AMD's follow-up to the RX 480 is faster than you might imagine. Based on our benchmarks based on the MSI Gaming X version of the card, it's almost as fast as the 4GB version of the RX 480. Of course, this is a premium partner design with a factory overclock in place and improved power delivery, but the bottom line seems clear - the RX 470 may have fewer compute units than the full-fat Polaris 10, but it doesn't seem to have that much of an impact on overall performance. The only issue is this: UK pricing is pretty much on par with the 4GB RX 480.
Before we go on, let's start with a bit of background - AMD provided two RX 470s for review, but one of them requires a vBIOS update that only arrived today. And this is a shame as it seems to be based on reference clocks with the standard six-pin power input - in short, the kind of baseline model we'd like to include in our testing. The MSI Gaming X is a keeper though, seemingly engineered to overcome the limitations we saw on the RX 480 reference card. There's a far more accomplished cooling assembly based on the new TwinFrozr 6 design, plus there's an eight-pin power input. Out of the box, the MSI card locks to a 1244MHz clock-speed and it is far more overclockable than the RX 480 we tested.
The results from this model are highly creditable - but based on some very last minute tests, it seems that it's only 1-3fps faster, depending on the game. In the meantime, we should expect to see aftermarket designs for the RX 470 flood the market. In the case of the MSI model, we have a quality cooler, quiet performance, great clocks out of the box and an improved range of outputs - HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 HDR and yes, dual-link DVI - a video link we consider essential on a more budget-orientated card.
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