Battlefield 4 is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. It is a sequel to 2011’s Battlefield 3 and was released on October 29, 2013 in North America. Battlefield 4’s single-player Campaign takes place in 2020, six years after the events of its predecessor. Tensions between Russia and the United States have been running at a record high. On top of this, China is also on the brink of war, as Admiral Chang, the main antagonist, plans to overthrow China’s current government; and, if successful, the Russians will have full support from the Chinese, bringing China into a war with the United States.
This game title uses the Frostbite 3 game engine and looks great. We tested Battlefield 4 with the Ultra graphics quality preset as most discrete desktop graphics cards can easily play with this IQ setting at 1080P and we still want to be able to push the higher-end cards down the road. We used FRAPS to benchmark with these settings on the Shanghai level. All tests were done with the DirectX 11 API.
Benchmark Results: At the popular 1080p gaming resolution, the XFX Radeon RX 460 4GB video card was able to average 39 FPS, which is about 5 FPS slower than the Sapphire Radeon R9 270 Dual-X OC from years ago. We were expecting to see a bit higher performance as you can pick up a used Radeon R9 270 graphics card off of eBay for $50-$80 all day long.
Benchmark Results: When scaling the resolution up to 2k (21601440), the XFX Radeon RX 460 4GB graphics card came in at 24.6 FPS and dropped down into the teens at the lows. This is not a card that is designed for beyond 1080P gaming on graphics intensive game titles like this.
Benchmark Results: This is not a 4K gaming graphics card, but since we take out power measurement using BF4 at 4K we might as well run FRAPS and show you what it got. Here we see the XFX Radeon RX 460 4GB graphics card averaged 12.3 FPS. Clearly not a 4K gaming card and thankfully it was never said to be. Since this isn’t a 2K or 4K gaming graphics card we will just be looking at 1080P performance in the remainder of the tests.
The Radeon RX 460 is AMD’s cheapest current-generation graphics card, with cards shipping for a spectacular sub-£90. It’s made for Full HD eSports games and low-end AAA gaming. But the focus here is with the games that need only modest amounts of processing power and a small helping of video memory.
The card on test, provided by AMD, is the 2GB XFX Double Dissipation Edition, which retails for around £104 at the time of review. Note that this probably isn’t the version we’d recommend; there are far more compact cards available for £90 that will provide very similar performance.
The RX 460 is also available in 4GB models, although this strikes me as something of a false economy given the sort of games the RX 460 is aimed at. It’s the 2GB model at the bottom end of the RX 460’s price range that makes the most sense.
AMD Radeon RX 460 – Specs and Design
The RX 460 runs on AMD’s Polaris architecture, which is also found on the more expensive RX 470 and RX 480 cards. Polaris competes against Nvidia’s Pascal architecture but is substantially less efficient, which can be seen by the power consumption differences across the range.
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Still, it’s AMD’s most efficient architecture at the time of writing, running on a 14nm (nanometre) architecture with a 1,220MHz boost clock and 896 stream processors.
You get a single DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b port and DVI-D port on this model, along with 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 7GHz.
This model uses two fairly large fans to keep cool, limiting the noise somewhat. It isn’t really a looker though, showing its budget origins by way of the glossy plastic and unsubtle red highlights.
AMD Radeon RX 460 – Performance Benchmarks
I benchmarked the RX 460 in our usual test rig that includes the following components.
- Motherboard: Asus Z170-Deluxe
- Processor: Intel Core i5-6600K (overclocked to 4.8GHz)
- RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2666MHz, 16GB DDR4
- Cooler: Corsair H60 liquid cooler
- PSU: Corsair CX750M
- SSD: Samsung 850 EVO
- OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
At this stage I should point out that the test rig is probably more highly specified than the sort of PC for which the RX 460 is made. The mid-range to high-end components here are rather at odds with the RX 460’s budget pricing, and this GPU would make far more sense in a cheaper and more compact system. The benchmark results below are a best-case scenario.
I ditched TrustedReviews‘ usual suite of benchmarks here and focused instead on the types of games for which the RX 460 is designed. I swapped out Tomb Raider and GTA V for Overwatch and CounterStrike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), although I kept both Hitman and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor to discover the capability of this card when playing AAA games at Medium settings.
These are the same benchmarks on which I ran the competing Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050.
CounterStrike: Global Offensive
CS:GO is the easiest benchmark of this set, offering up frame rates in excess of 200fps. I tested it at High presets in Full HD but without VSync for the snappiest, lag-free play you can achieve on a high-refresh-rate monitor.
The RX 460 scored an average frame rate of 216fps in the test, which is obviously more than playable and makes the most out of nearly every single high-refresh-rate monitor on the market.
Overwatch
Overwatch is part of the latest generation of eSports titles, with a mix of fast-paced gameplay and stylised but high-fidelity graphics. Again, I ran this at Full HD and High presets to see what the RX 460 is capable of.
At Overwatch’s default settings for the RX 460 – a mix of Medium and Low – the RX 460 managed 116fps. To keep things equal, I normalised the settings to match the GTX 1050 so both could be compared, like-for-like. Here, AMD’s GPU managed 87.2fps, which is once again very playable.
Hitman
Hitman is a AAA title that can prove challenging for graphics cards. Indeed, I had to override the game’s memory settings in order to turn everything up to Medium with 2x anti-aliasing. While it isn’t what the RX 460 was made for, it’s worth looking at in case you fancy a break from your RPGs and online FPS titles.
Hitman typically favours AMD cards, and since I ran the test in DirectX 12 mode, the RX 460 happily beat the rival GTX 1050 here with a score of 52.3fps.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Less challenging than Hitman, the Shadow of Mordor benchmark is a useful way to see how a GPU handles explosion and weather effects in a recent AAA title. I ran this test at Full HD on Medium presets.
In this final test the RX 460 put in a great result, managing 72.6fps. The GTX 1050 achieved a result that was 9% faster, but this is still a very playable result at these settings.
3DMark: Fire Strike Extreme
In an unexpected result, the GTX 1050 beat the RX 460 with a score (3,281) that was 28% better than the RX 460. While this is an artificial benchmark that doesn’t have a huge amount of real-world relevance, it’s interesting to note the difference between the two cards when the going gets really tough.
Power consumption
If the best thing about the RX 460 is its low price, the worst is its power consumption. With a 150W TDP (thermal design power), it’s about as hungry as an RX 470 and has a figure that’s double the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti. This really limits its usefulness as an upgrade from a much older GPU in a budget system, since it might need more power cables than your system has.
What’s more, this power consumption will affect the whole range. So RX 460s will universally be more power-thirsty than more powerful GTX 1050s. This, for me, is what gives the the GTX 1050 the edge.
Should I buy the RX 460?
When bought for £90, the RX 460 is actually pretty good value, coming in a full £20 cheaper than the lowest-priced GTX 1050s. However, the unit on test here represents part of the range that’s more expensive, and is priced almost equally to the GTX 1050.
So the answer to the “should I buy” question comes down to how much you’re willing to pay. If you’re willing to pay over £100, buy the GTX 1050 instead. If your budget can’t stretch beyond £90 (or you prefer AMD’s excellent Radeon software), the RX 460 is a good buy.
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend a 4GB model since this is beyond what most low-end titles will need – although if the price difference is marginal, then you might as well.