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AMD Radeon RX 470D

AMD Radeon RX 470D in 2025: Budget Warrior or Obsolete Solution?

An overview of the capabilities, performance, and practical value of the graphics card for modern users.

Introduction

Although the AMD Radeon RX 470D was released back in 2016 as a special version for the Chinese market, by 2025 it remains an intriguing artifact in the world of budget GPUs. Nearly a decade after its launch, this card is still found for sale as a new device at a price of $100–150, making it one of the most affordable options for entry-level PC builds. But how relevant is it in the age of ray tracing and 4K gaming? Let's delve into the details.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture: The Legacy of GCN

The RX 470D is built on the GCN 4.0 architecture (Polaris), created using GlobalFoundries' 14nm process. This allowed AMD to achieve a balance between energy efficiency and performance for its time. However, in 2025, Polaris appears outdated compared to RDNA 3 and Ada Lovelace.

Unique Features

- AMD FidelityFX: Support for the open set of FidelityFX tools (Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, Super Resolution) is partially available through drivers, enhancing image quality in games.

- Lack of Hardware Ray Tracing: The card does not support ray tracing, limiting its capabilities in modern projects.

- FreeSync: Compatibility with adaptive sync technology remains a plus for owners of monitors that support AMD FreeSync.

2. Memory: Modest Specifications

- Type and Size: 4GB GDDR5 with a 256-bit bus.

- Bandwidth: 224 GB/s — sufficient for games from the 2010s, but in 2025 it is inadequate even for 1080p in AAA titles.

- Impact on Performance: Insufficient memory (less than 6 GB) leads to a drop in FPS in modern games with high-detail textures, such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield.

3. Gaming Performance

1080p: Moderate Expectations

At medium settings, the RX 470D shows:

- CS2: 90–110 FPS;

- Fortnite (without Ray Tracing): 45–55 FPS;

- The Witcher 3: 40–50 FPS.

In less demanding titles like Valorant or Dota 2, the card achieves stable 100+ FPS.

1440p and 4K: Not Feasible

Even when reducing settings to the minimum, resolutions above 1080p become problematic. For example, Elden Ring at 1440p barely reaches 25–30 FPS.

Ray Tracing: Unavailable

The absence of specialized cores makes ray tracing impossible, even through software emulations.

4. Professional Tasks

- Video Editing: In DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, the card handles simple project rendering due to OpenCL support, but 4K timelines cause lag.

- 3D Modeling: In Blender, performance is limited — rendering a mid-level scene takes 3–4 times longer than on modern GPUs with hardware acceleration.

- Scientific Calculations: OpenCL support allows using the RX 470D for simple tasks, but lack of technologies like ROCm limits its application.

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 120 W — a modest figure even by 2025 standards.

- Cooling: Reference models are equipped with a single-slot cooler, which ramps up to 40–45 dB under load. A case with at least two fans is recommended for optimal airflow.

- Case Recommendations: It's best to avoid compact Mini-ITX solutions — inadequate cooling can lead to throttling.

6. Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB GDDR6): Priced similarly ($130–160), the GTX 1650 offers lower power consumption (75W) and better support for modern APIs but falls short in memory bandwidth.

- AMD Radeon RX 6400 (4GB GDDR6): The new budget card from 2022 (around $150) outperforms the RX 470D by 20–30% in games due to RDNA 2 architecture and PCIe 4.0 support.

- Intel Arc A380 (6GB GDDR6): Priced at $140–170, the A380 provides higher FPS in DX12 games and hardware ray tracing but requires a modern platform with Resizable BAR.

7. Practical Advice

- Power Supply: A 450W PSU with an 80+ Bronze certification is sufficient. Example: Corsair CX450.

- Compatibility: The card uses a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface — there are no compatibility issues even with older chipsets.

- Drivers: The latest Adrenalin 2025 versions maintain support for Polaris, but optimization for new games may be lacking.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($100–150);

- FreeSync support;

- Adequate performance for less demanding games and office tasks.

Cons:

- Only 4GB of video memory;

- No hardware ray tracing or DLSS/FSR 3 support;

- Noisy cooling system in reference models.

9. Conclusion: Who Should Get the RX 470D?

This graphics card is a choice for those who:

1. Are building a PC for basic tasks (office work, web surfing, video streaming);

2. Play older or less demanding games (indie projects, CS2, Dota 2);

3. Are on a budget of up to $150 and do not plan to upgrade in the next 1-2 years.

In 2025, the RX 470D is hard to call a worthwhile purchase, but if you are looking for a temporary solution or building a PC for parents, it may still serve its purpose. However, for comfortable gaming in modern AAA titles, it is better to add $50–100 and choose a newer model, such as the RX 6400 or Intel Arc A380.

Note: All prices are current as of April 2025 and pertain to new devices. When purchasing, pay attention to warranty and availability of official driver support.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

October 2016

Model Name

Radeon RX 470D

Generation

Arctic Islands

Base Clock

926MHz

Boost Clock

1206MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

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.

112

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.

256bit

Memory Clock

1650MHz

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.

211.2 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.

38.59 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.

135.1 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.

4.322 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.

270.1 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.

4.408 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.

1792

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

120W

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

1x 6-pin

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

300W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

4.408 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX TITAN

4.803 +9%

GeForce MX570 A

4.636 +5.2%

Radeon RX 470D

4.408

GeForce GTX 1060 8 GB GDDR5X

4.287 -2.7%

Tesla K80

4.195 -4.8%