Sapphire Nitro RX 460 OC Graphics Card Review

Testing & Methodology

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

Hardware

• Motherboard – Gigabyte X99-Gaming G1 WiFi LGA 2011-3 Motherboard
• Processor – Intel Core i7 5820K at Stock 3.3GHz
• RAM – 16GB (4 X 4GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz
• CPU Cooler – Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme
• Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 11 1200W
• Main Storage Drive – Crucial M550 512GB
• Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench
• Displays – AOC U2868PQU 4K
• Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit

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.

Games 

When reviewing affordable graphics cards which struggle at the highest presets, the visual settings are reduced accordingly to provide a clearer indication of performance. Then, products within this category are benchmarked against each other at 1920×1080 since anything higher yields very poor frame rates. In every case apart from Ashes of the Singularity, the visual details are configured to high which appears to be strenuous enough while making 60 frames-per-second an achievable target on certain models.

Please note, Ashes of the Singularity is deployed with the Standard preset and any other key details are disclosed on each chart’s header. While I could have added higher-end options like the GTX 970 all the way up to the GTX 1080, it didn’t seem appropriate given the price point of lower-end cards. Also, all games are benchmarked with FXAA enabled unless the specified preset overrides this.

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 me 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 I’ve found offers the most reliable monitoring compared to other methods. If you have any suggestions to aid the benchmarking process, please let me know so I can constantly improve the procedure.

Software

• Ashes of the Singularity (DirectX 12)
• Doom (Vulkan)
• Far Cry Primal (DirectX 11)
• Just Cause 3 (DirectX 11)
• Hitman (DirectX 12)
• Rise of the Tomb Raider (DirectX 12)
• Shadow of Mordor (DirectX 11)
• 3DMark
• Unigine Valley
• Unigine Heaven
• CPU-ID HWMonitor
• TechPowerUp GPU-Z
• Luxmark

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.