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AMD Radeon R9 M470

Name: AMD Radeon R9 M470
Brand: AMD

AMD Radeon R9 M470: Review of an Obsolete Mobile GPU in 2025

Relevance, Performance, and Practical Advice

Introduction

In 2025, the AMD Radeon R9 M470 stands as an example of a budget mobile GPU released in the mid-2010s. Despite its outdated architecture, it is still found in second-hand laptops and some budget models. Let’s explore who might benefit from this card today and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The R9 M470 is based on the 3rd generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) microarchitecture, which debuted in 2014. This solution is optimized for a balance between performance and energy efficiency, but it significantly lags behind modern AMD RDNA or NVIDIA Ampere GPUs.

Manufacturing Process: 28nm process technology. In comparison, modern GPUs in 2025 use 5nm and 6nm processes, providing significantly better energy efficiency.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX: Support for the open AMD technology package, including FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) version 1.0, but not FSR 3.0 with frame interpolation.

- Lack of Hardware Ray Tracing: No support for ray tracing due to the absence of the corresponding hardware blocks.

- FreeSync: Compatibility with adaptive synchronization to reduce screen tearing.

Memory: Type, Size, and Performance Impact

Memory Type: GDDR5 with a 128-bit bus.

Size: 4GB- the minimum standard for gaming even in 2025, but sufficient for performance in 1080p at low settings.

Bandwidth: 96 GB/s (6 Gbps × 128 bits / 8). For comparison, modern mobile GPUs with GDDR6 achieve 300-400 GB/s.

Impact on Gaming:

- 1080p: Acceptable performance in older titles (e.g., The Witcher 3 - 35-45 FPS on medium settings).

- 1440p and 4K: Not recommended due to memory limitations and low bandwidth.

Gaming Performance

Example FPS (1080p, medium settings):

- CS:GO - 90-110 FPS;

- Fortnite (without FSR) - 40-50 FPS;

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Low, FSR 1.0) - 25-30 FPS.

Role of FSR: AMD FSR 1.0 technology can increase FPS by 20-30%, but image quality decreases more noticeably compared to FSR 3.0.

Conclusion: The card is suitable for less demanding games and retro project emulators, but it is weak for modern AAA titles in 2025.

Professional Tasks

Video Editing: In Premiere Pro, rendering 1080p video is possible but with lags. Acceleration through OpenCL is limited.

3D Modeling: Blender and Maya work at a basic level - suitable for educational projects, but not for complex scenes.

Scientific Calculations: The lack of CUDA support (NVIDIA ecosystem) and modest OpenCL capabilities make the card ill-suited for such tasks.

Recommendation: Professionals should choose a GPU with hardware Ray Tracing support and larger memory (e.g., NVIDIA RTX 3050 Mobile).

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP: 75-90W. For a mobile card, this is a high figure - modern analogs with similar performance consume 40-50W.

Cooling: An effective ventilation system is required. Older laptops may experience overheating under prolonged load.

Advice:

- Regularly clean the coolers from dust.

- Use cooling pads.

- Avoid long gaming sessions in resource-heavy projects.

Comparison with Competitors

2015-2016 Analogues:

- NVIDIA GTX 960M: Comparable in performance but better in energy efficiency (TDP 65W).

- AMD Radeon RX 550: Newer but weaker in compute tasks.

Modern Budget Alternatives (2025):

- NVIDIA RTX 2050 Mobile ($300-400): Supports DLSS 3.0 and basic Ray Tracing.

- AMD Radeon RX 6500M ($250-350): RDNA 2, FSR 3.0, 4GB GDDR6.

Summary: The R9 M470 lags behind even budget newcomers of 2025, but it may be justified when purchasing a used laptop for $100-150.

Practical Tips

Power Supply: Laptops with the R9 M470 require a 120-150W adapter. For stable operation, avoid cheap alternatives.

Compatibility:

- Platforms: Only old systems with PCIe 3.0. Modern PCIe 5.0 is backward compatible but offers no speed improvement.

- Drivers: Official support from AMD has ended, but the community releases unofficial updates.

Driver Nuances:

- Use the latest version of Adrenalin 2021 Edition.

- Windows 11 may have compatibility issues - ensure to check compatibility.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low cost on the second-hand market.

- Support for FreeSync and basic FSR.

- Sufficient for office tasks and older games.

Cons:

- High power consumption.

- No support for modern technologies (Ray Tracing, FSR 3.0).

- Limited memory capacity.

Final Conclusion: Who is the R9 M470 Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Owners of old laptops looking to extend their lifespan.

2. Students needing a PC for study and less demanding games.

3. Retro gaming enthusiasts.

Why in 2025? If you are buying a used device for $100-150, the R9 M470 can still justify the investment. However, for new laptops, opt for modern GPUs - even budget models from 2025 offer better performance and features.

Conclusion

The AMD Radeon R9 M470 is an example of a “survivor” GPU that recalls the mid-2010s era. It is not suitable for modern tasks, but remains a niche solution for those who prioritize budget and simplicity.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

May 2016

Model Name

Radeon R9 M470

Generation

Gem System

Base Clock

900MHz

Boost Clock

1000MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

2,080 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

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 2.0

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

1375MHz

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.

88.00 GB/s

Display and Media

Outputs

Portable Device Dependent

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.

16.00 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.

48.00 GTexel/s

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.

96.00 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.

1.505 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.

768

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

Unknown

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.

1.2.170

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

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.

Shader Model

6.5

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.505 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

FirePro M6100

1.618 +7.5%

Radeon R9 M380

1.567 +4.1%