conclusion about AMD vs Nvidia performance.
    So far the clear winners for AMD are the games sponsored by AMD - so couldn't care less about those results.
    Doom is interesting, but any card getting very decent FPS in it.
    Reply
  • AndrewJacksonZA
    Actually, almost all the graphs are missing.
    Reply
  • Another failure by AMD.
    Reply
  • Ergosum
    Indeed. Charts would be nice :)
    Reply
  • Sizzor
    Is it me or every one else where are the charts??
    Reply
  • FormatC
    Cool down.... I've just re-published all galleries and the charts are visible now. The US guys are sleeping but I saw the issue (a follow of your new front-end) and fixed it.

    Please reload the pages again :)
    Reply
  • Stardude82
    Where are the cards? Not seeing them at the big e-retailers.

    Edit: Just went live and they're gone.
    Reply
  • Sizzor
    The MSRP was $149 and looking at the current market the price should be around $180, $200 is way to high for this card.
    Reply