ASUS Radeon RX 460 STRIX OC 4 GB

, on Aug 10th, 2016, in Graphics Cards. Manufacturer: ASUS

Introduction

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.

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