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AMD Radeon RX 460 1024SP

AMD Radeon RX 460 1024SP: Review of an Outdated Budget Fighter

April 2025

In the world of graphics cards, dominated by models with ray tracing support and neural network technologies, the AMD Radeon RX 460 1024SP feels like a relic of the past. However, even in 2025, this card can still find its niche. Let’s examine who it’s suitable for and what its strengths are today.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture and 4th Gen GCN

The RX 460 1024SP is built on the Polaris architecture (GCN 4), released in 2016. The manufacturing process is 14nm, which is considered outdated by 2025 (modern GPUs use 5-7nm). The card features 1024 stream processors, which is 20% more than the base RX 460 (896SP).

Unique Features

- AMD FidelityFX: A toolkit for enhancing image quality (Adaptive Contrast Sharpening, CAS).

- FreeSync: Support for adaptive synchronization with monitors.

- Lack of RT and DLSS: Ray tracing and NVIDIA's DLSS equivalents are not available.

The card is aimed at basic tasks and less demanding games, but it is not suitable for future technologies.

2. Memory: Modest Capabilities

Type and Volume

- GDDR5: An outdated standard (GDDR6 and HBM3 dominate in 2025).

- 4 GB: The minimum amount for gaming even at low settings.

Bandwidth

A 128-bit bus provides 112 GB/s. In comparison, modern budget cards (such as the RX 6500) offer 144-192 GB/s. In games with high texture detail, this becomes a bottleneck.

3. Gaming Performance: Only 1080p at Minimum Settings

Examples of FPS (Low/Medium settings, 1080p):

- CS2: 90-110 FPS.

- Fortnite: 45-55 FPS (without activating Performance Mode).

- Cyberpunk 2077: 20-25 FPS (without ray tracing).

- Hogwarts Legacy: 18-22 FPS.

Higher Resolutions

- 1440p: Not recommended — FPS drops by 30-40%.

- 4K: Unusable.

Ray Tracing: Not supported in hardware. Even with FSR (down to 720p), gaming is impossible.

4. Professional Tasks: Limited Applicability

- Video Editing: Suitable for basic editing in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, but rendering complex projects will take hours.

- 3D Modeling: Only simple scenes in Blender or Maya. OpenCL is slower than CUDA (NVIDIA).

- Scientific Calculations: Low performance due to outdated architecture.

The card is a choice for students or enthusiasts with minimal demands.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP

- 75W: Powered through PCIe, no additional connector required.

Cooling

Passive or compact coolers. Even under load, the temperature rarely exceeds 70°C.

Case Recommendations

- Mini-PCs or compact cases (e.g., Fractal Design Core 500).

- 1-2 fans for airflow are sufficient.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Analogues from 2016-2017:

- NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti: 10-15% faster in DX11, but more expensive initially.

- AMD RX 560: A close analogue with slightly better performance.

Modern Budget Cards (2025):

- Intel Arc A380: Supports XeSS and ray tracing, with 6GB GDDR6 — starting at $150.

- AMD RX 6500: 4GB GDDR6, FSR 3 — starting at $130.

The RX 460 1024SP even falls behind new entry-level models, but if found for $50-70, it may be an option for upgrading old PCs.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

- A 300-400W unit is sufficient (e.g., be quiet! System Power 10).

Compatibility

- PCIe 3.0 x8. Compatible with most motherboards, including older ones (2010+).

Drivers

- Official support from AMD ended in 2023. The community issues unofficial patches, but stability is not guaranteed.

Building a PC

- It’s better to use it with processors at the level of Intel Core i5-4xxx or Ryzen 3 1200 to avoid bottlenecking.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low power consumption.

- Silent operation.

- Compact size.

- Affordable price on the secondary market.

Cons:

- Weak performance in modern games.

- No support for ray tracing and FSR 3.

- Only 4GB of memory.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the RX 460 1024SP Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Owners of Old PCs looking to revitalize their system for office tasks or indie games.

2. Enthusiasts of Compact Builds where size and silence matter.

3. Users on a Tight Budget willing to buy a card for $50-70 on the secondhand market.

In 2025, the RX 460 1024SP is not a gaming champion, but a humble workhorse for basic tasks. For modern projects, it's better to consider new budget models with FSR 3 support and larger memory capacity.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

January 2017

Model Name

Radeon RX 460 1024SP

Generation

Arctic Islands

Base Clock

1090MHz

Boost Clock

1200MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x8

Transistors

3,000 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1750MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

112.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

19.20 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

76.80 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

2.458 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

153.6 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

2.409 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

1024

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

75W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.409 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon HD 8870 OEM

2.509 +4.2%

T600 Max-Q

2.45 +1.7%

Radeon RX 460 1024SP

2.409

Radeon R9 M290X

2.35 -2.4%

P106 090

2.305 -4.3%