Asus Radeon RX 470 Strix Gaming OC 4GB

[scaryjim]

I can't believe this draw more power than the GTX 1060. No wonder AMD hasn't released it's big chip GPU's there power draw would be terrible.

You obviously don't remember the GTX 480....

AMD's current gen cards aren't as energy efficient as nvidia's, but they're way more efficient that AMD's previous gen (and on a par with, if not better than, nvidia's previous gen). That means they can go quite a lot larger - even with less efficient GDDR5 cards - and still be within sensible power draw limits.

I'm not quite sure what this obsession with a few watts, or even a few hundred watts, is. You computer spends most of its time idle or off, at which point AMD and nvidia cards have exactly the same power draw, so it's irrelevant. At current energy prices it takes around a 70W difference at load to cost you 1p an hour in electricity. You probably use more electricity reheating a pizza than you do gaming for a week. It's such a pointless conversation.

[watercooled]

You obviously don't remember the GTX 480....

AMD's current gen cards aren't as energy efficient as nvidia's, but they're way more efficient that AMD's previous gen (and on a par with, if not better than, nvidia's previous gen). That means they can go quite a lot larger - even with less efficient GDDR5 cards - and still be within sensible power draw limits.

I'm not quite sure what this obsession with a few watts, or even a few hundred watts, is. You computer spends most of its time idle or off, at which point AMD and nvidia cards have exactly the same power draw, so it's irrelevant. At current energy prices it takes around a 70W difference at load to cost you 1p an hour in electricity. You probably use more electricity reheating a pizza than you do gaming for a week. It's such a pointless conversation.

Agreed - it seems that whatever Nvidia happens to be good at this generation becomes an obsession with a very vocal group of PC gamers.

AMD has superior tesselation performance? Don't mention it. - Nvidia overtakes in tess performance - suddenly it's hugely important and AMD is heavily criticised for lagging behind.

AMD has superior power efficiency? Don't mention it. - Nvidia overtakes in efficiency - suddenly it's hugely important and AMD is heavily criticised for lagging behind.

Nvidia's SLI implementation delivers smoother frame timing/less stutter? Everyone slates AMD for it. AMD fixes it to the point of it being a non-issue with drivers and XDMA? Let's not bother with those frame pacing graphs in reviews any more.

AMD has seemingly better support for current APIs like DX12 and Vulkan? Somehow not important. News about Maxwell supporting a couple of features, RoVs and conservative raster in hardware, suddenly really important despite next to no-one claiming they're so important being able to explain what they actually are!

Anyone see a pattern here?

Edit: Oh and with regards to both power consumption and longevity - anyone remember how the 680 was slightly faster and more power efficient than the 7970 at launch? Guess which one is miles faster now?

[excalibur1814]

MS gets a lot of flack but, each time nVidia installs Vulkan without my permission, I just remove it. Please ASK if I'd like it installing.

[sykobee]

Well, if the pricing is tweaked to match the reference pricing tweak, then this could be a good card.

165 quid is a fairly good deal for a 4GB 470, especially whilst you can't get 4GB 480s.

I wonder which 470 will be the best, Asus, MSI, Sapphire ...

[nitro912gr]

Very nice lineup so far, I wonder if the time to upgrade my 7850 has come.

[jigger]

You obviously don't remember the GTX 480....

AMD's current gen cards aren't as energy efficient as nvidia's, but they're way more efficient that AMD's previous gen (and on a par with, if not better than, nvidia's previous gen). That means they can go quite a lot larger - even with less efficient GDDR5 cards - and still be within sensible power draw limits.

I'm not quite sure what this obsession with a few watts, or even a few hundred watts, is. You computer spends most of its time idle or off, at which point AMD and nvidia cards have exactly the same power draw, so it's irrelevant. At current energy prices it takes around a 70W difference at load to cost you 1p an hour in electricity. You probably use more electricity reheating a pizza than you do gaming for a week. It's such a pointless conversation.

Yeah I've had this conversation with a few people that can't do maths or have no idea what they pay for electricity. If power cost is such a big concern for people then really buying a computer is probably above their means. If people are environmentally concerned then buying the most bang buck option and using the money saved to fit a few hundred watts of solar panels to your house will generate far more electricity than anything you could save from a graphics card.

[rwh202]

Yeah I've had this conversation with a few people that can't do maths or have no idea what they pay for electricity. If power cost is such a big concern for people then really buying a computer is probably above their means. If people are environmentally concerned then buying the most bang buck option and using the money saved to fit a few hundred watts of solar panels to your house will generate far more electricity than anything you could save from a graphics card.

I realise I'm in the minority, but the primary purpose of my GPUs is to crunch distributed computing work - to that end they're running flat out 24/7. In that use case, each watt is roughly a pound over a year. A card that can do the same work for 60 W less can happily cost £60 more because I'll be even after a year.
However, I agree that for an 'average' user maybe gaming 2 hours a day and either idle of off for the rest of the time will only be saving pennies. In their case, 'bang per buck' is more important than 'bang per watt', especially when the power levels are still eminently manageable and won't necessitate more elaborate power supplies or cooling solutions.

[Ferral]

Just had a look on Scan and you can get the Sapphire R9 480 Nitro for £200 (not forgetting free delivery) so things look to be heating up a bit. This R9 470 looking at benchmarks round the net is all but matching the Geforce 1060 and in some cases a little better (only a few frames either side in 1080p)

[watercooled]

I realise I'm in the minority, but the primary purpose of my GPUs is to crunch distributed computing work - to that end they're running flat out 24/7. In that use case, each watt is roughly a pound over a year. A card that can do the same work for 60 W less can happily cost £60 more because I'll be even after a year.
However, I agree that for an 'average' user maybe gaming 2 hours a day and either idle of off for the rest of the time will only be saving pennies. In their case, 'bang per buck' is more important than 'bang per watt', especially when the power levels are still eminently manageable and won't necessitate more elaborate power supplies or cooling solutions.

If it's running flat-out then it becomes more important, but you also need to consider the performance of the applications you'll be using, as AMD do significantly outperform equivalent Nvidia cards in many compute applications.

[Xlucine]

You obviously don't remember the GTX 480....

AMD's current gen cards aren't as energy efficient as nvidia's, but they're way more efficient that AMD's previous gen (and on a par with, if not better than, nvidia's previous gen). That means they can go quite a lot larger - even with less efficient GDDR5 cards - and still be within sensible power draw limits.

I'm not quite sure what this obsession with a few watts, or even a few hundred watts, is. You computer spends most of its time idle or off, at which point AMD and nvidia cards have exactly the same power draw, so it's irrelevant. At current energy prices it takes around a 70W difference at load to cost you 1p an hour in electricity. You probably use more electricity reheating a pizza than you do gaming for a week. It's such a pointless conversation.

A 50w power difference, over 40 mins of gameplay, costs as much as making two slices of toast (not including cost of the bread). A cup of tea is even worse...

assume:
1kw toaster
2mins for perfect toast

[jigger]

A 50w power difference, over 40 mins of gameplay, costs as much as making two slices of toast (not including cost of the bread). A cup of tea is even worse...

assume:
1kw toaster
2mins for perfect toast

Now don't be showing off with your fancy electronic toasting machine.

[scaryjim]

I realise I'm in the minority ...

That's a good start - it's amazing how many people on the internet just assume that everyone has exactly the same use-case as they do

... the primary purpose of my GPUs is to crunch distributed computing work - to that end they're running flat out 24/7. ...

Then that's a very good reason for considering the efficiency of your hardware, but (and for clarity, the rest of this comment is aimed not at you personally but at everyone reading this thread who doesn't have/understand your use-case) it's only one part of the story - a processor that sipped milliwatts might well be more energy efficient for those calculation despite taking decades to complete the task! And as watercooled said:

... you also need to consider the performance of the applications you'll be using, as AMD do significantly outperform equivalent Nvidia cards in many compute applications.

So if you're bit-coin mining, nvidia being more energy efficient for gaming is irrelevant, because AMD cards are just so much better at that task. As usual, it's horses for courses, and there will always be specific use cases that go against the norm.

So while energy efficiency is certainly a valid concern, if your use case is typical gaming it shouldn't be one of your major concerns - after all, the most energy efficient GPUs are without a doubt the ones in your high end smartphone, so if you REALLY care about energy efficiency whilst gaming you'd better stick to mobile games - or even better boards game/pen & paper RPGs, which you don't even have to turn your computer on for

[Ogami]

Honestly with the 470 and 480, anyone buying a 1060. Might just have a bit too much money on their hands.
AMD have pretty much bought up the lower - mid segment of the market in my opinion. I'm kind of itching to trade in my R9 380 for one of these now too....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Not so sure about the RX470 pricing - the £165 reference one looks OK,but the reference RX480 4GB is only £18 more. From what I gather the reference cooler fares much better on the RX470(even though it lacks the copper core of the RX480 one). Not sure about the other cards though - its almost like AMD is trying to either upsell the RX480 or still has a glut of R9 380 and R9 380X cards.

Edit!!

Also we are getting screwed over here.

For example this AIB Powercolor card is the same price as the reference one in the US:

http://www.ebuyer.com/755011-powerco...0fcaAtyf8P8HAQ

It is £198 here instead of £165.

Second edit:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...470&ignorear=1

Even on Newegg the AIB RX470 cards would be around £182 here.

[kalniel]

Honestly with the 470 and 480, anyone buying a 1060. Might just have a bit too much money on their hands.

Not sure I agree with that. The cards are launching in the range of £165 to about £250 (ignoring excessive custom premiums). Cards in the last few generations were still launching at much higher than that - Nano and the GTX 980 launched at £400+ Maybe they were only bought by people with too much money on their hands too, but these current cards are about half the cost.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well AMD has just opened a huge performance gap between the RX460 and RX470. The RX460 is using a cut down Polaris 11 chip so looks more like it will probably have around R7 370 level performance IMHO. The only explanation is tha the R9 380 or R9 380X will stay at £130 to £165 to bridge the gap between the RX460 and RX470.