The Radeon RX 470 is the second card AMD is releasing this round, and it will very soon be followed by the RX 460 to complete AMD's "Polaris" graphics stack, as the company apparently wants to reserve the high-end for its next-gen "Vega". Just like its bigger brother, the Radeon RX 480, the RX 470 is based on AMD's Polaris 10 "Ellesmere" silicon, but with fewer shaders. All other unit counts remained the same, and the GPU clock has been reduced. Memory capacity for the RX 470 is 4 GB and 8 GB, with the majority of cards being 4 GB. For this review, AMD sent us the ASUS RX 470 STRIX OC 4 GB because AMD doesn't release their own reference design to the public. We, however, still got the reference design BIOS and flashed a RX 480 4 GB with it, which effectively creates a RX 470 reference design to help establish a baseline.

ASUS has given their card a reasonable overclock, up to 1270 MHz from the 1206 MHz on the reference design. Memory clock remained at the stock frequency of 1650 MHz even though the memory chips have some good OC potential left in them. As a result, at 1080p, the ASUS RX 470 STRIX OC is 4% faster than the RX 470 reference, which is not a lot, I have to say. Against the GTX 960, it's a decisive win with almost 40% higher performance. The card is also 10% slower than the GTX 970 and R9 390. Compared to the RX 480, the difference is 17%, which means the RX 470 reference is about 20% slower than the RX 480. NVIDIA's GTX 1060 (and similarly performing cards like the GTX 980 and R9 Fury) are far ahead, with 30% higher performance. Overall, I would say the RX 470 is right at the lower end of the performance spectrum I would label as "acceptable for 1080p gaming." Of course, you can always increase your FPS rates in more demanding games by lowering detail settings.

ASUS has engineered a completely new thermal solution for their RX 470. Cooling performance is good, with only 63°C in heavy gaming, but noise levels are not. The card emits 36 dBA under load, which is just way too much for a card in this performance class. The GTX 1080 reference design has similar noise levels, but runs twice as fast. In absolute terms, 36 dBA is not horrible, but certainly noticeable, which shouldn't be the case with a card like the RX 470. Even the AMD reference cooler runs quietly on the RX 470, the same cooler that was super noisy on the RX 480. The underlying reason here is the lower power consumption, which reduces heat emission, putting less strain on the cooler. With ASUS, we've seen an overaggressive fan profile on their RX 480 STRIX, too, just like on the RX 470 in this review. I puzzle over why AMD sent me such a card, which is definitely not the right one to properly represent their product in these tests. What is nice, though, is that ASUS included the idle-fan-off feature we love so much since it provides a perfect noise-free experience during desktop work, Internet browsing, and even light gaming.

Power efficiency of the RX 470 is slightly improved over the RX 480, which suggests that AMD missed their power targets, but had to accept that fact in order to achieve the performance target they set for the RX 480. With only around 120 W, the RX 470 reference design is surprisingly power efficient, which gives me high hopes for future SKUs. ASUS has traded some of that power efficiency to offer higher performance out of the box, which increases power draw by around 20 W, up to 145 W. This is also right near the 150 W the included 6-pin and the PCIe slot provide. A 6-pin is sufficient for such a product in my opinion - there is no need to opt for an 8-pin. Compared to NVIDIA's "Pascal", AMD still has a long way to go. The GTX 1060, for example, runs at slightly lower power than the RX 470 reference, but delivers much higher performance.

A nice feature on the Radeon RX 470 STRIX is the fan header, which can be used to run a case fan at the same speed as the graphics card's fans. That includes the idle-fan-off feature, which makes this a simple way to reduce your system's noise output - case fans stopped while not gaming and overall heat output low. Once you start gaming and the graphics card starts putting out heat, the case fan will start turning as well to ensure hot air is pushed out of your case; I like it.

Our tested RX 470 comes with a 4 GB frame buffer, which seems perfect for this performance class in all games at playable resolutions. Sure, you can see a larger gap between the RX 480 8 GB and RX 470 4 GB in our Call of Duty benchmarks at 4K, a game that's notorious for its high video memory use, but the game is unplayable at 4K on both the RX 470 and the RX 480 to begin with. That's why I strongly recommend you get a 4 GB card if you are in the market for a RX 470. And before the Doom players say "but Nightmare quality needs 5 GB", sure, you can spend extra money to gain a tiny bit more image quality in Doom and maybe games to come, but the difference is too small to be worth the cost. If you have the money, buy an overall faster card in the first place. The same goes for CrossFire, which we tested during AMD's RX 480 launch only to find CF support to be sorely lacking for it to be a viable option.

Pricing of the Radeon RX 470 starts at $179. Performance-per-dollar of the RX 470 4 GB reference is nearly identical to the RX 480 8 GB, just at a lower price and less performance. At $179, the RX 470 is a decent option for 1080p gaming if you just can't save up enough money to afford any of the cards above the $200 mark. Another option would be the RX 480 4 GB if it makes a comeback with good market availability; the additional $20 will give you performance nearly identical to that of the 8 GB version. Last but not least, there is still the GTX 1060, which starts at $249 with no stock available, but has higher performance, better efficiency, noise and thermals. Don't get me wrong, the Radeon RX 470 is a great value proposition that sits right at the top of our performance-per-dollar charts, but there is also a lot of competition in this segment. However, the ASUS RX 470 is in my opinion slightly too expensive at $209; a better price would be $199 or $189 - if they fix that noisy cooler with a BIOS update. When I asked our head of news "What would you buy if you had $210?" he responded "I'd beg on the streets for $40 more if I had to for a 1060."