Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

AMD’s RX 470 sets its sights on 1080p gaming for less than $200

We’ve known about the RX 480’s younger siblings, the RX 470 and 460, for quite some time. Details on the card’s performance, feature set, and price point – pretty much everything about the cards – were lacking. Today, the RX 470 launches in earnest, and the shroud is lifted on one of the new budget-friendly cards.

The beating heart of the RX 470 is 2,048 Stream Processors with a 926MHz base clock, and a 1,206MHz boost clock in the reference version. AMD has chosen a full four gigabytes of GDDR5 for the mid-range offering, clocked at up to 1,750MHz. AIB partners are also available in the typical selection of overclocked flavors.

Recommended Videos

This is, of course, a GPU based on the 14nm FinFET die size, in what AMD refers to as the Polaris architecture. That means a rich feature set, including DirectX 12 optimization, FreeSync, Eyefinity, and support for the new Vulkan graphics API.

Most of the offerings are full-length, double-wide cards. Our review unit happens to be a Sapphire OC with a reference-style cooler, and it’s 9.5 inches long, the same length as the RX 480, with the same short PCB and extended cooler. The 120W TDP means the card needs some help from a six-pin PCIe power connection. Like most cards, ours is equipped with an HDMI 2.0b port, and a trio of DisplayPort 1.4 outputs.

We have a full review coming early next week, but to tide you over until then, we do have a little taste to share from our ongoing performance testing. Installed in our X99 test system, the RX 470 scored 9,215 in 3DMark’s Fire Strike benchmark, about 14 percent behind the RX 480.

For the real-world gaming tests and comparative performance results, you’ll have to wait until next week. The card is available now for a suggested $179 retail price, just $20 short of the vanilla RX 480 – if you can find it. At publish, all five RX 470 models on Newegg, which cost between $179 and $240, are sold out.

Buy on Newegg

Brad Bourque
Brad Bourque is a native Portlander, devout nerd, and craft beer enthusiast. He studied creative writing at Willamette…
AMD might’ve already lost the war with the RX 9070 XT
Various AMD RX 9000 series graphics cards.

It looks like I may have played myself again. I was genuinely excited about AMD's RX 9070 XT, but now, I'm starting to worry about its future. I always knew that the new AMD flagship wouldn't be able to compete against some of Nvidia's best graphics cards, but I had a lot of hope that it'd still be a great competitor for a number of other reasons.

I'm not doubting the performance of the RX 9070 XT. I have no reason to, as we don't know a thing about it -- and that's exactly why I'm worried. Not only are the GPUs still a complete mystery, but they've also reportedly been delayed. At this rate, I fear that AMD may have lost the war before it even started, and I'm not alone.
What's going on with RDNA 4?

Read more
AMD’s RX 9070 XT might beat Nvidia’s $1,000 GPU
Gigabyte's RX 9070 XT GPU.

AMD unveiled its RDNA 4 architecture at CES 2025, but the announcement failed to generate much hype, as many questions were left unanswered. However, thanks to leaked benchmarks, we now have unofficial data that shows the card beating Nvidia's $1,000 RTX 4080 Super, which helps us figure out where it'll rank among some of the best graphics cards.

The benchmarks originated from the Chiphell forum, where admin user nApoleon shared 3DMark scores and GPU-Z details. The post also urged users to delay buying Nvidia's RTX 50-series, claiming the GPU market has "completely changed" based on the results.

Read more
Preorders for AMD’s RX 9000 series may open this month
Various AMD RX 9000 series graphics cards.

Some much-needed good news just popped up in relation to AMD's best graphics cards, the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070. As spotted by momomo_us on X (formerly Twitter), the cards have been listed on the B&H website, and although you can't buy them right now, there's a preorder date for later this month. With the RTX 50-series set to launch on January 30, can AMD still beat Nvidia to the punch?

During AMD's CES 2025 keynote, the RDNA 4 lineup was largely a no-show, with nothing but a promise that we'd find out more soon. We weren't given the specs, much less a firm release date. While we still don't know when the RX 9000 series will truly arrive, at least we now know when the preorders are likely to start.  Keep in mind that none of this is official information from AMD, so everything could still change.

Read more