Unleashing the full potential of the Radeon RX 460

[HEXUS]

We build a sub-£600 gaming PC with more.

Read more.

[scaryjim]

so why on earth did AMD not stick the 1024-shader card out there in the wild to begin with!? I bet if they'd put it out with 1024 shaders @ around 1150MHz it would've had the same performance, still come in at around a 75W TDP, and had the flexibility to beat the GTX 1050 at a lower (for 2GB cards) or the same (for 4GB cards) price point...?!

AMD really need to get a tweaked stepping running out of the fab and release an RX 465 with 1024 shaders ASAP...

[3s-gtech]

AMD need to capitalise on the press this unlock is getting by selling the fulling unlocked model in the same price bracket as the current 896 core. Possibly as RX 465, or RX 460 SUPER PLUS ULTRA EDITION or something. Same price, of course - keeping the RX 460 line for the 896 core binned cards which won't unlock successfully and are a bit cheaper. They'll get a lot of goodwill - I'm amazed how it stacks up against GTX 1050 in efficiency and heat terms so it's a clear winner here.

[kalniel]

I'm a little bit concerned that the article basically shows you have to edit the BIOS, using workarounds, in order to make the 460 competitive :/

Nice touch including a windows license in the build price though

[scaryjim]

I'm a little bit concerned that the article basically shows you have to edit the BIOS, using workarounds, in order to make the 460 competitive :/ ...

I dunno, the 4GB card is very close to the GTX 1050 in most tests, and it's intriguing to see a couple of tests in there where the 2GB framebuffer is *clearly* an issue for the GTX 1050.

That said, a quick peruse of ebuyer puts the cheapest GTX 1050 @ £110, and the cheapest 4GB RX 460 @ £113 so without the core unlock AMD are neither the quickest nor the cheapest. The RX 460s seem to run up to around £120 then stop (with one exception, see below), so they could easily introduce an RX465, mandate that it has 4GB of memory, and sell it for £125-£140...

The Strix OC tested here is £160 on ebuyer That's more than most GTX 1050 Tis, and edging towards RX 470 money. Utterly ridiculous....

[Andaho]

Why not a G4560 instead of the i3-6100?

http://wccftech.com/intel-pentium-g4...et-cpu-65-usd/

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Good spot on that case bundle,the Earthwatts 380W is Delta made IIRC.

Why not a G4560 instead of the i3-6100?

http://wccftech.com/intel-pentium-g4...et-cpu-65-usd/

It could be at the time Hexus did the build it was not available??

Having said that it appears unless you spend £60+ on a B250 none of the earlier motherboards support unless you do a BIOS update which is kind of annoying.

[scaryjim]

... Having said that it appears unless you spend £60+ on a B250 none of the earlier motherboards support unless you do a BIOS update which is kind of annoying.

That's true, but a G4560 is ~ £40 less than an i3 6100, so either you can get an entry level B250 board and *still* pay less overall, or you could spend the same money and get a better motherboard...

[Tarinder]

And this is the beauty of building a PC - lots of choice.

[DanceswithUnix]

If the SSD had been replaced with a HDD and possibly the i3 with a Pentium, the machine could have had an RX 470.

Lovely though SSDs are, I don't think they have any place in a budget build.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That's true, but a G4560 is ~ £40 less than an i3 6100, so either you can get an entry level B250 board and *still* pay less overall, or you could spend the same money and get a better motherboard...

True,but it seems the G4560 has only been available to purchase only for a few days too,so I suspect it might not have been in stock when Hexus bought the parts.

[chinf]

If the SSD had been replaced with a HDD and possibly the i3 with a Pentium, the machine could have had an RX 470.

Lovely though SSDs are, I don't think they have any place in a budget build.

I agree - for a gaming PC this would be a better balance of performance. The upgraded GPU would give a better in-game experience in the short term and last longer. SSDs aren't good value at the moment, but overall they are still rapidly improving and would make a nice upgrade in the medium term.

[scaryjim]

If the SSD had been replaced with a HDD and possibly the i3 with a Pentium, the machine could have had an RX 470. ...

Hmmm, could it? Let's have a quick browse of Scan, shall we...

Hexus build: CPU + MOBO + SSD = £239; Alternative build: G4560 (£64) + B250 mobo (£67) + HDD (500GB, £40) = £171. Total saved, £68 - very nice

Cost of RX 460 in hexus build: £93. Add that to above the saving of £68, and the unspent £52 in the original budget, and you get a very nice sounding £213 ... enough for a 4Gb RX 480, let alone a 470...!

As it is, Scan have several RX 470s @ < £180, so you can get double the GPU performance and still afford a fairly recent game.... Or you can hit almost identical performance to the build as suggested in the article but within a £500 budget, meaning you can fit that Freesync 1080p monitor into the original budget....

[DanceswithUnix]

Hmmm, could it? Let's have a quick browse of Scan, shall we...

Thanks for running the numbers, that was very finger in the air estimate so I was expecting something older and more rubbish than a G4560 to save on motherboard cost.

The graphs in the article show the CPU isn't a bottleneck, so you should be able to lose some CPU and gain some GPU to get the machine better balanced. That was all I was seeing.

I suspect AMD wanted an Athlon X4 based build which would probably be competitive, but without the AM4 platform to build on who would want one

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But I still think you need to consider the G4560 is still not actually available on Scan yet - the OcUK had it in stock only a few days ago,and Ebuyer don't even sell it yet. I think the earliest I have seen anyone in the UK physically get one is the 16th or 17th of January IIRC. I suspect its just slightly bad timing on the part of Scan and AMD.

Edit!!

I am more intrigued by the actual results.

There was some hints AMD driver overhead improved a bit with the new branch of AMD drivers,and the relative positions seem to have improved now.

Core i3 vs Core i7










Is it me,or is the GTX1050 loosing more performance going from a Core i7 to a Core i3 than the RX460 in two of the three games??

[EvilCycle]

I would rather lose out on the single threaded performance and go for an FX chip (hence why I have an 8350 until I go ryzen) - the multi core performance increase would be a higher percentage than the loss of single core performance which I think would be more useful for gaming going forward, plus it would have made AMD smile seems as they funded the build.