AMD has hit the mainstream pretty hard this year with the Polaris-based Radeon RX 400 series, but now the Radeon RX 460 represents even better value for money with a BIOS unlock that unleashes 12.5% performance boost.
Over at the overclocking.guide, author der8auer has unlocked a Radeon RX 460 graphics card from its original 896 stream processors, to 1024 stream processors. The TMUs also get a boost, jumping from 56 to 64 TMUs - providing around 10-12% more performance, a great upgrade considering its free.
ASUS Radeon RX 460 Strix and the SAPPHIRE RX 460 Nitro have both been tested with the BIOS upgrade, and they worked - offering increased performance.
Unlocking Your Radeon RX 460
Caution: This is all at your own risk.
There are some BIOS firmware downloads you'll need, depending on the card you have:
Sapphire RX 460 Nitro 4G Unlocked BIOS
ASUS RX 460 STRIX O4G Unlocked BIOS
- First backup the original BIOS file in case you want to flash the card back at a certain point (run "backup BIOS.bat"). You can also save the BIOS with the latest version of TechPowerUp's GPU-Z.
- Afterwards run "flash unlocked BIOS.bat" to flash the BIOS. It will take about 15 seconds and should look like in the picture below.
- Afterwards restart your system and enjoy about 10% free performance.