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AMD Radeon RX 460 Mobile

AMD Radeon RX 460 Mobile in 2025: Is It Worth Paying Attention To?

Analysis of an outdated yet still relevant graphics card for some tasks

Introduction

Even in 2025, some laptops with discrete AMD Radeon RX 460 Mobile graphics are still in use—particularly in the second-hand market or in budget models. This graphics card, released in 2016, has long lost its relevance for modern gaming but remains an interesting example of the evolution of mobile GPUs. In this article, we will discuss its features, performance, and practical benefits in the context of the mid-2020s.

Architecture and Key Features

Polaris: A Modest Legacy of GCN

The RX 460 Mobile is built on the GCN 4.0 (Polaris) architecture, created using a 14nm process technology. In 2025, this seems archaic compared to the 5nm RDNA 4 and Ada Lovelace chips, but Polaris was an energy-efficient solution for its time.

Key Features:

- AMD FidelityFX: A suite of optimizations to enhance image sharpness (e.g., Contrast Adaptive Sharpening).

- FreeSync: Eliminates screen tearing on compatible monitors.

- No Hardware Ray Tracing: Ray tracing is implemented solely through software methods, resulting in catastrophic FPS drops.

Memory: A Weak Link in 2025

GDDR5 and Limited Bandwidth

- Memory Type: GDDR5 (not GDDR6 or HBM).

- Capacity: 2GB or 4GB depending on the variant.

- Bus: 128-bit.

- Bandwidth: 112 GB/s (for comparison: RTX 4050 Mobile — 192 GB/s).

Impact on Gaming:

4GB is barely sufficient for running modern titles at low settings. In games with high-resolution textures (e.g., Horizon Forbidden West), lag and texture streaming "on the fly" can occur.

Gaming Performance: The Realities of 2025

1080p – The Limits of Capability

- CS:GO / Dota 2: 60–80 FPS on medium settings.

- Fortnite: 30–45 FPS (Low, without Ray Tracing).

- Cyberpunk 2077: 20–25 FPS (Low, with FSR 1.0 in Performance mode).

- Starfield: Almost impossible to launch even on minimal settings.

Ray Tracing:

The technology is not supported at a hardware level. Software emulation (e.g., via DirectX 12 Ultimate) reduces FPS to 5–10 frames, which is unacceptable.

Professional Tasks: Only the Basics

Video Editing and 3D Modeling

- Video Editing: Can handle 1080p rendering in DaVinci Resolve when using simple effects.

- Blender: Rendering via OpenCL works but is slow (e.g., the BMW Benchmark scene takes 40–50 minutes to process).

- Scientific Calculations: Suitable for educational projects, but not for serious simulations.

CUDA vs OpenCL:

CUDA (NVIDIA) is not available, but OpenCL 2.0 is supported. However, performance is significantly lower than that of modern iGPUs based on Zen 4.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP and Cooling Recommendations

- TDP: 75W.

- Recommendations:

- The laptop should have at least one fan and copper heat pipes.

- Avoid slim chassis (<18mm) — throttling may occur.

- Regular dust cleaning is essential.

Temperatures:

Under normal conditions — 75–85°C under load. When overheating, it reduces frequency, leading to FPS drops.

Comparison with Competitors

Positioning Against Contemporaries

- NVIDIA GTX 1050 Mobile: 15–20% faster in games but also outdated.

- AMD Radeon RX 5500M: A newer RDNA architecture, supporting PCIe 4.0.

- Intel Arc A350M: Surpasses RX 460 Mobile by 2–3 times but requires updated drivers.

Prices in 2025:

Laptops with RX 460 Mobile are found only in the second-hand market for $150–$250. New devices with this GPU are not being released.

Practical Advice

How to Use RX 460 Mobile in 2025?

- Power Supply: A standard one (65–90W) is sufficient, but check the connector's integrity.

- Compatibility:

- Windows 11: Drivers are available, but updates ceased in 2023.

- Linux: Open-source AMDGPU drivers work reliably.

- Optimization:

- Use FSR 1.0 in games to increase FPS.

- Close background applications to save memory.

Pros and Cons

Strengths and Weaknesses

Pros:

- Low power consumption.

- Quiet operation for office tasks.

- Support for FreeSync.

Cons:

- Weak performance in modern games.

- Only 4GB of memory.

- No hardware Ray Tracing and FSR 3.0.

Conclusion: Who Is the RX 460 Mobile Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for those who:

1. Are looking for a budget laptop for document work, video viewing, and older games (up to 2018).

2. Need a backup device for basic tasks.

3. Are experimenting with Linux, where open-source drivers provide stability.

However, for gaming in 2025, professional editing, or 3D design, the RX 460 Mobile is categorically not recommended. Its time has passed, but it can still be useful in niche scenarios.

If you find a laptop with this GPU for $200 or less—assess your needs. It may work for studying and less demanding tasks, but for future upgrades, consider devices based on RDNA 3 or the RTX 40 series.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

August 2016

Model Name

Radeon RX 460 Mobile

Generation

Mobility Radeon

Base Clock

1000MHz

Boost Clock

1180MHz

Bus Interface

MXM-B (3.0)

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

4GB

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

1250MHz

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.

80.00 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.

18.88 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.

66.08 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.

2.115 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.

132.2 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.

2.157 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.

896

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

55W

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.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.157 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile 3 GB

2.259 +4.7%

Quadro K5000

2.212 +2.5%

Radeon RX 460 Mobile

2.157

Quadro 4100

2.099 -2.7%

GeForce GTX 660

2.021 -6.3%