AMD Radeon RX 460 vs AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT Comparison

AMD Radeon RX 460 and AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT represent two distant generations of AMD graphics hardware, and the benchmark data reflects a massive gulf in raw compute capability. The RX 7600 XT dominates the head-to-head comparison, winning both shared tests with decisive margins, while the RX 460’s only comparable advantage lies in its legacy status and lower system demands. The average benchmark scores, however, tell a more nuanced story: the RX 460 posts an average of 18,373 across its three OpenCL and Vulkan tests, while the RX 7600 XT averages 17,083 across a broader suite, though this figure is skewed by its inclusion of lower-scoring DirectX and 2D tests. This page breaks down the exact numbers, architectural differences, and practical use cases for each card.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two cards share only two direct benchmark comparisons, and in both cases the RX 7600 XT is the clear victor. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RX 7600 XT scores 92,426 against the RX 460’s 17,855, a delta of -80.7% from the perspective of the older card. That means the RX 7600 XT delivers roughly 4.2 times the raw compute throughput in OpenCL workloads—a staggering generational leap that aligns with its newer RDNA 3.0 architecture and significantly higher shading unit count.

The Vulkan result is similarly one-sided. The RX 7600 XT scores 48,366, while the RX 460 manages 20,198, representing a -58.2% delta. While the gap narrows compared to OpenCL (the RX 7600 XT is about 2.4 times faster here), the RX 460 still trails by more than half. This suggests Vulkan’s lower-level API helps the older GCN 4.0 design extract relatively more of its theoretical performance, but it is nowhere near enough to close the chasm.

Looking at the broader benchmark context, the RX 460’s Geekbench Vulkan score of 20,198 is its strongest result, slightly ahead of its OpenCL score of 17,855. The RX 7600 XT, by contrast, shows its OpenCL score (92,426) is nearly double its Vulkan score (48,366), indicating that its compute-heavy architecture excels in OpenCL’s general-purpose workloads but does not scale as dramatically in graphics-oriented Vulkan tasks. The RX 7600 XT also holds a Passmark G3D score of 17,132 and a GPU compute score of 8,987, while the RX 460 has no equivalent Passmark entries in the data.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The RX 460 has a higher average benchmark score at 18,373, compared to the RX 7600 XT’s 17,083. However, this is misleading because the RX 460’s average is computed from only three Geekbench tests, while the RX 7600 XT’s average includes ten scores across multiple suites, including lower-performing Passmark DirectX 9 and 2D tests.

Q: How does the RX 7600 XT perform in DirectX 12 compared to older APIs?

A: The RX 7600 XT scores 65 in Passmark DirectX 12, 167 in DirectX 11, 85 in DirectX 10, and 228 in DirectX 9. Its best legacy API result is DirectX 9, which suggests that while the card supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, its performance in that API is not its strongest relative showing.

Q: What is the percentile ranking of each card against all GPUs?

A: The RX 460 sits at the 62nd percentile, while the RX 7600 XT ranks at the 60th percentile. Despite the RX 7600 XT’s massive wins in the head-to-head tests, its broader benchmark suite pulls its percentile slightly below the RX 460’s.

Q: Are there any benchmarks where the RX 460 wins?

A: No. In the two head-to-head comparisons available (Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan), the RX 7600 XT wins both. The RX 460 records zero wins in the shared tests.

Q: What is the closest rival to the RX 460 in terms of average score?

A: The Intel Arc A770M has an average score of 18,383, just 0.1% higher than the RX 460’s 18,373. The AMD FirePro D500 (18,533) is 0.9% higher, while the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 (18,189) and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile (18,159) are 1% and 1.2% lower, respectively.

Q: Which rival is closest to the RX 7600 XT in average score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 averages 17,037, which is 0.3% higher than the RX 7600 XT’s 17,083. The AMD Radeon HD 7970M (17,019) is 0.4% lower, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (17,208) is 0.7% higher and the NVIDIA Tesla M4 (16,932) is 0.9% lower.

Where Each One Wins

The RX 7600 XT is the obvious choice for any modern compute or gaming workload that leverages OpenCL or Vulkan. Its OpenCL score of 92,426 is over five times the RX 460’s, making it suitable for general-purpose GPU computing, machine learning inference, and content creation tasks that offload to the GPU. In Vulkan-based games or applications, the RX 7600 XT’s 48,366 score provides roughly 2.4 times the performance of the RX 460, ensuring smoother frame rates and higher detail settings in modern titles.

The RX 460, despite losing both head-to-head tests, retains a niche for legacy systems or low-power builds. With a 75 W TDP and no power connectors, it draws power directly from the PCIe slot, making it compatible with older or budget motherboards that lack auxiliary power headers. Its 170 mm length (6.7 inches) is shorter than the RX 7600 XT’s 204 mm (8 inches), allowing it to fit in compact cases. The RX 460’s 62nd percentile ranking also indicates it competes reasonably well against a wide swath of older GPUs, though its 2 GB memory and 112.0 GB/s bandwidth severely limit modern high-resolution textures.

For users prioritizing raw performance in current software, the RX 7600 XT wins outright. For those maintaining an aging system with minimal power delivery, the RX 460 offers a drop-in upgrade path without requiring a new power supply or chassis modifications. The RX 7600 XT’s 16 GB memory is eight times larger, and its 288.0 GB/s bandwidth is 2.6 times higher, making it vastly more capable for 1440p or 4K textures and multi-tasking with large datasets.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ in nearly every measurable specification. The RX 460 uses 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, while the RX 7600 XT uses 16 GB of GDDR6, both on a 128-bit bus. Memory bandwidth jumps from 112.0 GB/s on the older card to 288.0 GB/s on the newer one, a 157% increase. Shading units scale from 896 to 2,048, texture mapping units from 56 to 128, and render output units from 16 to 64.

Clock speeds are substantially higher on the RX 7600 XT: base clock rises from 1090 MHz to 1980 MHz, boost clock from 1200 MHz to 2755 MHz, and the RX 7600 XT adds a game clock of 2470 MHz, which the RX 460 lacks. Memory clock increases from 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective) to 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective). Pixel rate jumps from 19.20 GPixel/s to 176.3 GPixel/s, texture rate from 67.20 GTexel/s to 352.6 GTexel/s, and FP32 performance from 2.150 TFLOPS to 22.57 TFLOPS.

Power requirements scale accordingly: the RX 460 has a 75 W TDP with no power connectors and a suggested 250 W PSU, while the RX 7600 XT has a 190 W TDP with a single 8-pin connector and a suggested 450 W PSU. The bus interface advances from PCIe 3.0 x8 to PCIe 4.0 x8. Display outputs differ, with the RX 460 offering 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0b, and 1x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the RX 7600 XT offers 1x HDMI 2.1a and 3x DisplayPort 2.1. The RX 7600 XT’s launch MSRP is 329 USD.

Architecture Differences

The RX 460 is built on the Baffin chip using GCN 4.0 architecture, fabricated on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. It contains 3,000 million transistors on a 123 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 24.4M per mm². It belongs to the Arctic Islands (RX 400) generation and supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3. It has no dedicated ray tracing cores.

The RX 7600 XT uses the Navi 33 chip with RDNA 3.0 architecture, fabricated on a 6 nm process at TSMC. It packs 13,300 million transistors on a 204 mm² die, giving a density of 65.2M per mm²—more than double the RX 460’s density. It belongs to the Navi III (RX 7000) generation with the codename "Hotpink Bonefish" and supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. It includes 32 ray tracing cores, a feature entirely absent from the RX 460.

The architectural shift from GCN 4.0 to RDNA 3.0 explains the performance differential. RDNA 3.0’s redesigned compute units deliver higher instructions per clock, and the addition of ray tracing hardware enables hardware-accelerated ray tracing effects. The process node shrink from 14 nm to 6 nm allows the RX 7600 XT to pack over four times the transistor count in less than double the die area, enabling both higher clock speeds and greater parallel throughput. The RX 460’s FP16 performance matches its FP32 at 2.150 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio), while the RX 7600 XT also achieves a 1:1 ratio at 22.57 TFLOPS, indicating both cards lack dedicated half-rate FP16 paths. The RX 7600 XT’s predecessor is Navi II, and its successor is Navi IV, while the RX 460’s predecessor is Pirate Islands and its successor is Polaris.