The Radeon RX 460 was marketed by AMD as an ideal GPU for MOBA or online games like DOTA 2. Here at Back2Gaming, we like to do things differently. Instead of reviewing this GPU using games like DOTA 2, we would test it on games which are more demanding. No, we are not going to test it on the latest games at 1080p using maximum settings then conclude it’s a bad GPU for today’s games. Like what we did in our review of GTX 950, we will test RX 460 on the latest games at 1080p using tweaked image quality settings and aim for an average frame rate above 30 FPS.
We would like to thank AMD for lending us an MSI Radeon RX 460 2GB OC
How We Tested
The PC we used for testing is shown below.
CPU | Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.0 GHz |
Graphics Card |
ASUS Strix GTX 950 2GB OC MSI RX 460 2GB OC |
Motherboard | Gigabyte Z97-D3H |
Memory | G. Skill 4GBx4 DDR3 1,600 MHz |
Case | Antec 300 |
GPU Driver |
Crimson 16.9.1 |
Operating System | Windows 10 64-bit |
The game settings we used for testing is shown below.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided | Rise of the Tomb Raider | The Witcher 3 |
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 | Resolution: 1920 x 1080 | Resolution: 1920 x 1080 |
Field of View: 100 | Anti-aliasing: FXAA | Frame Rate: Unlimited |
MSAA: Off | Texture Quality: Medium | Nvidia HairWorks: Off |
Texture Quality: High |
Anisotropic Filter: 16x |
Number of Background Characters: Ultra |
Texture Filtering: 16x Anisotropic |
Shadow Quality: Medium |
Shadow Quality: Medium |
Shadow Quality: Medium | Sun Soft Shadows: On | Terrain Quality: Ultra |
Ambient Occlusion: On | Depth of Field: On | Water Quality: Ultra |
Contact Hardening Shadows: Off | Level of Detail: Very High |
Grass Density: Ultra |
Parallax Occlusion Mapping: High | Dynamic Foliage: Medium |
Texture Quality: Ultra |
Depth of Field: On | Ambient Occlusion: On | Foliage Visibility Range: High |
Level of Detail: Medium | Pure Hair: On | Detail Level: Ultra |
Volumetric Lighting: Off |
Specular Reflection Quality: High | Motion Blur: Off |
Screenspace Reflections: On | Vignette Blur: Off | Blur: Off |
Temporal Anti-Aliasing: On | Motion Blur: Off | Anti-aliasing: On |
Motion Blur: Off | Bloom: On | Bloom: On |
Sharpen: On | Tessellation: On | Sharpening: High |
Bloom: On | Screen Space Reflections: On | Ambient Occlusion: SSAO |
Cloth Physics: On | Lens Flares: On | Depth of Field: On |
Subsurface Scattering: On | Screen Effects: On | Chromatic Aberration: Off |
Chromatic Aberration: Off | Film Grain: Off | Vignetting: On |
Tessellation: On | Light Shafts: On |
Test Results
The Witcher 3 is one of the great-looking games released in 2015 and is suited for benchmarking today’s GPU’s. Of the 3 games we tested, this one is the most forgiving because we were able to set a lot of settings to Ultra and still be able to play the game. RX 460 is 14 % slower than GTX 950 in this game.
Despite being initially released as an exclusive game for XBox One, Rise of the Tomb Raider on the PC has impressive visuals. Even with the tweaked settings we used, the game still looks beautiful. RX 460 was again slower than GTX 950 but the gap has increased to 18%. In this game, the performance difference between the 2 GPU’s is noticeable even without a frame rate counter.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is another great-looking game which was just released last August 24, 2016. We did a performance review which you can read here. Like in Rise of the Tomb Raider, we had to turn down a lot of settings to make the game playable on the RX 460 and GTX 950. The most interesting part here is RX 460 has an almost identical performance compared with GTX 950.
Conclusion
As of September 17, 2016, the Radeon RX 460 2GB can be had for as low as PhP 5,600 ($ 117). In all of the games we tested, RX 460 delivered an acceptable performance at 1080p. We had to turn down a lot of settings to make the game playable but it is not that bad considering the price of the card. Also, the settings we used are still conservative. If you are willing to use lower settings or if you have a monitor with a native resolution of 1600 x 900 or lower, you can expect to have a much smoother gaming experience with the latest games. Another good thing about the Radeon RX 460 is it does not require a 6-pin PCI-E power cable. It’s good news for those using pre-built desktop PC’s like the Acer Aspire TC-601 or those with old PC’s equipped with a PSU that does not have a 6-pin PCI-E power cable.
The AMD Radeon RX 460 2GB offers a great value for the money and it makes the GeForce GTX 750 Ti obsolete.
4 Comments
lol
napansin ko sa test nyo puro NV titles … tlagang mababa mag perform ung 460 dahil sa gameworks/extensive tesselation/etc. which NV put on their titles to favor their cards …
Yung Deus Ex Mankind Divided was provided by AMD for us to test. Included sya sa lahat jan. Also we’re proud to say na disabled lahat ng proprietary graphic settings like HBAO+ and Hairworks, etc. dahil hindi ako fans ng optimized advantage.
Just like to note as mentioned sa article, hindi head-to-head comparison but relative analysis, clearly stated sa article it is the GTX 750 Ti na kalaban ng RX 460.
Hi Mr. Andrian,
Thank you for taking the time to check the article. However, I think you didn’t “read” it entirely. In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the RX 460 performed great compared to GTX 950 especially if you consider the price gap.
Also, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is not an NVIDIA-optimized title. Kindly check the links below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsFIRXVEjcs&feature=youtu.be&t=16
http://www.amd.com/en-us/markets/game/featured/deus-ex#
Regards,