NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Gets Official: 4x DX11 Performance Of Rivals
By Chris Davies/July 12, 2010 1:56 am EST
NVIDIA has outed its much-rumored GeForce GTX 460, a mid-range Fermi-based graphics card promising four times the performance of rivals, real-time PhysX and 3D support with a price tag of roughly $199. The company has focussed their efforts on DirectX 11 tessellation, with a quoted up to 4x improvement in performance over cards from other manufacturers.
Two cards are being announced, the GeForce GTX 460 768MB – expected to arrive from ASL, ASUS, Colorful, ECS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, Jetway, KFA2, Leadtek, MSI, Palit, Point of View, PNY, Sparkle and Zotac – together with the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which will go on sale by July 26th 2010. Both have 336 CUDA cores and 56 texture units; the GTX 460 768MB has a 192-bit memory interface, while the GTX 460 1GB has a 256-bit memory interface.
The graphics clock runs at 675MHz while the processor clock runs at 1,350MHz; there’s also a 1,800 memory clock, NVIDIA SLI support, and 3D Vision/3D Vision Surround support. Standard ports include two Dual Link DVI and a mini HDMI (with an internal audio input for the latter, together with HDCP compliance), while maximum display resolution is 2,560 x 1,600. They’re both dual-slot cards with a PCI-e 2.0 x16 interface.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB should be available from today, with an MRSP of $199; the GeForce GTX 460 1GB will be roughly $229 when it arrives later this month.
Press Release:
DX11 Done Right! NVIDIA Delivers Monster Tessellation Performance to the $199 Sweet Spot for Gamers
New GeForce GTX 460 Delivers up to 4x Performance Over Competing Processors, Real-Time PhysX, and Eye-Popping 3D
‘Capcom has worked closely with NVIDIA on a number of PC titles and GeForce GPUs have always helped us to deliver the very best experience to users. The GeForce GTX 460 is a great card and its blazing performance helps our titles to shine.’ — Capcom / Jun Takeuchi / General Manager of R&D Strategic Planning Department
‘With the GeForce GTX 460, NVIDIA is really upping the ante with an amazingly fast DirectX 11 GPU available at a great, mainstream-friendly price.
Its new hardware tessellation support will enable games to reach an entirely new caliber of graphics.’ — Epic Games / Tim Sweeney / Chairman, CEO and Technical Director
‘The Civilization V team is really excited about the high-end DirectX 11 performance at a mainstream price point that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 delivers. The 460’s support for DX11 features such as tessellation and compute shaders allow Civilization V to run faster while looking better than ever.’ — Firaxis Games / Dan Baker / Graphics Lead on Civilization V
‘We’ve got a great working relationship with the NVIDIA engineers. It has enabled us to add amazing new visual effects like native 3D, 3D Vision Surround, and PhysX/APEX support in Mafia II. With the new GeForce GTX 460, Empire Bay comes to life, immersing players like never before!’ –2K Games / Denby Grace / Senior Producer of Mafia II
‘NVIDIA platforms continue to be the Gold Standard at Id Software for quality, performance, and support.’ — Id Software / John Carmack / Technical Director
‘Great performance at a great price — what’s not to love? With full support for PhysX and 3D Vision, the GeForce GTX 460 is a great GPU to use for UDK development and UE3-based games.
‘ — Epic Games / Mark Rein / Vice President
‘Kings and Castles will look spectacular on the GeForce GTX 460. Imagine how full-scale battles with hundreds of soldiers, dragons, and flying zeppelin battleships will look in fantastic 3D!’ — Gas Powered Games / Chris Taylor / Founder & CEO
The new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 GPU delivers awesome DX11 performance and support for PhysX and 3D Vision to the $200 sweet spot gamers love.
SANTA CLARA, CA — (Marketwire) — 07/11/2010 — NVIDIA today announced the latest addition to its Fermi-class of graphics processing units (GPUs), the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460 — which delivers a great DX11 gaming experience and is priced right at the market’s $199 sweet spot.
Built from the ground up for DirectX 11 tessellation, GeForce GTX 460 GPUs deliver monster tessellation performance with up to 4x tessellation performance(i) over competing GPUs. The GTX 460 brings the ultimate next-generation DX11 gaming experience to a new price segment, enabling more gamers than ever to experience incredibly detailed characters, terrain and game environments with blazing fast performance and awesome visuals.
With full support for NVIDIA 3D Vision™ technology, the GeForce GTX 460 provides the graphics horsepower and video bandwidth needed to experience games and high definition Blu-ray movies in eye-popping stereoscopic 3D.
Here’s what leading game developers have to say about the GeForce GTX 460:
«With the GeForce GTX 460, NVIDIA is really upping the ante with an amazingly fast DirectX 11 GPU available at a great, mainstream-friendly price. Its new hardware tessellation support will enable games to reach an entirely new caliber of graphics.»
– Epic Games / Tim Sweeney / Chairman, CEO and Technical Director
«NVIDIA platforms continue to be the Gold Standard at Id Software for quality, performance, and support.»
– Id Software / John Carmack / Technical Director
«We’ve got a great working relationship with the NVIDIA engineers. It has enabled us to add amazing new visual effects like native 3D, 3D Vision Surround, and PhysX/APEX support in Mafia II.
With the new GeForce GTX 460, Empire Bay comes to life, immersing players like never before!»
–2K Games / Denby Grace / Senior Producer of Mafia II
«The Civilization V team is really excited about the high-end DirectX 11 performance at a mainstream price point that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 delivers. The 460’s support for DX11 features such as tessellation and compute shaders allow Civilization V to run faster while looking better than ever.»
– Firaxis Games / Dan Baker / Graphics Lead on Civilization V
«Great performance at a great price — what’s not to love? With full support for PhysX and 3D Vision, the GeForce GTX 460 is a great GPU to use for UDK development and UE3-based games.»
– Epic Games / Mark Rein / Vice President
«Capcom has worked closely with NVIDIA on a number of PC titles and GeForce GPUs have always helped us to deliver the very best experience to users. The GeForce GTX 460 is a great card and its blazing performance helps our titles to shine.
«
– Capcom / Jun Takeuchi / General Manager of R&D Strategic Planning Department
«Kings and Castles will look spectacular on the GeForce GTX 460. Imagine how full-scale battles with hundreds of soldiers, dragons, and flying zeppelin battleships will look in fantastic 3D!»
– Gas Powered Games / Chris Taylor / Founder & CEO
With 336 NVIDIA CUDA™ cores and 56 texture units, the GeForce GTX 460 comes in two flavors:
GTX 460 768MB, with a 192-bit memory interface at an estimated U.S. price of $199
GTX 460 1GB, with a 256-bit memory interface at an estimated US price of $229
The GeForce GTX 460 768MB version is available starting today from the world’s leading add-in card partners, including ASL, ASUS, Colorful, ECS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, Jetway, KFA2, Leadtek, MSI, Palit, Point of View, PNY, Sparkle, Zotac and others. Wider availability of the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is expected by July 26, 2010. Consumers are encouraged to check their favorite retailer or e-tailer for availability.
Recommended
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB Graphics Card Review
Is Half a Fermi a Semi?
Nvidia’s claims that its Fermi architecture is modular certainly seem true – the new GTX 460 (codenamed GF104) has two GPCs to the four of the GF100-based GTX 480 and GTX 470. However, the GTX 460 isn’t exactly half a GTX 480 – Nvidia has enhanced the SMs of the original design so that the GTX 460 has 70 per cent of the stream processors that a GTX 480 has rather than 50 per cent. The frequencies of the GTX 460 are between those of the GTX 480 and the GTX 470 too, meaning that on paper the GTX 460 looks rather promising.
Nvidia says that it ‘could have cut the GeForce GTX 480 GPU in half [when designing the GTX 460], however, we wanted to tailor the chip to nail the gamers sweet spot segment.’ We hope that won’t be quite as painful as it sounds. Claiming the GTX 460 to ‘deliver the perfect blend of performance, price and power [consumption]’ does sound as if Nvidia has learnt from the mistakes of the past – the GTX 480 was hugely overpriced at launch, and the same could be said of the GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 when they launched.
The new GTX 460 is more oblong than its GTX 480 sibling (right) as it only has two GPCs, even if these contain more resources each. Click to enlarge
The reality of these claims is that each SM of the GTX 460 has 48 stream processors (which we still refuse to call CUDA cores as Nvidia would like) rather than the 32 stream processors per SM of the original GF100 design. This has necessitated an increase in the number of texture units per SM too, from the four of the original design to eight. The SMs of the GTX 460 are arranged into a group of four in one GPC and a group of three in the other.
Two Versions of the GTX 460
There are two versions of the GTX 460 to look out for, with the differentiator being the amount of memory on the card. However, there are more differences than merely whether the card has 768MB of memory or 1GB. As the difference is in the number of memory chips (rather than the density), there are fewer memory controller units enabled on the lesser 768MB version, fewer ROPs (24 rather than 32) and less Level 2 cache (384KB, not 512KB).
Essentially, the memory sub-system has been slightly cut back, either because of defects in the manufacturing process or just to hit a lower price (or both).
It’s only the memory subsystem that differs between the two GPUs though, with the specs elsewhere identical. Both cards therefore have 336 stream processors running at 1,350MHz, while the rest of the GPU is clocked at 675MHz. Whether a (standard) GTX 460 has 1GB of GDDR5 memory or just 768MB, it runs at 900MHz (3.6GHz effective) too. Standard GTX 460 768MB cards are due to cost £180, while a standard 1GB 1GB card will cost £200 – this puts the two cards up against ATI’s Radeon HD 5830, though we also tested the £140 HD 5770 and £230 HD 5850.
Possibly the most interesting point to raise from the specs below is that the GTX 460 looks to be faster than the GTX 465, despite the latter’s superior name. The 352 stream processors of the GTX 465 operate at 1,215MHz while the 336 stream processors of the GTX 460 run at 1,350, giving the GTX 465 a maximum ‘stream processor operations per second’ of 427,680 rather than 453,600.
We know this number only gives a rough estimation of relative performance, but we’ll be keen to see if Nvidia has dropped another naming clanger.
| Mid-range DirectX 11 Graphics Cards | |||||||
| ATI Radeon HD 5850 | ATI Radeon HD 5830 | ATI Radeon HD 5770 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 465 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB | Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 768MB | |
| Price | £240 | £165-£190 | £130 | £260 | £200 | Around £200 | Around £180 |
| Manufacturer | ATI (AMD) | ATI (AMD) | ATI (AMD) | Nvidia | Nvidia | Nvidia | Nvidia |
| GPU | |||||||
| Codename | Cypress Pro | Cypress LE | Juniper XT | GF100 | GF102 | GF104 | GF104 |
| GPU Frequency | 725MHz | 800MHz | 607MHz | 607MHz | 675MHz | 675MHz | |
| Stream Processors | 1,440 | 1,120 | 800 | 448 | 352 | 336 | 336 |
| Stream Processor Frequency | 725MHz | 800MHz | 850MHz | 1,215MHz | 1,215MHz | 1,350MHz | 1,350MHz |
| Texture Units | 72 | 56 | 40 | 56 | 44 | 56 | 56 |
| ROPs | 32 | 16 | 16 | 40 | 32 | 32 | 24 |
| Transistors | 2. 15bn |
2.15bn | 1.04bn | 3bn | 3bn | 1.95bn | 1.95bn |
| Manufacturering Process | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm |
| MEMORY | |||||||
| Memory | 1GB GDDR5 | 1GB GDDR5 | 1GB GDDR5 | 1,280MB GDDR5 | 1GB GDDR5 | 1GB GDDR5 | 768MB GDDR5 |
| Frequency | 1GHz (4GHZ effective) | 1GHz (4GHZ effective) | 1.2GHz (4.8GHz effective) | 837MHz (3.3GHz effective) | 800MHz (3.2GHz) | 900MHz (3.6GHz effective) | 900MHz (3.6GHz effective) |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 128-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit |
| Bandwidth | 128GB/sec | 128GB/sec | 77GB/sec | 134MB/sec | 102GB/sec | 115GB/sec | 86GB/sec |
| CARD | |||||||
| Power Connections | 2 x 6-pin PCI-E | 2 x 6-pin PCI-E | 1 x 6-pin PCI-E | 2 x 6-pin PCI-E | 2 x 6-pin PCI-E | 2 x 6-pin PCI-E | 2 x 6-pin PCI-E |
| Maximum Power Consumption | 151W | Varies | 108W | 215W | Varies | 160W | 150W |
| Recommended Power Supply* | 500W | 500W | 450W | 550W | 550W | 450W | 450W |
| Size | 9in long, dual slot | Varies, dual slot | 8. 25in long, dual slot |
9.5in long, dual slot | 9.5in long, dual slot | 8.25in long, dual slot | 8.25in long, dual slot |
| *Manufacturer recommendation only, this may not represent bit-tech‘s own recommendations | |||||||
1 — Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB Review2 — GeForce GTX 460 1GB Specifications3 — Zotac GeForce GTX 460 1GB4 — Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB OC5 — Palit GTX 460 1GB Sonic Platinum 6 — GeForce GTX 460 1GB Test Setup7 — GeForce GTX 460 1GB Dirt 2 (DX11) Performance8 — GeForce GTX 460 1GB STALKER: CoP (DX11) Performance9 — GeForce GTX 460 1GB Crysis (DX10) Performance10 — GeForce GTX 460 1GB Bad Company 2 (DX11) Performance11 — GeForce GTX 460 1GB Power Consumption and Thermals12 — GeForce GTX 460 1GB Performance and Conclusion
DirectX 11 in a new way | PC World
Testing new graphics cards based on two new nVidia GPUs and AMD Barts
GPU
In the summer of 2010, nVidia launched a series of mid-range video cards with DirectX 11 support on the market.
These were the GeForce GTX 460 and GTS 450, based on GF104 and GF106 graphics processors. Then they successfully competed with the AMD Radeon HD 5700 series devices. In the fall, AMD updated its lineup, introducing two very successful video cards based on the new Barts GPU. And now it’s nVidia’s turn to make a retaliatory move. In its press release on the release of new products, nVidia draws attention to the fact that, according to a survey of users of the gaming service Steam, 84% of gamers still have not acquired DirectX 11-enabled video cards. NVidia, given that the average life gaming PC is three years old, and the recent introduction of second-generation Intel Core processors, heralded 2011 as the year of DirectX 11, and the launch of two new graphics cards that she hopes will open up the world of DirectX 11 to a wide audience of gamers .
These products will be discussed in this article. The first video card, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, according to nVidia’s plan, should take the place of the once popular GeForce 8800GT, based on the legendary G92 processor, which later underwent a process change and several rebirths in the GeForce 9800GTX, 9800GTX + and GTS 250 video cards.
The second novelty is the GeForce GTX 550 video card Ti. According to the logic described above, it will replace the GeForce 8400GT. These boards will occupy price niches of about $250 and $150.
Since nVidia Fermi is a new architecture, the first generation of GPUs based on it has a lot of potential for optimization. So, at the end of 2010, the GeForce GTX 580 video card, an improved version of the GTX 480, appeared. Nvidia promised that the GeForce GTX 560 Ti would be 33% faster than its predecessor, and the GTX 550 Ti 28% faster. Moreover, both models will outperform previous generation devices by 20% in terms of performance/power consumption ratio.
The GeForce GTX 560 Ti (GF114) graphics processor slightly outperforms the GF104 in terms of the number of shader processors (384 vs. 336), as well as the number of raster units: their number has increased from 24 to 32. The nominal clock speeds for the raster domain have been raised from 675 to 822 MHz, and for shader — from 1345 to 1650 MHz.
Moreover, the declared power consumption of the board increased by only 10 watts. Nvidia also reports that the new GPU has good overclocking potential despite the higher clock speeds. The press release states that the GTX 560 Ti features a hardware GPU power monitoring system, first introduced in the GTX 580, to protect the processor from overload when running resource-intensive GPGPU applications. However, for the GTX 560 Ti, this functionality is optional and is implemented at the request of the board manufacturer.
>>insert photo from file gtx550_chip.tif
The processor of the video card GeForce GTX 550 Ti (GF116) does not differ from the GF106 in terms of the number of stream processors. The optimization carried out at the transistor level made it possible to raise the frequency of the raster domain from 783 to 900 MHz, and the shader domain from 1566 to 1800 MHz. The power consumption of the board has increased from 106 to 116 watts. Fundamental changes have affected the memory controller.
The memory bus width has been increased from 128 to 192 bits. This allows you to connect three GDDR5 chips to the controller instead of two. Previously, nVidia memory controllers supported the simultaneous use of memory chips of the same capacity. Therefore, with a bus at 1950 based on the GP Cayman. For this review, we selected several video cards to evaluate their performance in games.
Test Method
The configuration of our test stand has not changed since the last review of video cards. It includes an Intel Core i7 980X processor, Intel DX58SO motherboard, Apacer Golden Series 6GB DDR3-1333 memory kit (three modules of 2 GB each, frequency 1333 MHz, timings 9-9-9-24), hard drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1500 GB capacity, Scythe Kabuto CPU cooler and 650 W Corsair HX650W power supply. We have added the game Lost Planet 2, which uses DirectX 11, to the test set. We still do not refuse the synthetic FutureMark 3DMark Vantage test and use it simultaneously with the new 3DMark 11.
Games based on DirectX 10 are still relevant, in addition, using the old test makes it possible to compare performance of video cards of different generations.
Gigabyte GV-N560SO-1GI
The GV-N560SO-1GI video card belongs to the Super Overclock series. This means that this model is the fastest of all Gigabyte video cards based on the GF114 GPU. The operating frequency of the GPU raster domain has been raised to 1 GHz, and the shader domain to 2 GHz. The effective memory frequency is increased by 572 MHz above the nominal and is 4580 MHz.
Most likely, now this is generally the fastest version of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti sold in Russia. The processor is cooled by a cooler based on four copper heat pipes. The two fans are fairly quiet, but unfortunately most of the hot air from the video card is dissipated inside the case rather than expelled outside. The rear panel has two DVI outputs and one mini HDMI connector.
In performance tests, video cards based on the GeForce GTX 560 Ti are leading in our review, and the retail price of the GV-N560SO-1GI is now very attractive.
This video card will be an excellent choice for the gamer.
Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti AMP
Zotac’s video card has an interesting design. The cooling system shroud is made of metal mesh, similar to the one that covers the speakers in car speakers. For sure, in a case with a transparent wall, with good lighting, this board will look spectacular.
The cooling system itself, like that of the Gigabyte board, is based on a heatsink with copper heat pipes, but it is blown by not two, but one fan. The board also has a second, flat heatsink that removes heat from the memory chips. Interestingly, the memory chips on the Gigabyte motherboard are not equipped with heatsinks, although they operate at a higher frequency.
Although the Zotac video card is more expensive than the Gigabyte device, it will be an excellent choice for those who are interested not only in technical characteristics, but also in the appearance of the device.
In addition, the difference in the operating frequencies of the GPU and memory can certainly be eliminated manually, especially with a good case ventilation system.
Palit GeForce GTX 550 Ti Sonic
Palit traditionally specializes in video cards of the lowest price category, within a single GPU. At the same time, in the last couple of years, its products have been distinguished by a quality that is quite acceptable for its price, which has earned the love of consumers who want to get the maximum possible performance for the available amount of money.
At the time of this writing, GeForce GTX 550 Ti video cards have not yet been widely available in retail, so there is nothing to compare the retail price of the board in question. Palit video cards with the word Sonic in their names are overclocked. In this case, the frequencies of the GPU are raised by 11% above the nominal, and the memory — by 7%.
The processor is cooled by a simple aluminum radiator, the memory chips are blown by a fan, but do not have their own cooler.
The length of the board allows it to be installed in any ATX case. The rear panel has a full set of popular interfaces: DVI, D-Sub, HDMI.
Palit GeForce GTX 550 Ti Sonic is the cheapest video card in our review. However, in terms of price / performance ratio, it is inferior to AMD motherboards. Perhaps its acquisition will become relevant after the prices for the new product fall slightly.
ASUS EAH6850 DC/2DIS/1GD5/V2
The ASUS video card is made in its standard design, adopted for the latest generations of not too expensive video cards. It is noteworthy that the appearance of the cooling system shroud is almost identical for motherboards based on AMD and nVidia GPUs. Either ASUS is minimizing production costs in this way, or it is taking a deliberate step to ensure that the graphics adapter is primarily associated with the manufacturer of the board, and not the graphics processor.
The board’s cooling system completely dissipates hot air inside the case, which, as we have repeatedly noted in our reviews, is not always good.
The rear panel has two DVI sockets (one of them is devoid of analog output) and one HDMI and DisplayPort connector each.
HIS 6850 IceQ X Turbo 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E DP/2xDVI/HDMI
The HIS video card has a number of advantages over the ASUS solution. Firstly, its cooling system is built in such a way that some of the hot air still goes outside the case. At the same time, it uses a quiet fan with a blade diameter of 86 mm, and not a high-speed centrifugal one. In addition, the HIS video card has higher GPU and memory frequencies.
The HIS board is a couple of centimeters shorter than the ASUS product. However, this is offset by the fact that the location of the power connector on it allows you to insert the cable plug into the board from behind, and not from the side, which is less convenient. Well, the main advantage of the HIS board is the higher frequencies of the GPU and memory.
Sapphire FleX HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 and Sapphire Vapor-X HD 6870 1GB GDDR5
These two Sapphire devices are the same video card with two different cooling systems.
The frequencies of the GPU and memory correspond to the nominal value. The rear panel has an HDMI output, Dual-Link DVI and Single-Link DVI jacks, and a pair of mini DisplayPort jacks.
The cooling systems of these two video cards look very similar, but this is deceptive. The board, which has the word Vapor-X in its name, is equipped with a radiator, which, in addition to heat pipes, uses the so-called vapor chamber to remove heat. Sapphire has successfully used this heatsink design on more than one generation of video cards. On the Vapor-X board, the heatsink has a large contact pad and cools not only the GPU, but also the memory chips located next to it. This is the only significant difference between the two considered devices.
***
So, let’s summarize the review. In the low-cost segment, where nVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti and AMD Radeon HD 6850 competed, the latter showed superiority. The GTX 550 Ti is a new video card, it is quite possible that retail prices will change in the near future, but for now the Radeon HD 6850 is the preferred purchase.
Of the two video cards we reviewed based on this GPU, the HIS model turned out to be faster, for which it receives the Best Buy award from us.
As for the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, everything is not so simple here. The fact is that when we selected devices for this review, we were guided by the prices at which video cards were available at retail. AMD has lowered the price of the Cayman-based Radeon HD 6950 video card, making it a direct competitor to the GeForce GTX 560 Ti.
In the table with the test results, we have added data from the reference versions of the Radeon HD 6950 and 6970, taken from the previous review. As our research has shown, the GeForce 560 Ti is much closer in performance to the Cayman than to the Barts. In the near future we will publish more detailed comparative testing of real Radeon HD 69 models50 with the GeForce 560 Ti, which also includes their scalability in CrossFireX and SLI modes.
Of the devices presented in this review, it is worth recommending purchasing the Gigabyte GV-N560SO-1GI board.
In terms of performance, it surpasses not only its counterparts on the same GPU, but also the reference versions of the Radeon HD 6950. And the price for it is quite acceptable.
Performance test results in the game Lost Planet 2 (DirectX 11), fps
Performance test results by FutureMark 3DMark Vantage program in various modes, points
Test results with Unigine Heaven Benchmark (DirectX 11), frame/s/points
Performance test results by FutureMark 3DMark 11 in various modes, scores
Performance test results in the game Metro 2033 (DirectX 11), fps
Performance test results in Mafia 2 (DirectX 11), fps
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB Fermi Overview
(Center)
The GTX 460 is the latest addition to Nvidia’s line of DirectX 11 compatible graphics cards. Aimed right at the middle of the market, it should be a great buy for anyone looking for a decent amount for their dollar.
Let’s find out if this lives up to expectations.
Nvidia’s first set of DirectX 11 graphics cards didn’t quite help the world. They were all based on a new architecture called Fermi and used a new chip based on this design, the GF100, which looked very impressive on paper. Unfortunately, for Nvidia, this does not quite meet the requirements. Heat, power consumption, and above all manufacturing issues plagued the GTX 480 and GTX 470, and neither delivered performance that justified those trade-offs. What’s more, Nvidia charged them extortionate prices (£450) when they first came out — it really wasn’t a good episode for the company.
A few months later, he released the GTX 465, which used a heavily stripped down (i.e., bits off) version of the GF100, which was intended as a stop loss to enter the mid-range market. However, he also failed to deliver on all fronts.
Now Nvidia has finally released a card based on a completely new chip, originally designed to be smaller and less powerful, but which should power every other aspect of the graphics card; heat, energy consumption, noise and prices.
This card is a GTX 460 and the chip it is based on is called GF104.
In this review, we will not go into the detailed internals of the Fermi architecture (we refer you to our GTX 470 review for that), but we will give you a quick overview of the differences between the GF100 and GF104.
The GF100 contains 512 stream processors (SPs), or Cuda cores as Nvidia likes to call them, which are the main processors on the chip. They are divided into sets of 32 in what is called a streaming multiprocessor (SM). It also adds four texture units, some cache, thread schedulers, and a polymorph engine that handles geometric processes like tessellation.
Four of those SMs are then combined into a General Processor Cluster (GPC) which basically just adds a bitmap engine (a bit that converts 3D models to 2D pixels). Finally, four of these GPCs are added along with additional thread scheduling components, a host interface, memory controllers, ROPs (48 of them divided into six sections), and 512 KB of L2 cache.
The result is one huge and hot chip that contains a whopping 3.1 billion transistors. However, due to manufacturing issues, the GTX 480 has one of its SMs disabled, so you end up with 480 SP, 15 SMs, and 60 texture units.
For the GF104, all the basic building blocks are very similar, but their proportions have been changed. So you get 384 SP divided among eight SMs, which gives you 48 SP per SM. To deal with these extra SP, each SM also has twice the amount of texture units. Each SP also has a second send port added to process the stream more efficiently. Finishing off, the GF104 has 32 ROPs divided into four sections. As a result, despite the fact that at first glance it seems that the GF100 is only half a chip, the GF104 is significantly more, which is reflected in the number of transistors of 1.95 billion
So we come to the cards that will actually use the GF104 chip. Like the GTX 480, the new cards won’t actually use the full potential of the chips they’re based on.
Instead, one of the SMs was disabled. This is because the art of making these chips is good and even the slightest defect can render the chip useless. Thus, if Nvidia promised a full-featured chip, it would have trouble producing enough of them. By turning off the defective part of the chip, even more can be used. This isn’t an issue unique to Nvidia, but it obviously still suffers more from it than AMD/ATI since that company hasn’t had to resort to such measures.
There will also be two versions of the GTX 460, one with 1GB of RAM and one with 768MB. The latter also has a smaller memory subsystem with L2 cache reduced from 512KB to 384KB and ROPs from 32 to 24. We’ll look at this version of the card shortly.
So today we’re looking at the Zotac GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which uses a reference design and runs at stock clock speeds, unlike some cards on the market that come pre-overclocked. Nvidia did not provide a stock cooler for the GTX 460 and instead let partners choose their own settings.
Thus, there are many different options.
The card we’re looking at uses a radial fan that draws air from the front of the card through the heatsink and back of the card. Others use axial fans blowing directly onto the card. We generally prefer the Zotac approach as these coolers blow hot air straight out of your PC case. However, this particular design isn’t the quietest we’ve come across, idling at 48dB (measured at 30cm) and rising to 53dB under load.
Unlike the stock (i.e. Nvidia designed) cooler on the GTX 470, this runs at 40dB/50dB while competing ATI cards also run below 40dB in idle. The Zotac card isn’t loud enough to bother you if you’re just sitting and working with music, for example, but if you have a computer in your bedroom it might be enough to keep you awake at night.
The Zotac looks otherwise fine. It’s 218mm long, which is small enough to fit in most cases, and you get a huge amount of dual-DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort video outputs on offer — more than any other card we’ve seen from Nvidia.
The only thing we didn’t expect to see on a card that looks rather small and unassuming are two six-pin PCI-E power connectors. The official GTX 460 1GB TDP is 160W, so it’s just over the safe limit of using just one slot — it would be interesting to see how much room that leaves for overclocking. Another cool thing to note is the presence of only one SLI connector along the top edge, which means you can «only» run two of them together, not three.
Zotac also ships a copy of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, two PCi-E connectors with two Molex and six-pin connectors, and a DVI-VGA adapter with the board. Zotac also offers a competitive 5 year warranty on their cards. All in all, we think this is a pretty compelling package. All that’s left to do is see how it works.
We compared the GTX 460 1GB against the ATI Radeon HD 5850, ATI Radeon HD 5830 and GTX 470, which cost around the same £200 mark. We use the same testbed which consists of an Asus P6T motherboard equipped with an Intel Core i7 9 processor65, 6GB Kingston DDR3 RAM and 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT hard drive.
In addition to Crysis, we run every game at the highest level of detail and manually scroll through the frames per second of the recording using FRAP. For Crysis, we run a custom time demo and use the widely available Crysis testing tool. We also only run it on high detail settings, not very high.
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To analyze these results, go to the «Analysis and Verdict» page.
We record power consumption with a network power meter, so the results shown reflect the total power of the system. The idle figure shows the power consumption when the system is doing nothing but displaying the Windows desktop, while the underutilization figure is taken when running our temporary Crysis demo demo with settings 1920 x 1200 with 2xAA.
Noise readings are taken for the entire system (excluding the power supply and drives) enclosed in a soundproof box.
The decibel meter is then held 30 centimeters away from the card while all other components are passively cooled. Again, we measure when on the desktop and when Crysis is running.
To analyze these results, go to the «Analysis and Verdict» page.
We started testing with that constant graphics card tormentor, Crysis. Here the GTX 460 1GB delivers impressive performance, easily delivering playable frame rates at 1.920 x 1200 with 2xAA. It also comfortably beats its most direct competitor, the HD 5830, and gives the more expensive HD 5850 and GTX 470 an edge.
Moving on to a more modern title, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and the GTX 460 look even more impressive, opening up a comfortable edge over competing cards from ATI and maintaining playable frame rates again at 1,920 x 1200 with 4xAA. On push, you could even play at a 30-inch monitor resolution of 2560 x 1600.
This completely reverses the role when it comes to Just Cause 2. The name clearly favors ATI cards, and the GTX 460 1GB loses a lot, struggling to keep playable frames at 1680 x 1050.
Finishing Colin McCrae: DIRT 2, all tested cards could comfortably play at 1,920 x 1200 with 4xAA, and you could probably stretch to 2560 x 1600 again. Not much between cards either, but the GTX 460 consistently outperforms the competition ATI cards.
In terms of noise and power consumption, we already mentioned that this particular Zotac card isn’t the quietest, but it’s still within acceptable limits. It’s also good when it comes to power consumption, keeping up with competing ATI cards. In particular, it is clear that the changes made to the GF104 chip have paid off, as it consumes significantly less power than the GTX 470 with the GF100 processor.
All in all, the GTX 460 1GB is an impressive beast. On average across all our tests, it performed better than competing ATI cards in this price range, it’s not overly noisy, and it draws less power than anything else. Once you enable Nvidia-exclusive add-ons like PhysX and 3D gaming, you’ll have a clear winner in this sector.
