Make way for the new Esports card

AMD is going all out with their goal to enthrall the budget conscious gamer. Last week it was the RX 470, the ideal card for gamers looking for a Rs 20,000 card to maximise their gaming experience at 1080p and this week it is the RX 460.

This card is being marketed by AMD for the sole purpose of being an eSports card. A card that will give the highest level of performance for gamers who spend the majority of their day playing games like Counter Strike Global Offensive and DoTA 2.

With 16 compute units and up to 2.2 teraflops of computing power, you should not be expecting this card to perform very well in demanding AAA titles, but then again, that is not the intention behind it either. With a total system power draw of 127W the Sapphire Nitro RX 460 4 GB edition can run directly off the motherboard without any power supply connection. It does have a six-pin power connector for those looking to overclock this card which is possible thanks to the twin fan cooler, which kept the card at an acceptable 680C at full load. Now let’s address the main reason we gamers invest in GPUS, i.e. the benchmarks and performance.

As stated earlier, the RX 460 is primarily an Esports card and it had no trouble running either CSGO or Overwatch at max settings at 1080p. The card registered an average frame rate of 179 and 53 frames per second respectively on both the games.

However, most gamers don’t buy a card just to play these games, and therefore the RX 460 was also benched on The Division where the RX 460 managed to put up a decent 32 frames per second, which for a card at this price range is commendable. It even managed 21 frames per second in Rise of The Tomb Raider with all settings maxed out at 1080p. You will be easily able to hit playable frame rates of around 35 by lowering the anti-aliasing and textures down to medium.

At the end of the day the RX 460 is an entry level graphics card, and for that, what you get is quite awesome. The card beats out the old favourite, the GTX 750ti and even manages to trounce the GTX 950 in certain situations. The only issue right now is with the pricing. AMD has priced the 4GB variant of the RX 460’s reference card at '13,990, putting it square with certain variants of the GTX 960, a card that it has no hopes of beating in benchmarks.

If the prices of the RX 460 were a little lower, as they are in the United States, then picking this card up for a budget build would be a no-brainer.