Can it catch the GTX 1050!
At the time of writing this article graphics card prices are sky high (it's summer 2017), with demand from Crypto miners, gamers and retailers trying to make a quick buck. It's not a good time to be looking for a new graphics card...... and If your like me and just want to buy a card to play games, not willing to pay these inflated prices! what can you do?....maybe... possibly a used RX460 could be the answer to tie you over?
Originally I was a owner an R9 280X which was awesome as a second hand buy! But with all the hype about AMD releaseing a new graphics card, I thought it was time to sell it and upgrade to the newer RX580. Unfortunately for me, the week after selling my R9 280X graphics card prices went crazy :(. Thinking it would be short lived I waited... then waited some more and prices just got worse. Not sure what to do and not willing to pay £100+ pounds more I was stuck with a PC and no graphics card......
3 - 4 weeks went buy and I finally gave in, putting the Gigabyte RX580 8GB on back order with Amazon, they were selling them close to there RRP but with no guarantee of a delivery date. So I started to look for something cheap to tie me over as I couldn't use my PC. Eventually settling on a used (but like new) Gigabyte WindForce 2GB OC from Amazon for £75, thinking the price hike had not affected the lower ends cards, I could later resell the card when finished.
Once it arrived I fairly impressed, it was cheap to touch but looked smart with a compact a dual fan design. The card also featured a HDMI port, DVI port, Display port and does not require additional power connectors, so Installation was a breeze.
Rear view
Side View
So can it catch the GTX 1050... in Time Spy!
Looking to squeeze every bit of performance from the card I knew you could unlock more shader units (increasing it from 869 shaders to 1024). To do this you need to flash the BIOS , see the Techpowerup website for more information!
With the new BIOS and unlocked shader units my next step was to overclock the card. Through trial and error the maximum safe settings I managed to achieved are pictured below. My main goal was to reach 1300Mhz with this 2GB version. It seemed trying to overclock the cards memory made no difference so I just focused on the GPU,s core clock.
Comparing scores on 3D Mark Time Spy it looks good... especially as it now matches the GTX 1050, but costs less.
Below is a short video discussing my experience of the RX460 two gigabyte version!