MSI Radeon RX 470 Gaming X 8G

Nailing the mid-range

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE! What a generational jump for graphics card owners. The difference between those old 28nm processors and today’s 14 and 16nm cores is absolutely incredible. Take a look at this card here. Like for like, it’s treading toe to toe with the GTX 970. What was at launch a $350 graphics card has now been ousted by a card that comes in at $150 cheaper. It’s remarkable really.

MSI’s Radeon RX 470 is an overclocked model of AMD’s low-end mid-range GPU. It still requires an eight-pin PCIe power, and still has 8GB of VRAM on board, making it quite comparable to the RX 480 in a lot of ways. And overall performance figures aren’t far off, either— no doubt due in part to that hefty 48MHz overclock on the core. But that leads us to a good question: Why would you consider buying this over something such as a 4GB RX 480? As we’ve already seen, the 4GB version of the 480 is more than capable of holding its own at stock, and considering that these two cards come in at the same price point—yet this one comes pre-overclocked and the 480 doesn’t—we can’t quite work out who this card is aimed at.

OK, perhaps you’re not bothered about learning, or aren’t interested in the minor risk factors or time investment that’s associated with finding a stable overclock on a card. But even so, by pressing one of those three profiles situated in MSI’s Gaming X app, you’re essentially doing nothing different from loading an overclocked profile. You still run the same risks.

What is nice here is that MSI has included its full-sized RGB cooler that’s found on its other cards. The Twin Frozr VI keeps the card cool and exceptionally quiet, and even provides a little extra headroom if you do want to push the RX 470 just that fraction higher. Performancewise, it’s still averaging well into the fifties at 1080p, and forties at 1440p, and it’s an absolutely solid card, scuppered only by the phenomenal value of its rival, the 4GB RX 480.

VERDICT9

MSI Radeon RX 470 Gaming X 8G

RADIANT Strong performance; super cool and quiet; great overclocker; plug and play.

ROTTEN Doesn’t quite beat the 4GB RX 480. $200, www.msi.com