Sapphire, a Hong Kong technology company, has been making Radeon video cards for the better part of a decade. Leaked details about Sapphire’s RX 470 Platinum Edition and RX 460 have been reported by Videocardz.com, whose track record on reporting similar leaks has been generally reliable.
The leaked Sapphire RX 470 Platinum Edition photos show a cooler that looks almost identical to AMD’s RX 480 reference design. The RX 470 Platinum Edition has a silver-colored reference blower cooler and includes a custom backplate. One last difference is Sapphire’s name branding, which is printed in white on the side of the RX 470 Platinum instead of AMD’s red Radeon logo. You can read our thoughts on the RX 480 reference cooler in our review here.
The leaked photos show that the RX 470 features a 4+1 phase power design and a 6-pin power connector. The reference RX 480, on the other hand, uses a 6+1 phase power design while also using a 6-pin power connector. It will be interesting to see how fewer phases impact power draw on the RX 470.
One of the biggest stories coming out after AMD’s RX 480 release was the power draw exceeding 150W at load. The initial reports by Tom’s Hardware showed that the RX 480 was pulling more power than what the PCI Express and 6-pin power connectors were rated for, but these issues have been (more or less) entirely resolved by the 16.7.2 driver push. The RX 470 shouldn't experience similar issues, as it's a lower TDP part and has had time to soak any design changes prior to launch.
Details on the RX 460 are much scarcer, as there is only one photo included with Videocardz.com's report. The one thing we can glean is that the card sports a custom two-fan cooler.
The GPU wars are heating up between nVidia and AMD with the newly launched GTX 1060 and the recently launched RX 480. We expect the competition to be fierce in the entry-level GPU market once the RX 460 and RX 470 ship. These cards will most likely take on nVidia’s assumed GTX 1050, if it ever is announced, in the budget segment of the video card market. If you’re in the market for a $100 - $150 video card, we recommend waiting until AMD and nVidia release their new entry-level GPUs.
Source: Videocardz.com.
- Chris Zele.