AMD has just launched the $199 Radeon RX 480 but the RX 470 may be the sweet spot for budget PC gamers looking at more than okay 1080p gaming that could beat the GTX 970.
The company has already released the specs for their RX 470 and RX 460 cards that are still powered by their new Polaris GPU architecture. They are marketed towards those who really want to make the most of their budget as they could be priced significantly lower than the RX 480's $199 starting point.
NVIDIA might have dominated the high-end GPU market with their GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 but their price tags are too steep for some to afford. AMD's new Polaris cards could be the answer for those looking for a huge step up in performance with just relatively smaller costs.
AMD is still using the Polaris 10 card on the RX 470 with only four Compute Units (CU) turned off to save on production costs, PCGamesN has learned. It will also come with the same 4GB GDDR5 memory the RX 480 has and it will still be on par with the current GTX 970 cards that are priced at more than $250 even after the deep price cuts from NVIDIA.
Some sources even state that overclocking the RX 470 could make it reach the performance level of the stock RX 480 clocks and even beat the GTX 970 altogether. Recent RX 470 benchmarks showed that it scored more than 5400 on the 3DMark FireStrike Extreme tests with stock clocks while the GTX 970 scored just 200 points above at around 5600.
AMD's new Polaris card offerings really bring down the price point with the same or even better performance. Even the RX 480's $199 price tag can beat the performance of their R9 390X or the GTX 980 which cost $400 upwards, Market Realist reported.
There hasn't been a confirmation from AMD on when the Radeon RX 470 and RX 460 cards will launch. They are expected to follow several weeks after the partner RX 480 cards have been released as well. AMD's RX 470, which could be priced at around $150, will bring GTX 970 performance without the $290 or $300 price tag.