AMD Radeon RX 460 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Comparison

# NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 vs AMD Radeon RX 460

The GeForce RTX 2070 and Radeon RX 460 occupy entirely different strata of the GPU market, separated by two years, two process nodes, and a gulf in compute resources. The data shows the RTX 2070 utterly dominates the RX 460 in every shared benchmark, but the more interesting story is how each card finds its niche: the RTX 2070 as a high-end Turing part with ray tracing and tensor cores, the RX 460 as a low-power GCN 4.0 part that still holds a respectable 62nd percentile ranking among all GPUs. Their average benchmark scores are surprisingly close—18,789 for the RTX 2070 versus 18,373 for the RX 460—but this is misleading, as the two share only a handful of tests, and the head-to-head results reveal a massive performance gap.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 2070 wins decisively in every single benchmark where both cards appear. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 2070 scores 79,966 against the RX 460’s 17,855, a 347.9% advantage. In Geekbench Vulkan, the RTX 2070 hits 82,521 versus 20,198, a 308.6% lead. These are not close contests; they are generational and architectural mismatches.

The RX 460’s only unique benchmark is Geekbench Metal, where it scores 17,065. Since the RTX 2070 has no Metal result in the data, this is the sole arena where the RX 460 can claim a win by default—on Apple’s Metal API, the RX 460 at least has a measurable presence. The RTX 2070, meanwhile, has a full suite of benchmarks: 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 at 1,569, Passmark G3D at 16,094, Passmark GPU Compute at 6,411, and older DirectX tests ranging from 60 (DX12) to 211 (DX9). The RX 460 lacks all of these scores, so the RTX 2070 wins on benchmark coverage alone.

The RTX 2070 also holds a higher percentile ranking at 63 versus the RX 460’s 62. This is a narrow margin, but it reflects the RTX 2070’s position among all GPUs, not just this pairing. The RX 460’s near-identical percentile is remarkable given its far lower raw specifications, suggesting that the average benchmark score is heavily influenced by the specific tests included in each card’s profile.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The RTX 2070 averages 18,789, while the RX 460 averages 18,373. The RTX 2070 leads by roughly 2.3%, but this is based on different benchmark sets—the RTX 2070 has 10 results, while the RX 460 has only 3.

Q: How large is the performance gap in the shared Geekbench tests?

A: In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 2070 is 347.9% ahead; in Geekbench Vulkan, it is 308.6% ahead. The RTX 2070 scores 79,966 and 82,521, respectively, versus 17,855 and 20,198 for the RX 460.

Q: Does the RX 460 win any benchmark against the RTX 2070?

A: No. The head-to-head data shows 2 wins for the RTX 2070 and 0 for the RX 460. The RX 460’s only unique result is Geekbench Metal at 17,065, which the RTX 2070 does not have.

Q: Are these cards in the same performance tier?

A: Not based on the data. Despite similar average scores and percentiles (63 vs 62), the shared benchmarks show a 3x to 4.5x gap. The average score similarity is an artifact of different test suites, not comparable performance.

Q: What is the RTX 2070’s closest rival according to the data?

A: The NVIDIA Tesla K80 is closest with an average score of 18,866, a delta of -0.4% relative to the RTX 2070. The AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT is 0.6% behind, and the AMD Radeon RX 560X is 0.9% behind.

Q: What is the RX 460’s closest rival?

A: The Intel Arc A770M is nearly identical at 18,383, a delta of -0.1%. The AMD FirePro D500 is 0.9% behind, and the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 is 1% ahead.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous: the RTX 2070 is the superior GPU for any task that appears in both cards’ benchmark profiles. If you need a card for DirectX 12, Vulkan, or OpenCL workloads, the RTX 2070 is faster by multiples—not percentages. The RTX 2070’s 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1,569 and Passmark G3D score of 16,094 have no RX 460 counterpart, further cementing its dominance in modern compute and graphics tests.

The RX 460 is not without merit, but its value lies outside this comparison. Its 62nd percentile ranking and Geekbench Metal score of 17,065 suggest it remains relevant in specific ecosystems—likely Apple-based—where the RTX 2070 has no presence. For a user constrained to Metal, the RX 460 is at least a working option, whereas the RTX 2070 offers nothing in that API.

For anyone choosing between these two, the RTX 2070 is the clear pick for performance. The RX 460 wins only on power efficiency (75 W TDP vs 175 W) and the absence of a power connector, making it suitable for legacy systems with minimal power delivery. But if raw compute is the goal, the RTX 2070’s 7.465 TFLOPS FP32 versus the RX 460’s 2.150 TFLOPS tells the whole story.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ in nearly every specification. The RTX 2070 uses a TU106 chip on TSMC’s 12 nm process, while the RX 460 uses Baffin on GlobalFoundries’ 14 nm node. The RTX 2070 packs 10,800 million transistors on a 445 mm² die; the RX 460 has 3,000 million on 123 mm². Transistor density is nearly identical—24.3M/mm² versus 24.4M/mm²—but the scale is vastly different.

Clock speeds: the RTX 2070 bases at 1410 MHz and boosts to 1620 MHz; the RX 460 bases at 1090 MHz and boosts to 1200 MHz. Memory is 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth for the RTX 2070, versus 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus with 112.0 GB/s for the RX 460. The RTX 2070 has 2304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 64 ROPs; the RX 460 has 896 shading units, 56 TMUs, and 16 ROPs.

The RTX 2070 includes 36 ray tracing cores and 288 tensor cores; the RX 460 has neither. Pixel rate is 103.7 GPixel/s versus 19.20 GPixel/s, and texture rate is 233.3 GTexel/s versus 67.20 GTexel/s. FP16 performance differs by architecture: the RTX 2070 achieves 14.93 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio), while the RX 460 manages 2.150 TFLOPS (1:1). Power draw is 175 W versus 75 W, with the RTX 2070 requiring a single 8-pin connector and a 450 W PSU, while the RX 460 uses no connector and a 250 W PSU. The RTX 2070 also has a wider PCIe interface (x16 vs x8) and additional display outputs, including a USB Type-C port.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two shared benchmarks are Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan, and both are landslides. In OpenCL, the RTX 2070’s 79,966 score is 347.9% higher than the RX 460’s 17,855. This means the RTX 2070 delivers roughly four and a half times the OpenCL performance. In Vulkan, the RTX 2070 scores 82,521 against 20,198, a 308.6% gap—over four times the RX 460’s result.

These deltas are consistent with the hardware differences. The RTX 2070 has 2.57 times the shading units, 2.57 times the TMUs, 4 times the ROPs, and 4 times the memory bandwidth. Its FP32 throughput is 3.47 times higher. The benchmark results exceed even these ratios, suggesting architectural efficiency gains from Turing’s design beyond raw resource counts.

The RTX 2070’s nearest rivals in the data—Tesla K80, Radeon Pro 5700 XT, RX 560X, RTX 2000 Ada—all sit within 0.9% of its average score. The RX 460’s rivals—Arc A770M, FirePro D500, Radeon Pro 5700, RTX 3060 Mobile—are similarly clustered. This indicates that both cards sit in competitive neighborhoods, but those neighborhoods do not overlap.

Architecture Differences

The RTX 2070 is built on NVIDIA’s Turing architecture, a major departure from the Pascal generation. Turing introduces dedicated ray tracing cores (36 of them) and tensor cores (288), enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI-based features like DLSS. The RX 460 uses GCN 4.0, a refinement of AMD’s Graphics Core Next design, which has no dedicated RT or tensor hardware. This is the fundamental architectural divide: Turing is a forward-looking design with specialized units for emerging workloads, while GCN 4.0 is a traditional, compute-oriented architecture.

The process nodes differ: 12 nm TSMC for the RTX 2070 versus 14 nm GlobalFoundries for the RX 460. Despite the smaller node, the RTX 2070’s transistor density is marginally lower (24.3M/mm² vs 24.4M/mm²), because the chip is far larger and includes more complex logic. The RTX 2070 also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, while the RX 460 tops out at DirectX 12 (12_0) and Vulkan 1.3. Both support OpenGL 4.6.

Memory technology is another divider: GDDR6 at 14 Gbps effective for the RTX 2070 versus GDDR5 at 7 Gbps for the RX 460. The RTX 2070’s 256-bit bus doubles the RX 460’s 128-bit bus, and its 8 GB capacity quadruples the RX 460’s 2 GB. The RX 460’s FP16 throughput is identical to FP32 (1:1), while the RTX 2070 doubles FP16 (2:1), reflecting Turing’s focus on mixed-precision workloads.

The RTX 2070 is physically larger (229 mm long, 113 mm tall, 35 mm wide) versus the RX 460’s 170 mm length. The RTX 2070 also has a wider feature set in display outputs, including a USB Type-C port absent on the RX 460. These differences—from process to memory to specialized cores—explain why the RTX 2070 costs more in power and size, but also why it delivers anywhere from 3x to 4.5x the performance in shared tests. The RX 460 is a capable low-power card for its era, but the RTX 2070 is a different class of hardware entirely.