When comparing AMD Radeon RX 460 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, the Slant community recommends AMD Radeon RX 460 for most people. In the question“What are the best GPUs for gaming?” AMD Radeon RX 460 is ranked 7th while NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose AMD Radeon RX 460 is:
The RX 460 offers a very decent performance in recent video games with a 1080p resolution, although the card may struggle with maximum settings. Anno 2205 manages to squeeze an average [framerate of 45 fps ](https://nl.hardware.info/reviews/6898/5/amd-radeon-rx-460-review-topper-voor-htpc-maar-ook-voor-gaming-benchmarks-anno-2205) out of the RX 460 in 1080p and medium graphical settings. Similar results can be seen for Far Cry Primal at [49 fps](https://nl.hardware.info/reviews/6898/9/amd-radeon-rx-460-review-topper-voor-htpc-maar-ook-voor-gaming-benchmarks-far-cry-primal) and [47 frames per second](https://nl.hardware.info/reviews/6898/15/amd-radeon-rx-460-review-topper-voor-htpc-maar-ook-voor-gaming-benchmarks-the-witcher-3) for The Witcher 3. In Grand Theft Auto V, the RX 460 manages to achieve an average framerate of [100 fps](https://nl.hardware.info/reviews/6898/10/amd-radeon-rx-460-review-topper-voor-htpc-maar-ook-voor-gaming-benchmarks-gta-v). In short, the AMD Radeon RX 460 is perfectly capable of playing games at a 1080p resolution, albeit not on high or ultra settings.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Good entry-level card for 1080p gaming
The RX 460 offers a very decent performance in recent video games with a 1080p resolution, although the card may struggle with maximum settings. Anno 2205 manages to squeeze an average framerate of 45 fps out of the RX 460 in 1080p and medium graphical settings. Similar results can be seen for Far Cry Primal at 49 fps and 47 frames per second for The Witcher 3. In Grand Theft Auto V, the RX 460 manages to achieve an average framerate of 100 fps.
In short, the AMD Radeon RX 460 is perfectly capable of playing games at a 1080p resolution, albeit not on high or ultra settings.
Pro Offers great value
The 2 GB version of the RX 460 retails for a bit over $100, which is an extremely competitive price tag in the entry-level segment. Performance-wise, the RX 460 is a bit faster than a 750 Ti but costs about $30 less.
Pro Asynchronous shaders improve performance in recent games
The RX 470 offers concurrent/parallel CPU to GPU communication in DirectX 12, Mantle and Vulkan with asynchronous shaders for the stream processors. Asynchronous shaders allow the developers of games to maximize the potential of AMD's new Polaris architecture and this technology is used to optimize DX12, Mantle and Vulkan performance in recently released compatible games. In short, developers can now use multiple task queues and split up GPU power across multiple tasks at the same time.
Pro Cheapest card that supports H.265 decoding and HDMI 2.0
The RX 460 is currently the cheapest graphics card on the market with support for H.265/HEVC decoding (and thus Ultra HD resolutions with a high 10-bit color spectrum) and a HDMI 2.0 port. Next to gaming, this makes the RX 460 very suitable for playing Ultra HD video content.
Pro Excellent overclocking potential
Overclocking allows you to increase the clock speeds of your GPU for increased performance. The GTX 960 chip overclocks very well and overclock results of over 15% aren't uncommon. In this case, both the GPU base clock and memory have been overlocked 18%, which also results in a 18.3% better performance in Battlefield 3 (73.9 FPS vs 87.4 FPS).
Pro Ideal for 1080p gaming
The GTX 960 holds up well in gaming benchmarks with a 1080p resolution and all games are perfectly playable. Some of the more recent titles may require you to to use medium settings, but overall 1080p performance is great. For example, Metro Last Light runs at an average of 56.1 frames per second with maximum details. Average FPS in Alien Isolation is 89.5 FPS in 1080p, and it also performs well in 1440p with an average 56.7 frames per second. Similar results can be seen in Bioshock Infinite with 90 average FPS in 1080p and 54.1 FPS in 1440p. In Battlefield 4, a result of 48.8 FPS is reached in 1080p with 4x AA enabled.
Pro Low power consumption
The GeForce GTX 960 requires a single 6-pin PCIe power connector and is decently energy efficient. In non-gaming situations, maximum consumption for an entire system is measured at about 9 watts while the maximum power usage during full load is 140 watts. For comparison, the GTX 760 consumes 167 watts during full load - 21% more.
Cons
Con Disappointing Vulkan performance
Vulkan is a graphical API that allows developers to better communicate with the GPU, which generally results in performance improvements compared to the more standard DirectX 12 or OpenGL API's. Some recent games offer support for Vulkan, such as Doom, Dota 2 and Ashes of the Singularity.
The RX 460 is considered to be a low-end graphics card and doesn't perform noticeably better in Vulkan. In Doom with Ultra Settings and 1080p resolution, the RX 460 is able to achieve an average framerate of 33 FPS, with a minimum of 19 and a maximum of 76. When using Vulkan in the exact same situation, the RX 460 has an average framerate of 35 fps which is an improvement that not noticeable in-game, and a lower minimum of 10.5 fps and a higher maximum of 174 frames per second. This very small difference is quite surprising, as the stronger RX 470 and RX 480 siblings of the RX 460 do perform significantly better under Vulkan.
Con 4 GB version adds little value
The AMD RX 460 is available in both a 2 GB and 4 GB version, but the latter version adds little value to this graphics card. Despite doubling the available video memory, performance differences in games at a 1080p resolution are very minimal. Compared to the 2 GB version, RX 460 cards with 4 gigabytes of memory retail for about $40 more and have a slightly higher power consumption due to the extra memory chips as well.
Con Disappointing performance-per-watt ratio
The RX 460 uses AMD's new Polaris 11 architecture and while this new generation of chips is more energy-efficient than previous-generation GPU's, the overall performance-per-watt ratio disappoints. The TDP (thermal design point and maximum power consumption) of the RX 460 is measured at 75 watts. In terms of gaming performance, the RX 460 offers similar results to the previous-generation R7 370 chip but unfortunately, power consumption is roughly the same.
Con Is outperformed by the RX 470
Although NVIDIA has announced the succesor of the GTX 960 in the form of the more powerful GTX 1060, the price point of the older 960 remains over a hundred dollars lower. This puts the GTX 960 in direct competition with AMD's new RX 470 graphics card which is available for a slightly higher price but offers consistently better performance.
Con Previous generation chip
The GTX 960 chip has been around for a while, and both NVIDIA and AMD are introducing new mid-range graphics cards in the remainder of 2016. It's only a matter of time before a new graphics card debuts with increased performance and the same price tag, such as the RX 480 by AMD.