Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC Aura RGB 4GB review

The Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC Aura is another well designed graphics card by the Taiwanese engineering giant. Their products have scored consistently well in our reviews this year due to a combination of performance, fantastic features and clever design.

The Asus RX 470 Strix is just as well designed as their more expensive models that we have reviewed in recent months, and this specific implementation of the Direct CU II cooling system is stellar – maintaining gaming temperatures below 60c at all times. Unfortunately, I think Asus made the cooling profile slightly too aggressive as the Sapphire RX 470 Nitro OC+ actually outperforms the Strix, maintaining a higher average frame rate. Relaxing the target temperature to 75c would have been a wise move.

That said, this card is relatively quiet under load, which is a bonus. Performance is as we would expect, considering it loses 16 texture units and 256 shader units over the higher profile, faster clocked RX 480.

Technically a fairly big negative would be the exclusion of a backplate on the PCB – our thermal imaging camera picked up several hot spots close to 80c. This omission is obviously related to the price point, and is not really a major concern. That said, if price is the issue for the Strix RX470, why not ditch the LED lighting completely and divert the money into a backplate for the PCB? Without the backplate, the LED lighting seems somewhat pointless anyway as you can no longer expect to see beautiful colours on the logo engraved there – all you get is a tiny little logo visible on the side of the card.

Unfortunately with the launch of AMD's RX 470, we do need to focus on other, equally important factors. The main one is that AMD's pricing and marketing strategy right now is completely at odds with itself. Let me clarify and go into some detail over the last week behind the scenes between KitGuru, Sapphire, Asus and AMD.

Last week we reviewed the Sapphire RX 480 4GB and 8GB cards (HERE). Both won our highest award, and the 4GB card has hit the market at only £199.99 inc vat. This isn't an ‘optimistic paper launch' either because Overclockers UK told us that they sold 60 of these 4GB RX 480's within the space of a few days – at £199.99 inc vat. More are due in stock soon. Sapphire confirmed with me on the phone that the price point will hold steady.

This 4GB RX480 is critical to the way the market is standing today. An 8GB RX 480 is currently priced between £250 and £290 and we have been told that only select AMD partners such as Sapphire and XFX will be able to sell 4GB versions of the RX 480. As it stands, companies such as MSI and ASUS are only allowed to ship 8GB RX480 cards.

I have been told that while the 4GB Sapphire RX480 Nitro+ OC is £199.99 inc vat the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC will hit retail at around £190 inc vat and the Sapphire RX470 Nitro+ OC will likely be around £195 inc vat. It doesn't take an accounting genius to work out that this is only £10 and £5 less respectively than the custom Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC.

Now, consider me a cautious person – I don't enjoy throwing money away more than anyone else but would you save £5 and opt for a custom RX470 over a custom RX480? It is true, the RX480 isn't in a vastly higher performance league, but the price difference should be clearly more than £5.

As it stands, it doesn't matter how good these RX 470's cards are from any of the partners, if you have a budget of £200 for a new graphics card then that 4GB Sapphire RX480 is the one to get. Without question.

We have also heard that some AMD partners will be releasing 8GB RX470 cards in coming weeks. If current pricing stands then it seems almost certain that an 8GB RX470 could cost more than a 4GB RX480. This is why we included some tests at Ultra HD 4K today, we will be interested to see at a later date how an 8GB version of the RX 470 will compare at higher resolutions. Does a lower end card with limited horsepower really need 8GB of memory? It seems unlikely the RX 470 would have enough power at higher resolutions to fully utilise such a large memory allocation regardless.

While I have primarily focused on the AMD battle with itself, lets not forget the Nvidia GTX1060 – we have seen some deals lately on custom cards available for only £228.99 inc vat HERE. At those prices it is difficult to ignore.

You will be able to buy the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC 4GB from Overclockers UK. We were told an hour before publication of this review today that pricing will be between £190 and £200 inc vat.

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Pros:

• LED lighting system.
• great build quality.
• dual fan cooler works well.
• no coil whine.

Cons:

• no backplate – causes hotspots on rear of PCB close to 80c.
• faster RX480 is priced only marginally more expensive (around £10).

Kitguru says: The Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC is a well designed card, but AMD have allowed the strangest market pricing we have seen in recent years. A 4GB RX 470 is only a few pounds cheaper than the faster 4GB RX 480 models. As such, the RX 470 is in dire need of a price drop.

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