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Today we take a look at the third RX 470 card to hit our labs – the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G. This card ships with a dual fan custom cooler, as well as enhanced out of the box clock speeds. The talking point? This is the first RX 470 we have looked at which ships with 8GB of GDDR5 memory.
If you followed our launch reviews, you will know that I was quite surprised, and equally disappointed with AMD partner card RX 470 retail pricing. The cards we reviewed were priced only £10 less than the Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC 4GB – which made little, if any, sense to me. Sadly prices haven't dropped any over the weekend, but we hope in coming weeks that some deals will appear for RX 470 solutions.
If launch pricing of the 4GB RX 470 cards seemed bizarre, then today takes a turn into the twilight zone. This MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8GB is priced at £229.99 inc vat, which is £30 more expensive than the Sapphire RX480 Nitro+ OC 4GB. Adding 4GB of GDDR5 memory does come at a cost, but I have to admit to more head scratching this week.
On a slightly more positive note at least the MSI RX470 Gaming X 8GB is equipped with a very attractive two tone dual fan cooling system which makes it easily the best looking RX 470 available today.
| 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 MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is clocked at 1242mhz in Gaming mode, while the GDDR5 memory runs at 1,650mhz. In OC mode the core is tweaked to 1254mhz (6.6Gbps effective) and the memory gets a very minor increase to 1,675mhz (6,7Gbps effective). We always test graphics cards from all the companies in the fastest state, as we would imagine most KitGuru readers will do the same (or even overclock manually to the limit).
There will be no overclocking page in this particular review today, because if we increased core speed at all past the ‘OC' rated speeds in the latest version of MSI Afterburner, our test system would crash.
The MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G ships in a colourful box with a high resolution image of the product on the front.
The rear of the box goes into more detail on the card specifics including catchy headlines such as ‘Play Hard, Stay Silent'. Yes, we will indeed MSI.
The bundle includes a software disc, and a quick users guide.
The MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8GB is a very attractive card and features the two red and black tone cooling system we love – there are two custom branded ‘Torx 2.0' fans fitted. Unfortunately it is not all good because MSI have decided not to fit a backplate to the rear of the PCB. It will be interesting to see later with our thermal imaging camera how this will effect the issue of thermal hotspots under heavy load.
The card takes power from a single 8 Pin PCI e connector.
This card would look so much better with a fancy MSI branded backplate fitted. We understand companies needing to cut costs in the lower end market, but this card is retailing for £230 in the UK, so I find it very disappointing. The £199 Sapphire RX 480 has one fitted for instance.
It is interesting to note that official MSI RX470 Gaming X 8GB product images regarding the LED lighting system on the official MSI website show the card fitted with a backplate HERE. As it stands you will only see some colour through the MSI logo on the side of the card, above.
The I/O plate is fitted with a single DVI (Dual Link) connector, two HDMI (2.0) connectors, and two DisplayPort (1.4) connectors.
The MSI Twin Frozr IV cooler is substantial, featuring several thick heatpipes, which run into densely packed racks of aluminum fins on either side of the cooling block.
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 ’30. view all pages’.
We are aware the RX 470 is not designed for Ultra HD 4k gaming, but we include the results out of interest – comparing against 4GB versions of the same hardware when more texture memory is advantageous. There seems little point for an 8GB RX470 in the grand scheme of things however including some tests seems the best road to test.
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:
MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G – (1,254 mhz core / 1,675 mhz (6.7Gbps effective) memory)
Comparison Cards on test:
Sapphire RX 470 Nitro + OC 4GB – (1,260 mhz core / 1750 mhz (7 Gbps effective) memory)
Asus RX 470 Strix Gaming OC Aura RGB – (1,270 mhz core / 1650 mhz (6.6Gbps effective) memory)
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.
Performance is pretty much as expected, slotting in close beside the Sapphire RX 470 Nitro+ OC solution which we tested last week.
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.”
As we would expect, the MSI card falls in just behind the Sapphire RX 470 Nitro+ OC solution.
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 MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G averages 44.4 frames per second, just behind the Sapphire RX 470 Nitro+ OC.
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.
Performance of the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is identical at this resolution to the reference cooled and reference clocked AMD RX 480, averaging 43.6 frames per second.
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 1440p resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.
At 1440p, the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G falls down the chart a little averaging 38.3 frames per second.
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 4k resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.
At Ultra HD 4K, the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is around 1.5 frames per second behind the reference clocked GTX 1060 and 2 tenths of a frame faster than the Sapphire RX 470 Nitro + OC.
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 MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G averages 54 frames per second, a couple of frames behind the reference clocked AMD RX 480.
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.
With test at Ultra HD 4k resolution with Ultra image settings enabled.
The engine at 4K is too demanding for these lower level cards, dropping to 20 frames per second. The extra 4GB of GDDR5 memory makes no real difference, as the RX 470 core itself itself is holding everything back.
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 MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G averages 65 frames per second, identical to the Sapphire RX 470 Nitro+ OC.
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 1440 with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.
Many people would consider this a playable gaming experience, but many gamers like to see a solid 60 frames per second rate. If this is the case then removing anti aliasing and lowering some image quality settings would be the best bet – or revert to 1080p resolution.
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 Ultra HD 4k with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.
The MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is not a 4K gaming card, exactly like the 4GB version of the RX 470.
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.
At 1080p the performance is excellent, averaging in excess of 60 frames per second.
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.
At 1440p performance takes a noticeable hit, and frame rates sometimes drop below 30.
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.
Not playable at 4K – well not at these image quality settings anyway. Performance is pretty much in line with the Sapphire RX 470 Nitro + OC 4GB card.
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.
Performance at 1080p is superb, holding close to a 70 frames per second average.
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 1440p the frame rate holds above 30 at all times. If you want better performance then dropping some of the image quality settings from ultra to high would help.
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 Ultra HD 4k resolution, the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is completely out of power. The extra 4GB of GDDR5 memory makes no difference to the playability of the experience.
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 the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G averages 45 frames per second.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 1440p the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is out of power. Some image quality settings would need reduced.
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-High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.
At Ultra HD 4K, the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is unable to cope, even with a few image quality settings reduced. A high spec GTX 1080 is the best option for this title.
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 decent gaming experience at 1080p, averaging around 60 frames per second.
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.
At 1440p performance is still reasonably acceptable.
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.
Not what we would consider playable, and performance is still very closely matched against the Sapphire RX 470 Nitro+ OC 4GB.
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 MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is very quiet and the fans never spin that high (around 600 rpm during Tomb Raider testing). At idle and under low load situations, both fans disable. We recorded no coil whine either, which is good to note.
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.
MSI have opted for a less aggressive profile and temperatures peak around 71c when under the synthetic duress of the FurMark stress test. When gaming the card holds the temperature steady at 65c.
The fans only spin between 800 and 900 rpm under this synthetic load!
Without a backplate we measured some very high temperatures on the rear of the PCB, close to 100c. MSI take note.
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 235 watts, very similar against the Nvidia GTX 970.
The MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is a very attractive looking graphics card that targets the mainstream enthusiast gaming audience. We have said it many times in the past, but we do believe that MSI make the best looking graphics cards on the market.
MSI have approached the design of the RX 470 with a focus on low noise performance, and they have suceeded. The RX 470 Gaming X 8G is actually one of the quietest graphics cards we have tested. The large slow spinning fans never exceed 600 rpm when gaming, and they hit around 840 rpm when stressed with the synthetic Furmark test.
Unfortunately for MSI this causes a few issues. Firstly, they cut corners (and costs) by excluding the installation of a backplate. Without a backplate fitted, our thermal imaging camera recorded hotspots close to 100c under load. The Sapphire RX 470 Nitro+ OC by comparison recorded 50.2C at the hottest point on the backplate – around 50c cooler!
We didn't include an overclocking page in this review because we couldn't simply get the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G overclocked at all without running into artifacting and instability problems. The ‘OC' software profile is the highest stable clock speed we could get, so we aren't sure if this is related to some kind of system glitch, or a more serious issue – as we only have one sample to test.
Right now my biggest issue with the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G, or in fact any 8GB RX 470 is the pricing. This card is £30 more expensive than the Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC 4GB, which retails for £199.99 inc vat on Overclockers UK HERE. Overclockers UK told us that they are selling out of the Sapphire cards as they get them in and are currently awaiting more stock. At £200 it is the best gaming card on the market right now.
If AMD had forced partners to simply release 4GB RX 470's and 8GB RX 480's then the market would make a lot more sense right now. As it stands we have RX 470's more expensive than faster RX 480's and what makes it worse is that incorporating 8GB of GDDR5 memory on a RX 470 is utterly pointless.
You can buy the MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G from Overclockers UK for £229.99 inc vat HERE.
Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.
Pros:
- looks fantastic.
- dual fan cooler works well.
- no coil whine.
- quiet.
Cons:
- no backplate.
- 8GB of memory is pointless on a RX 470.
- PCB runs close to 100c under load.
- £30 more expensive than some 4GB RX480 models available today.
Kitguru says: The MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G is a great looking graphics card, that delivers solid performance. Unfortunately at £30 more than 4GB RX480 cards available on the market it is very badly priced. There is no need for 8GB of GDDR5 memory on a lower level RX470 either, because the GPU is long out of horsepower before the extra texture memory would be required.
I want to see an RX 480 XFire and MultiGPU review… Even an RX470 XFire review would be great… Zen should make it go fast…
<<tw. ★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★::::::!ir266m:….,….
I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head, rx470 4gb, and rx480 8gb as the only choices would have made the whole thing better and clearer for everyone. Even their own sales!
8gb pointless on a 470
wow thats just so wrong
several games already take more than 4gb.
what’s pointless is 4gb on a 480
this is not about games, rx470 have weak muscles to carry out 8gb
“this is not about games”? What do you mean with that?
You essentially always pay for GPU power. A 8GB 470 might have too much VRAM, which is useless as worstcase, yet a 4GB 480 will have unspent GPU power when you have to reduce the textures cuz of VRAM. Increasing texture quality is only limited by VRAM and has no effect on the GPU-limited framerate.
A surplus on VRAM is always better than a surplus of GPU power.
Does anybody knows if this card really support 5 independent screens at once?
Thanx in advance
RX470 is actually have same design like RX480. I’ve the Sapphire Nitro RX470 8GB OC with default clock @1260 MHz that reach 5.1 TeraFlops which is same like the stock reference RX480.