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Graphics Cards

Sapphire AMD RX 470 Crossfire Graphics Card Review

Testing & Methodology


Here is the test system we used for all graphics card reviews and game performance analysis:

Additional Hardware

  • “Killawatt” style electricity usage meter wall plug
  • Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter

Drivers

The latest drivers are always used at the time of testing, but please note reviews undergo a scheduling process. This means a new driver could be released on the day of publication. However, this is unavoidable and disclosing the driver versions used is the most transparent way of informing the reader about current performance levels.

Screenshot_12

Games 

Throughout the testing procedure, we always use demanding presets to stress graphics cards to their absolute limits. However, in the interest of fairness, any technology which favours either AMD or NVIDIA is disabled. More specifically, this refers to PhysX, Hairworks and more. Additionally, we also disable all forms of AA to gauge performance levels which aren’t impacted by complex AA. Theoretically, we could have employed FXAA because it only has a minor impact on the frame-rate, but many users strongly dislike the hazy image this causes. Apart from the details mentioned above, all settings remain at the maximum values. On another note, we previously used Grand Theft Auto V in the testing process and it’s a popular title. However, there’s been some strange anomalies in the minimum frame-rate which mean I’m not confident in the benchmark’s accuracy.

Since I’ve taken the helm as graphics card reviewer, I wanted to put fairness at the heart of each article and ensure there’s a good balance between DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games. This allows us to properly analyse each graphics card as focussing on sponsored titles from a particular vendor will always result in an inaccurate picture. Unfortunately, popular monitoring software like FRAPS cannot display the frame-rate in real time and poses a problem when observing performance numbers. Thankfully, it’s still possible to use FRAPS’s Min/Avg/Max function which we’ve found offers the most reliable monitoring compared to other methods. If you have any suggestions to aid the benchmarking process, please let us know so we can constantly improve the procedure.

Selecting strenuous presets especially at higher resolutions can cause hitching and other performance problems on graphics cards with lower amounts of video memory. For example, Rise of the Tomb Raider’s Very High textures really requires 6GB of RAM to maintain a smooth frame-rate. In theory, we could run the benchmarks at the High setting but this defeats the purpose of high-end graphics cards which are designed to cope with the absolute best graphics on the market. Furthermore, the notion of enthusiast cards sporting less than 6GB memory will become less of an issue in the future. Of course, whenever we’re tackling more affordable GPUs, the settings will be altered accordingly.

To reiterate, all settings are set to their maximum values apart from AA and vendor exclusive technologies. Sometimes, selecting the maximum preset doesn’t combine all the best settings, so we double check these and manually confirm the highest graphical preset has been enabled.  The only one important aspect to mention revolves around Exclusive FullScreen in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Judging by the thorough testing, the frame-rate is much better when using this particular mode.

Software

Synthetic Benchmarks

During our testing, we use a range of readily available synthetic benchmarking tools which are free to download from the respective websites. We do this so the readers can download and compared to our results. Download links are contained within the “Software” subheading.

Noise

Everyone has their own reasonable noise level when it comes to comes to components in a computer. Some can handle all fans at 100% load to keep temperatures down, some want a completely silent computer. To properly gauge the noise output of a graphics card, we position a Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter from two metres away and take an average reading.

Power Consumption

With electricity becoming increasingly expensive across most parts of the world the need for computer components to become power efficient has never been more relevant. Graphics cards are often the most power-hungry components of a desktop system so having an efficient graphics card is very important to keeping power bills under control. Power is often correlated to heat and so lower power consumption means a graphics card is likely to run slightly cooler and put out less heat into your system meaning your other components will run cooler with improved longevity. AMD and NVIDIA have both made power consumption an integral part of the way graphics cards dynamically overclock so the need for graphics card vendors to use efficient VRM and PCB designs is becoming important to maximise performance. We take power readings after 5 minutes of two different load scenarios: desktop idle and Unigine Heaven load.

Temperatures

The cooling solution which graphics card vendors choose to implement is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with when choosing a graphics cards. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are extremely important. Lower temperatures are always better and with AMD and NVIDIA opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account it is important that graphics card vendors use high-performance cooling solutions in order to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching dangerous temperatures are now in the past but the importance of lower temperatures still remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity and lower fan speeds .We take temperature readings after 5 minutes of two different load scenarios: desktop idle and Unigine Heaven load. We always record actual temperatures and make any adjustments for changes in the thermal testing environment.

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14 Comments

  1. Well we might see better multigpu support now that Microsoft is trying to push it by giving free examples and code on Github.
    Thanks for the review.

    1. You’re welcome! Yep, I hope so but not expecting any change for a while, considering doing a similar article with the RX 460 but could require some tweaks with the games.

      1. I don’t know how many will be interested for an RX 460 CF setup. Two RX 460 will have less stream processors and still cost more than one RX 470. Probably for that reason there are not going to be enough or any reviews out there, testing a CF setup with two RX 460. eteknix could end up as one of the few having such a review.

  2. FYI Ashes of the Singularity mGPU only works if Crossfire is disabled since it uses the cards independently rather than “synced”

    1. I go into detail why that’s the case to show the current state of Crossfire/SLI in the usual test bench including DX12 and Vulkan. Then I included Shadow of Mordor to show that there is cases when the scaling works pretty well. Surely, the issue is that many games don’t support multi-GPU and changing the testing to show ones which do seems to give an unfair reflection.

        1. I can only benchmark so many games within a certain time period and I once again state that the idea of changing the games doesn’t show how Crossfire works in our test bench. If people prefer to see the benchmarks for Crossfire only games even if they’re old and doesn’t show the experience people will have with modern games then that’s something to look into. Please don’t make demands, I’m only trying to produce honest content and reviews are a length process especially with NDAs.

      1. Also , where’s the full comparison vs other cards on shadow of mordor? Can’t help but get the feeling that the review is done in such a way as to trash and downplay the idea of crossfire in favor of subsequently recommending a higher specced, higher price Nvidia gpu…..

  3. Someone pointed this out and the comment was removed. This is from the oxide developers specifically:

    “For best performance, disable Crossfire/SLI directly in the AMD or Nvidia Control Panels”

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