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AMD Radeon RX 470 Mobile

AMD Radeon RX 470 Mobile: Review and Analysis in 2025

Introduction

Although the AMD Radeon RX 470 Mobile is no longer new, it remains a popular choice for budget gaming laptops and workstations. In this article, we will explore what this graphics card is capable of in 2025, evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, and provide practical recommendations for users.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture: A Time-Tested Foundation

The RX 470 Mobile is built on the Polaris architecture (GCN 4.0 series), released by AMD in 2016. The card is manufactured using a 14nm process, which is considered outdated by modern standards but ensures stability and low production costs.

Unique Features

- AMD FidelityFX: A set of tools for image enhancement, including Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) and FSR 1.0 (FidelityFX Super Resolution). The latter allows for increased FPS through image upscaling, but is inferior to FSR 2.0+ in quality.

- FreeSync: Support for adaptive synchronization to eliminate screen tearing.

- Lack of Ray Tracing: Hardware RT support is absent—this is a feature of newer RDNA architectures.

2. Memory: A Balance Between Speed and Volume

Type and Volume

The graphics card comes equipped with 4GB of GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth reaches 224 GB/s, which is sufficient for gaming at medium settings in 1080p resolution.

Impact on Performance

- Memory Volume: 4GB can become a bottleneck in modern titles (e.g., "Cyberpunk 2077" or "Starfield"), where Ultra HD textures require 6-8GB.

- GDDR5 Speed: Lags behind GDDR6 (used by competitors), but for less demanding games, the difference is not critical.

3. Gaming Performance

Average FPS in Popular Games (1080p, Medium Settings)

- CS2: 120-140 FPS.

- Fortnite: 60-70 FPS (without enabling FSR).

- Apex Legends: 55-65 FPS.

- The Witcher 3: 45-50 FPS.

- Hogwarts Legacy: 30-35 FPS (requires FSR and low settings).

Support for Resolutions

- 1080p: The optimal choice for most games.

- 1440p: FPS drops by 30-40%, suitable only for older titles (e.g., "GTA V").

- 4K: Not recommended—video memory and computational power are insufficient.

Ray Tracing

There is no hardware RT support. Software emulation via drivers is possible but leads to a 2-3 times drop in FPS.

4. Professional Tasks

Video Editing and Rendering

- DaVinci Resolve: Rendering acceleration via OpenCL, but lags behind NVIDIA RTX in speed (about 20-30% slower).

- Blender: Support for Cycles through AMD ProRender, but NVIDIA's CUDA cores are more effective.

3D Modeling

- Autodesk Maya: Works stably, but complex scenes require optimization.

Scientific Computing

- OpenCL: Suitable for basic tasks (e.g., MATLAB), but for machine learning or neural networks, it's better to choose cards with ROCm support (Radeon Open Compute).

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP and Cooling Requirements

- TDP: 120W. This is high for a laptop—requiring a cooling system with 2-3 heat pipes and powerful fans.

- Temperatures: Under load, it can reach 80-85°C. Using cooling pads is recommended.

Case Selection Tips

- Laptops with RX 470 Mobile often have a bulky body (thickness from 25mm). Avoid ultrabooks as they won't provide adequate cooling.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Analogues in 2025 (New Devices)

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile: Priced $50-70 higher, but more energy-efficient (TDP 50W) and supports DLSS 1.0.

- AMD Radeon RX 5500M: More modern RDNA 1.0 architecture, 4GB GDDR6—15-20% faster in games.

- Intel Arc A370M: Comparable in price ($200-250), performs better with newer APIs (DX12 Ultimate), but has less stable drivers.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

- Minimum power supply wattage for laptops: 150W. For prolonged gaming sessions, choose models with a reserve (180W).

Compatibility

- Processors: It's better to pair with AMD Ryzen 5 5000/6000 to activate Smart Access Memory (a slight performance boost).

- Drivers: Use Adrenalin 2024 Edition—they are optimized for older GPUs.

8. Pros and Cons

Advantages

- Low price: New laptops with RX 470 Mobile cost $400-600.

- Support for FreeSync and FSR.

- Reliability: Proven architecture with minimal "growing pains."

Disadvantages

- Limited video memory.

- High power consumption.

- No hardware ray tracing.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the RX 470 Mobile Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for those seeking a budget solution for:

- Gaming at medium settings in 1080p.

- Office tasks and video editing (without real-time requirements).

- Users who do not plan to upgrade in the next 2-3 years.

However, if you need ultra settings, 4K, or AI features, consider more modern models like the AMD Radeon RX 7600M or NVIDIA RTX 4050 Mobile. But for their capabilities, you will have to pay $800+, making the RX 470 Mobile still the king of the budget segment.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

August 2016

Model Name

Radeon RX 470 Mobile

Generation

Mobility Radeon

Base Clock

926MHz

Boost Clock

1074MHz

Bus Interface

MXM-B (3.0)

Transistors

5,700 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.

128

Foundry

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

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.

256bit

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.

224.0 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.

34.37 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.

137.5 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.

4.399 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.

274.9 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.

4.311 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.

2048

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

85W

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

4.311 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon RX 5300

4.725 +9.6%

GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile

4.516 +4.8%

Radeon RX 470 Mobile

4.311

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GP104

4.285 -0.6%

Radeon HD 7990

4.178 -3.1%