Noise, Power Consumption and Temperatures
Noise
The graphics card’s 0dB fan mode is superb and creates a silent desktop experience when engaging in rudimentary tasks such as web browsing. Under load, the noise output remains very low and doesn’t become an annoyance at any time. As you can see, it’s much quieter than the RX 470 despite utilising the same fans and similar heatsink design. Perhaps, this is down to the core’s lower power demands which make the fans rotate at a slower RPM speed.
Power Consumption
Evidently, the Sapphire Nitro RX 460 OC is a low-powered product and consumes around the same watts as the GTX 950 once paired with an X99-based system. Please remember, this is a custom cooled unit with a 6-pin power connector and lower-end models will use significantly less power under stress.
Temperatures
Here we can see GPU reaches an average temperature of 74C during benchmarking doesn’t offer the same thermal efficiency as the GTX 950. Unfortunately, the core runs hotter than a large number of AMD products such as the R9 380X and this probably stems from the factory overclocked 1250MHz boost.
Yeah, the problem really is that old stock of 950s bought by the stores pre-brexit is competitive on price right now!
There is a Powercolor 460 for sale on OCUK for £99 right now, which despite the 2GB memory does have a lot of value for money going for it, if you really really cannot stretch to buying a 470.
I feel that £130+ for a 4GB 460 is just asking too much – maybe £120 as a premium over £99.
The Vulkan and DX12 results here and on other reviews do show a lot of potential. Getting 60fps (or close enough) on 1080 Ultra in Doom is a massive achievement.
I predict a major driver release from amd with a major performance increase. Maybe not but I think so