With the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo once again upon us, this week has been a flood of gaming hardware and software news. On the PC front, AMD is once again sponsoring PC Gamer’s PC Gaming Show, and while the company isn’t making quite as large of a presence this year – having just announced a bunch of tech at Computex – AMD is still attending E3 to tease a bit of hardware. Announced in a press release that’s going out at the same time as the PC Gaming Show starts, AMD is very briefly teasing the next two Polaris-based Radeon cards: the Radeon RX 470 and the Radeon RX 460.

AMD previously teased the Radeon RX 480 back at Computex, and with that card not shipping until the end of this month, the RX 470 and RX 460 are even more brief teases, essentially amounting to AMD confirming that they will exist.

As you can assume from the numbers, the RX 470 and RX 460 will slot in below the $199 RX 480. AMD’s press release specifically notes that the RX 470 is a “refined, power-efficient HD gaming” card. Whereas the RX 460 is a “a cool and efficient solution for the ultimate e-sports gaming experience.” These are no further details such as performance, specifications, or pricing, so this is a true teaser in every sense of the word.

Based on their admittedly short descriptions, it sounds like the RX 470 and RX 460 will slot in to very similar positions as the R7 370 and R7 360 respectively, as these are the same markets AMD pitched those cards at. This would make the RX 470 a budget 1080p card, while RX 460 is pitched specifically at MOBA players and the like, as those games have relatively low system requirements. Lower-end cards of this nature have also proven very popular in China, where MOBAs are especially popular and the pricing is better aligned with what most consumers can afford.

For what it’s worth, those cards launched at $149 and $109 respectively, so that may give us a ballpark idea of what to expect. Note that AMD only has two Polaris chips – the larger Polaris 10 and the smaller Polaris 11 – so it’s not clear how AMD may split these up. Historically, Radeon x60 cards have been based on chips that have been prevalent in smaller, mid-performance laptops.

On that note there’s one last passage from AMD’s press release I want to point out.  In reiterating their talking point about bringing “console-like” performance to thin and light laptops, AMD’s release mentions that Polaris offers “exceptionally low power and low-z height.” Like everything else, no further details are provided, but I don’t suspect this is the last we’ve heard of this point. Having seen a very early Polaris 11 last December it’s definitely a small chip, and it sounds like AMD focused not just on package size, but thickness as well. Z-height is not something I’ve previously paid attention to, so I’m not immediately sure how thick AMD’s last-generation chips were, or whether this has been much of a problem on a competitive basis.


AMD's Polaris Announcement Slide Deck - Laptops

AMD Full Press Release
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  • TheinsanegamerN - Friday, June 17, 2016 - link

    Dont forget the last minute 560SE as well. not 570 based, but came out when the 7000 series did.

    Fermi was weird. Good, but weird.
  • fanofanand - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    Someone isn't familiar with the 710, 720, 730 etc. apparently.
  • Archie2085 - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    @Ryan .. The Chip on Pic looks to be small and released as a pair.. Speculating is both these cards come from the same chip.. The smaller Polaris .. Leaving the Rx 480 being from the bigger chip.. Reading this with the statement "products from $99 to $299" and Rx 480 coming in at $199 or $229 sounds like Rx 480 is not a fully enabled chip??? and fully enabled chip comes in at 299??

    Can you probably get info if the there is a younger brother or a elder Brother for Rx 480..
  • Meteor2 - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    Yes there's definitely a $299 Polaris card coming, a 490 I guess.
  • Eden-K121D - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    2816 CU for 299 with 8GB GDDRX with ~ 8.5 Tflops of performance
  • tarqsharq - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    We're more likely to get a cut down Vega in that power slot instead of a maxed out Polaris.

    With a 232mm^2 surface area and doing the math from scaling on previous chips on area/CU ratio... 2560 is pushing it for the allotted space.
  • doggface - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    My 2 cents. If they have the relevant HW decode for HEVC and MAIN10, HDMI 2 and DP 1.3/4 these look like excellent HTPC cards.

    AMDs lower end lineup is horrible at the moment and these 400 series cards are going exactly where they are needed. Get rid of those four year old rebadges and get the lower end up to the state of the art. Matters more than how many SMs they have, I reckon.

    It isn't always about MAX FPS/Ultra settings.
  • bill44 - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    Which website is best for 'FULL' GPU card reviews? By 'FULL' I mean every aspect (inc. audio)
    (which no one talks about anymore) and alternative outputs (such as cards with 3x HDMI + 1x DP).

    Also, is there a website which allow you to compare old cards with new ones? I.e. something very old low end card with current high end ones to see how much better they are? How much faster RX480 vs GTX460? HTPC MadVR use.
  • fanofanand - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    That used to be Anandtech before it became Appletech. *cry*
  • MLSCrow - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    So AMD's best card performs between the R9-390X and the GTX980 and is only $199?! Putting two of them together for $398 outperforms NVidia's flagship GTX1080 for $599 or more realistically like $749-$999 as seen on the market today?! That's incredible!

    http://videocardz.com/61005/new-amd-radeon-rx-480-...

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