Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC Aura RGB 4GB review

Allan 'Zardon' Campbell August 4, 2016 Featured Tech Reviews, Graphics, Reviews

Rating: 7.0.

Today is the second of AMD's recent graphics card releases. While AMD sampled reference solutions for RX 480, they are relying on partner cards for the RX 470 launch. Today we take a close up look at the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming which arrives with a custom cooler, RGB lighting and enhanced ‘out of the box' speeds.

In AMD's literature they claim the RX 470 can handle ‘high definition gaming above 60 FPS+ at max settings'. Yes, they obviously mean 1080p. Thankfully today we don't have to focus on one of their reference cooled cards and can invest our time into the rather subdued, yet lovely looking Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming card.

The Asus card features a Direct CU II cooler with patented ‘wing blade' fans which deliver high air pressure. In a similar fashion to their high end models, the card is equipped with Aura RGB lighting and has customisable colour decals to let you express your own style. This card has 4 pin fan headers on the PCB allowing additional fans to be controlled directly from the card.

GPU	Radeon R9 290X	Radeon R9 390	Radeon R9 390X	Radeon R9 Fury	Radeon R9 Fury X	Radeon RX 480	Radeon RX 470
Shader Units	2816	2560	2816	3584	4096	2304	2048
ROPs	64	64	64	64	64	32	32
Graphics Processor	Hawaii	Hawaii	Hawaii	Fiji	Fiji	Ellesmere	Ellesmere
Transistors	6200M	6200M	6200M	8900M	8900M	5700M	5700M
Memory Size	4GB	8GB	8GB	4GB	4GB	4GB/8GB	4GB/8GB
Memory Bus Width	512 bit	512 bit	512 bit	4096 bit	4096 bit	256 bit	256 bit
Core Clock	1000 mhz	1000 mhz	1050 mhz	1000 mhz	1000 mhz	up to 1266mhz	up to 1206mhz
Memory Clock	1250mhz	1500mhz	1500mhz	500mhz	500mhz	2000mhz	1650mhz

An overview of the Ellesmere RX 470 in GPUz. AMD's RX 480 has 2,304 stream processors, the RX 470 has 2,048. Both have 32 ROPS, however the RX470 loses 16 texture units, from 144 on the RX 480 to 128 on the RX 470.

The ASUS card has two overclocked modes available – ‘Gaming mode' which runs at 1250mhz and ‘OC mode' running at 1270mhz. We have tested graphics cards from all manufacturers in recent months at their fastest supported speeds, just to keep things on an even footing. I believe that KitGuru readers will use these OC modes available via the supplied software anyway.

Both RX 470 and RX 480 are built around a 256 bit memory interface and while we are reviewing a 4GB RX 470 the subject of memory count doesn't quite end there.

Time for a little preamble now…

The week before this review went live was certainly interesting behind the scenes, especially in regards to our conversations with a handful of etailers and AMD themselves. It would appear that AMD will be releasing 4GB and 8GB versions of the RX 470 even though its not ‘official' news yet. Price points for the high grade customised 4GB RX 470 cards just before launch are said to be around the £190 mark.

If you are a regular KitGuru reader you will remember our review of the excellent, customised 4GB Sapphire RX 480 Nitro OC from last week – at a price point of only £199.99 (HERE). £199.99 is potentially only £10 more than a high grade RX 470. We can only guess what potential 8GB versions of the RX 470 will likely cost – more than a 4GB RX480? I certainly can't see a lot of sense in that.

AMD seem to have their pricing strategy all wrong with these cards. Simply releasing a 4GB RX470 and an 8GB RX480 with a £50-£60 price difference between cards would have been more market savvy to me. It seems rather obvious that incorporating 8GB of GDDR5 memory into a RX470 seems somewhat pointless – the GPU will be long out of horsepower before it ever requires 8GB of texture memory.

Asus are using similar box artwork to their high end Strix models. The word ‘Strix' is drawn out in a full spectrum of colours to draw significance to the RGB lighting.

Inside the box is some literature on the card, a software disc, free game code, cable ties and colour decals.

The Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming is finished in plain black, with black fans, and a – yes you guessed it, black shroud. The PCB is also black although there is no backplate fitted which surprised me. The higher end models in the Strix lineup have RGB style backplates as you can see over HERE.

The card measures 24.2 cm x 12.9 cm x 4.2 cm.

The AURA RGB lighting on this card is somewhat limited in regards to exposure – as can be seen in the ASUS slide above.

The RX 470 Strix Gaming card allows fans to be connected to a connector on the PCB. It supports both 3 pin (DC) and 4 pin (PWM) fans and will automatically detect the kind of fan connected. You can now control the chassis fans by using Professional mode within GPU Tweak II. The card takes power from a single 6 PIN PCIe power connector.

The I/O plate is fitted with two DVI connectors (dual link), a HDMI (2.0) connector and a DisplayPort (1.4) connector.

The Direct CU II cooler for this card has two thick heatpipes which run into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side of the copper core. Asus are using SK Hynix GDDR5 memory on this particular card.

Like all other cards in the range, Asus are incorporating concrete alloy chokes to help reduce unpleasant buzzing during high load operation. They are also using SAP II Capacitors which are said to have a 90,000 hour longer life than traditional capacitors.

I have spent the last month benchmarking a selection of AMD and NVIDIA cards with the latest drivers on one of our new 6700k test beds. We are using the AMD Crimson Edition Display Driver, Version 16.8.1 and Nvidia ForceWare 368.81 driver.

We list each resolution test for every game on its own page – meaning if you are just interested in 1440p resolutions for instance, you can skip the other resolutions without effort. If you want to read the whole review and find all the page changes annoying – click on our menu system top right of these pages, and head to ’32. view all pages’.

We are aware the RX 470 is not designed for Ultra HD 4k gaming, but we include the results out of the sake of being thorough. There is also the possibility that if AMD do release an 8GB version of the RX 470, we will want to test it against the 4GB version at higher resolutions. Even if it is somewhat pointless in the grand scheme of things.

We are using a custom Titan Bayonet system supplied by Overclockers UK as the basis of our test system today. Read more on this system over HERE.

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Mid Tower
Processor: Intel 6700K @ 4.4ghz
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) @ 3000mhz
Motherboard: ASUS Z170-E DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex 850W Gold Certified
Software: Microsoft Windows 10 64 Bit
SSD: Samsung 250GB 850 EVO
HDD: Seagate 1TB 7,200 rpm 64MB Cache.

If you want to purchase this system yourself head to THIS page on OCUK.

Graphics cards:

Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC Aura RGB – (1,270 mhz core / 1650 mhz (6.6Gbps effective) memory)

Comparison Cards on test:

Asus RX 480 Strix Gaming OC AURA RGB – (1,330mhz core / 2,000 (8Gbps effective) memory)
Sapphire RX 480 Nitro + OC 8GB – (1,342mhz core / 2,000 mhz (8Gbps effective) memory)
Sapphire RX 480 Nitro + OC 4GB – (1,306mhz core / 1,750 mhz (8Gbps effective) memory)
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G RGB SLI– (1,683mhz core / 1,823 mhz boost / 5000 mhz memory)
Palit GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition – (1,747mhz core / 1,886mhz boost / 5256 mhz memory)
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G RGB – OC Mode (1,709mhz core / 1,849mhz boost / 5,056 mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming RGB (1721 mhz core / 1860 mhz boost / 5,005 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition (1607mhz core/ 1733mhz boost / 5,005 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition (1506mhz core/ 1683mhz boost / 4,006 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB (Rev 2 w/ backplate). (1040mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 295X2 (1,018 mhz core / 1,250mhz memory)
AMD R9 Fury X (1,050 mhz core / 500 mhz memory)
AMD R9 Nano (1,000mhz core / 500 mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX980 Ti XTREME Gaming (1,216 mhz core / 1800mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX Titan Z (706 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX Titan X (1,000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX980 Strix (1,178 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX980 Ti (1,000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390X Tri-X 8GB (1,055 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB (1,010 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 10 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Ashes Of the Singularity
Dirt Rally
Hitman 2016
Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor
Rise Of the Tomb Raider
Grand Theft Auto 5
Metro Last Light Redux

Additional equipment:
Leica S-E (006) medium format camera with 70mm F2.5 and 100mm F2 Leica lens.

We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

The Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming falls in behind the RX 480 by around 2,000 points at the default resolution, and 500 points at Ultra HD 4K.

3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

Compared against the reference AMD RX480, we can see a drop of around 1,500 points for the Asus RX470 Strix Gaming OC card.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
Multicore CPU support
Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
Powerful C++ API
Comprehensive performance profiling system
Flexible XML-based data structures

We test at 2560×1440 with quality setting at ULTRA, Tessellation at NORMAL, and Anti-Aliasing at x2.

The Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC manages to outperform the 380X Nitro falling in behind the GTX 970.

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the future where descendants of humans (called Post- Humans) and a powerful artificial intelligence (called the Substrate) fight a war for control of a resource known as Turinium.

Players will engage in massive-scale land/air battles by commanding entire armies of their own design. Each game takes place on one area of a planet, with each player starting with a home base (known as a Nexus) and a single construction unit.

We test the final retail game at 1080p resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.

This engine runs particularly well on AMD hardware. We can see the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC manages to outperform the GTX 970 by around 3 frames per second.

We test the final retail game at 1440p resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.

Performance is good at 1440p, averaging 34.5 frames per second. This is around 2 frames more than the GTX 970. The RX 480 by comparison averages 40.3 fps at the same settings.

We test the final retail game at 4k resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.

At Ultra HD 4K the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC doesn't deliver a great experience. We wouldn't expect it to do so either, its not designed for 4K gaming. Still performance is a single frame per second in advance of the R9 Nitro 380X.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a third-person open world video game, where the player controls a ranger by the name of Talion who seeks revenge on the forces of Sauron after his family, including his wife, are killed. Players can travel across locations in the game through parkour, riding monsters, or accessing Forge Towers, which serve as fast travel points.

We test at 1440p with the image quality settings at Ultra.

At 1440p, the RX 470 puts in a very healthy performance, averaging 50 frames per second. A little reduction in image quality settings would help drive the minimum frame rates higher. Its very closely matched against our Palit GTX970 sample at this resolution.

With test at Ultra HD 4k resolution with Ultra image settings enabled.

At Ultra HD 4k, the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC holds an average frame rate of 26. It drops too low to be remotely playable, but by reducing image quality settings we could improve the situation a little. That said, you really want to be aiming for a GTX 1080 or Fury at 4k – bank balances permitting.

Dirt Rally is developed by British video game developer Codemasters using the in house Ego engine. Development began with a small team of individuals following the release of their 2012 video game Dirt: Showdown. Codemasters have emphasised a desire to create a simulation with Dirt Rally. They started by prototyping a handling model and creating tracks based on map data. The game employs a different physics model from previous titles, rebuilt from the ground up.

We test at 1080p with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.

At 1080p, the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC delivers good gaming frame rates, averaging 62 fps, and holding close to 50 fps in the more intensive sections of the environment. This is around 6 fps slower than the reference clocked RX 480.

We test at 1440 with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.

At 1440p the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC is being pushed hard. It averages 44 frames per second, holding above 30 fps at all times. It is significantly quicker than the Sapphire R9 Nitro 380X, but 4-8 frames slower than the GTX 970.

We test at Ultra HD 4k with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.

The GTX 970, 380X and RX 470 cannot maintain smooth frame rates with these settings at 4K. You could dial down a lot of the image quality settings to get above 30fps, but spending more cash would be advised.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story. It uses a Direct X 12 capable engine.

We enable Direct X 12, Vsync is off and graphics are set to the ‘very high' profile, shown above. We test the Nvidia Titan Z with the SLi optimisation both disabled, then enabled. This is clearly marked in the graph. See more HERE.

Great performance at 1080p, maintaining an average over 65 frames per second. It is very closely matched against the AMD R9 Nano and R9 390 Nitro 8GB.

At 1440p it would be advisable to run with lower image quality. An average of 42 frames per second is very good, but the frame rate does drop to around the 25 point a few times during some of the levels. Not ideal for smooth gaming.

No chance at 4K, not unless we opted for one of the lowest image quality profiles in the options. Still we can see the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC holds its own against the GTX 970 from the last generation.

Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players may freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. It may be fully explored after the game's beginning without restriction, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content.

We maximise all the image quality settings, but leave anti aliasing turned off, as it dramatically impacts performance.

At 1080p, even at these ultra high IQ settings, the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC does a commendable job, holding frame rates above 40 at all times. Reducing a few image quality settings from Ultra to High, as well as reducing draw distance a little would help increase this to maintain closer to 60 fps at all times. The reference clocked AMD RX480 has around a 5-6 frame advantage.

We maximise all the image quality settings, but leave anti aliasing turned off, as it dramatically impacts performance.

At 1440p the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC struggles to maintain super smooth frame rates – unless the image quality settings were dialled down noticeably. Performance is slightly ahead of the R9 380X, but quite some way behind the R9 390 Nitro 8GB (10 fps).

We maximise all the image quality settings, but leave anti aliasing turned off, as it dramatically impacts performance.

Much lower image quality settings would be needed to run Grand Theft Auto 5 at 4k. You ideally want the fastest GTX1080 you can get for this resolution, or even two of them in SLi.

Just like the original game Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above ground. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones (this happens regardless of your actions in the first game). Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements.

Quality-Very High, SSAA-on, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

At 1080p, we get a borderline result – certainly not the ‘high definition gaming above 60 FPS+ at max settings' that AMD touted in their reviewers guide. Still to be realistic, you could drop a few of the image quality settings to gain higher levels of performance. The RX480 has a good 5 frame advantage at this resolution.Just like the original game Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above ground. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones (this happens regardless of your actions in the first game). Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements.

Quality-Very High, SSAA-on, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

The Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC struggles to maintain smooth frame rates at 1440p with our selected image quality settings. Strangely enough we got a higher minimum frame rate than the GTX970.

Quality-High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

At Ultra HD 4k with these slightly reduced image quality settings, the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC averages almost 30 frames per second, a little behind the RX480.

Hitman (2016) is a third-person stealth video game in which players take control of Agent 47, a genetically enhanced, superhuman assassin, travelling to international locations and eliminating contracted targets. As in other games in the Hitman series, players are given a large amount of room for creativity in approaching their assassinations. The game is being released in stages, which hasn't proved too popular with a large audience.

We test with many of the settings maximised, SSAO is disabled however as I found it causes some crashing. I have to say that Hitman is a little unstable at times under the best of situations, but we managed to get it running well enough to benchmark. The built in benchmark is very flaky indeed however, so real world runs had to be used.

A good gaming experience at 1080p, averaging close to 60 frames per second.

At 1440p we would still consider this playable, but only. Those gamers who demand a solid 60fps will need to look elsewhere – well unless you also don't mind running with reduced image quality settings. Still we can see the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC holds its own against the GTX 970. The RX470 is around 10-14 frames slower than the RX 480 however – its very noticeable with this engine.

At Ultra HD 4k resolutions the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC will struggle to maintain anything close to playable. A noticeable drop in image quality helps, but it ruins the 4K gaming experience.

We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hair dryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The fans disable at idle and lower power demands, which is a great feature to have. When load increases, the fans spin up to around 1,500 rpm when gaming, and 1,750rpm when running Furmark. The fans are audible but never too intrusive.

We are glad to report the card doesn't suffer from coil whine either – likely aided by the use of high grade concrete alloy chokes in the design of the card.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 21c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider for 90 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 10 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The dual fan cooler does a good job of keeping the card cool – holding a 57c load temperature result when gaming. This rises to 60c under Furmark.

We install the graphics card into the system and measure temperatures on the back of the PCB with our Fluke Visual IR Thermometer/Infrared Thermal Camera. This is a real world running environment playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider for extended periods of time.

Without a backplate installed on the PCB, we noticed several hot spots along the rear of the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC. The hottest part measured almost 78c – nothing dangerous but a little higher than I would have liked to see from a lower range card like this.

We measure power consumption from the whole system when idle and when gaming, excluding the monitor. We play Rise Of the Tomb Raider and measure demand.

Power consumption from the system showed around 203 watts, a little more than with the GTX 1060 in the system.

We attempted to overclock the Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC with both GPU Tweak II and AMD's WattMan. Both software packages delivered similar results.

Using the overclocking software I was able to get the RX 470 Strix Gaming OC to 1,365mhz before instability would occur. This is around a 7.5% increase over the OC profile on the BIOS we received.

The overclock translated into a 700 point increase in the latest version of 3DMark Fire Strike test.

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.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

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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Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC Aura RGB 4GB review

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