Designed for 1080p gamers, we take at look at the RED DEVIL RX 470 graphics card which bears a dual-cooling fan design with two-state overclock to both GPU and memory.
Product on Review: RED DEVIL RX 470
Manufacturer & Sponsor: PowerColor
Street Price: £199 GBP / $199 USD
Defending the mid-range, AMD has been on a passionate mission with their recent “Radeon Rebellion” campaign. We’ve already seen how the Radeon RX 480 performs and today sees us take a look at the next candidate to join the series – the RX 470. This new graphics card is intended for mainstream gamers who require a good value for money GPU whilst gaming with those high-detail presets enabled at 1080p. Will a sub £199 / $199 graphics card be capable of offering such possibilities?
Having already scrutinised the devilish delights of PowerColor’s RED DEVIL RX 480, we turn to the brand again today for a look at their RED DEVIL RX 470. The 470 variant arrives with a similar livery, although the cooler now bears two cooling fans and is obviously smaller in size – making it more discreet. PowerColor has equipped this new card to feature the dual-switch OC mode to have the card operate in a low-noise state or advanced overclock.
RED DEVIL RX 470 is looking like a good value for money offering. Let’s put it under the spotlight!
PowerColor on their RED DEVIL
With its restless desire to rule the universe without seeing any light; Devil 13, the ruler of the underworld, created a new Devil to rise from the underworld and master all creatures. Red Devil as he was named , known to be the only Devil besides his creator to master all elements of the Hexagon. Controlling Fire, Lightning, Air, Magic Energy, Dark Soul, and Mirage, its presence was feared by all corners of the new world. Ever since, no one dared to challenge Devil’s true gaming empire.
Technical Specifications
Below are the technical details surrounding RED DEVIL RX 470:
Chipset
Radeon RX 470
Digital max resolution
7680×4320
Core Clock
Silent Mode: Base: 926MHz
Silent Mode: Boost: 1220MHz
Ultra OC Mode: Base: 926MHz
Ultra OC Mode: Boost: 1270MHz
Memory Clock
1750MHz / 7.0 Gbps
Process Technology
14 nm
Shader Units
2048
Memory Size
4GB GDDR5
Memory Bus
256-bit
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Memory Type
GDDR5
DirectX
12
OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Multi-view
4
I/O
1x Dual-link DVI-I
1x HDMI 2.0
3x Display Port 1.4
Suggested Power requirement
500W (8-pin external power connector)
Card Size
240mm x 110mm
Radeon RX 470
Digital max resolution
7680×4320
Core Clock
Silent Mode: Base: 926MHz
Silent Mode: Boost: 1220MHz
Ultra OC Mode: Base: 926MHz
Ultra OC Mode: Boost: 1270MHz
Memory Clock
1750MHz / 7.0 Gbps
Process Technology
14 nm
Shader Units
2048
Memory Size
4GB GDDR5
Memory Bus
256-bit
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Memory Type
GDDR5
DirectX
12
OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Multi-view
4
I/O
1x Dual-link DVI-I
1x HDMI 2.0
3x Display Port 1.4
Suggested Power requirement
500W (8-pin external power connector)
Card Size
240mm x 110mm
Detailed Look & Video Review
For this review we’ve produced a video review over on our YouTube channel which details all of the included features, and takes a close look at the PCB/cooling solution along with the addition of some gaming benchmarks. Please check out our video review or hit play on the video below:
Test Setup & Methodology
How we test graphics cards
Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.
Hardware
Taking Intel’s High-End Desktop platform, our hardware utilises the Intel X99 chipset. Combined with this we use the Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to a realistic and achievable 4GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB (4x4GB) of DDR4 at 2666MHz and a 750GB SSD there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.
High End Graphics Cards on test:
PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 470 (Crimson 16.8.1)
PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 480 (Crimson 16.7.2)
ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme (NVIDIA 368.81)
ASUS STRIX GTX 1080 (NVIDIA 368.81)
Gainward GTX 1070 Phoenix Golden Sample (NVIDIA 368.81)
MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X (NVIDIA 368.64)
Gainward GTX 1060 Phoenix Golden Sample (NVIDIA 368.64)
NVIDIA GTX 1060 (NVIDIA 368.64)
NVIDIA GTX 980Ti OC (NVIDIA 368.81)
NVIDIA GTX 980 (NVIDIA 368.81)
NVIDIA GTX 970 (NVIDIA 368.81)
AMD Radeon RX 480 CrossFire (Crimson 16.7.2)
AMD Radeon RX 480 (Crimson 16.7.2)
XFX R9 FURY (Crimson 16.7.2)
AMD Radeon R9 390X (Crimson 16.7.2)
Special thanks go to Intel, Corsair, MSI and AOC for providing the extreme spec components used for our test bench:
Motherboard: MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 840 EVO 750GB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2879VF
Capture Card – Razer Ripjaw
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 840 EVO 750GB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2879VF
Capture Card – Razer Ripjaw
Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we’ve chosen:
DOOM (OpenGL 4.5 & Vulkan)
Total War: Warhammer
Rise of the Tomb Raider
HITMAN
DiRT Rally
Total War: Warhammer
Rise of the Tomb Raider
HITMAN
DiRT Rally
To capture framerates we use a combination of in-game benchmark tools, FRAPS and PresentMon.
We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included three of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:
Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Futuremark 3DMark Time Spy
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Futuremark 3DMark Time Spy
Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…
Power, Temperatures, Acoustics
To test for power consumption, we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state (4GHz overclock) so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using Heaven 4.0 which was ran for 20 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.
Temperature
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests we set Heaven 4.0 running continuously for ~30 minutes recorded the peak/maximum GPU temperature.
Acoustics
Noise from the cooling fans on RED DEVIL render the card super-quiet, just like the RX 480 – take a look and listen on our video.
DX12: 3DMark Time Spy
With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, 3DMark Time Spy is the ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.
DX11: 3DMark FireStrike
Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.
DX11: Unigine Heaven 4.0
Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.
DX11: Unigine Valley
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.
DX12: DOOM OpenGL 4.5
By default DOOM utilises an OpenGL 4.5 renderer, and is one of relatively few Windows PC titles to not use DirectX 12. It tests how well NVIDIA and AMD’s GPUs deal with a less mainstream approach, especially in regards to driver optimisations, and like all of id titles stretches graphics quality to the limit.
DX12: DOOM Vulkan
id have also released an optional Vulkan rendering path for DOOM. This API is a development of AMD’s Mantle low level which has been taken on board by the Kronos Group for implementation as the next generation of Open graphics APIs. Like DirectX 12 Vulkan is capable of Asynchronous Compute in specific configurations.
DX12: Total War: WARHAMMER
Total War: WARHAMMER is a pseudo Real-Time Strategy title which leverages DirectX 12 to render huge numbers of complex units on screen at any one time.
DX12: Rise of the Tomb Raider
Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider is the sequel to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot. An enormously challenging title graphically, the developers also released an optional DirectX 12 render path for Windows 10 users. Although it has undergone a number of iterations this rendering pathway notably doesn’t currently utilise the full capabilities of DirectX 12.
DX12: HITMAN
Yet another DirectX 12 title, 2016’s Hitman from Square Enix and developer IO Interactive has a more robust DirectX 12 implementation than Rise of the Tomb Raider. We’ve tested at a full range of resultions, from 1080p through to 4K, which provides a look at the impact of GPU speed and memory utilisation.
DX11: DiRT Rally
Overall Performance
Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.
Value For Money
We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.
Conclusion
After already taking an in-depth look at the RED DEVIL RX 480 and being impressed, we can whole heartedly report a similar story with the RED DEVIL RX 470.
PowerColor’s cooling solution on RED DEVIL RX 470 once again delivers on low-noise. Under load the cooling fans emit very little noise, which again is the key objective with the RED DEVIL series. We also found it very encouraging that our cooler didn’t exceed 70 degrees after sustained gaming sessions – pointing to great thermal performance too.
As you’ll see over on the preceding pages, the 3D performance from PowerColor’s RED DEVIL RX 470 is the showstopper. In some of the benchmarks our card outperformed AMD’s reference RX 480. Against NVIDIA’s cohort, there is a clear advantage with choosing such an AMD card for DX12 usage, particularly when the Vulkan API is being utilised. RED DEVIL RX 470 is undoubtedly an excellent 1080p performer – the results against the cost revealing one of the best value for money cards we’ve yet tested.
When we reviewed the RED DEVIL RX 480 we highlighted the upside-down logo on the outer edge of the card and we’re baffled to see its presence on the RX 470 version too. Once again, PowerColor assure us that in the revised retail editions this should be ironed out.
RED DEVIL RX 470’s price is the major talking point as it hits shelves at just £199 GBP / $199 USD – making it possible for gamers who want to enjoy DX12 titles at high detail presets using 1080p resolution. The RED DEVIL RX 470 along with all its features is backed by a generous 3-year warranty; something which will quite obviously seal the deal.
Gamers who desire above all things the ‘best bang for buck’ should look no further – PowerColor’s RED DEVIL RX 470 arrives with a strong feature-set, performs brilliantly and is amazing value for money!
VIDEO REVIEW – VORTEZ TV
Pros
+ Great performance
+ Features two-state modes
+ Comes with factory overclock
+ Low-noise
+ Overclocks even further
+ Amazing value
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 3-year warranty
Cons
– No option for LEDs
– Emblem upside down?!
+ Great performance
+ Features two-state modes
+ Comes with factory overclock
+ Low-noise
+ Overclocks even further
+ Amazing value
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 3-year warranty
Cons
– No option for LEDs
– Emblem upside down?!
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
