GTX 460 2GB: worth the wait?

[sikcle]

So most of the manufacturers of the GeForce gtx 460 fermi cards have 768MB and 1GB versions released.

Now several of them are prepping non-reference 2GB versions.

Are these worth the wait, performance boast and price increase?


Anyone care to guess as to how much more these things should cost and relative performance inc.?

 

[jerreece]

2GB is likely not going to have any REAL benefit on a GTX 460. To consume 2GB at this point, you'd have to be using a 2560x____ monitor resolution anyhow, and the GTX 460 won't perform at those resolutions.

Waste of money in my opinion. Even 2GB on a GTX 470 or ATI 5850 would seem fairly pointless today. In the future perhaps, but with current game titles there's no need for 2GB in my experience.

 

[killerchickens]

If you plan on sli and game at 1920X1080 or higher it would be worth buying.

 

[jerreece]

save your money, or better yet send it to me....that way you would get the same performance and I would be happier :lol:

LOL +1

Sort of the 2 + 2 = 4... just like 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4. No matter how you do the math, it's the same results. I was gaming with a guy on Bad Company 2 last night and chatting over Teamspeak. He's got a Quad SLI GTX 480 setup. But why? He can't really harness that kind of power anyhow. LOL

 

[Mousemonkey]

I would rather have a 460 with all it's cores enabled but maybe that's just me.

 

[jerreece]

I would rather have a 460 with all it's cores enabled but maybe that's just me.

You mean a GTX460 that's 'hacked' or 'flashed' to act like a 470/480?

- Oh Way, the Quad SLI GTX 480 guy is running a Core 2 Quad Extreme -

 

[killerchickens]

save your money, or better yet send it to me....that way you would get the same performance and I would be happier :lol:

Oh I must have been stupid when I bought my 2gb 4850 x2 instead of the 1gb version 1.5 years ago its not like newer games started using more memory or anything crazy like that no that would never happen. :lol:

 

[Mousemonkey]

You mean a GTX460 that's 'hacked' or 'flashed' to act like a 470/480?

- Oh Way, the Quad SLI GTX 480 guy is running a Core 2 Quad Extreme -

No, your thinking of the 465, I'm talking about only 336 of the 384 cores being available on this version/edition of the GF104.

 

[killerchickens]

...the 4850 x2 2GB runs at 1GB per GPU....ATI already had 4850 1GB cards out since they where able to utilize the ram...how does that prove the GTX 460 is fast enough to utilize 2GB of RAM?

As I said in my first comment you would have to buy another for sli eventually. A single 4850 cant use 1gb of ram you need 2 in crossfire.

 

[killerchickens]

.....care to explain that comment a little further in detail....especially the part of "single 4850 cant use 1gb of ram you need 2 in crossfire"....

If you have a single 4850 it doesn't have enough memory bandwidth to use 1gb of ram but if you put 2 4850s in crossfire it doubles the memory bandwidth so it can use the extra ram. It works the same with sli.

 

[Northwolfe]

The 2GB on GTX460 sounded like another marketing stunt by an avid nVidia partner working too hard to try and stand-out from the rest of the pack (read MSI, eVGA). But then I started reading news of nVidia partners having difficulties getting their hands on the GF104 processors - seems they can't build them fast enough to satisfy the demands. So why a 2GB version, and when will it be available? Is it even useful, or is an nVidia partner just trying to make a name for itself?

If the card does come out I guess some minor benefits would occur, for those using SLI, playing at very high resolutions, or with a 3 monitor layout. Then again, those are probably better off waiting for the more powerful 475/485/495(???) cards to be released.

In the end it all comes down to $$$$$$. If the 2GB card is only $15/$20 more expensive it will sell. If they have to enter into the realm of the 470 (~$280) it's useless - more, If they have to go near the ~$250 price the card will never be released...if it is, well I guess "there's one born every day"...

 

[bystander]

There are only two reasons for more than 1gb of video ram atm. If your resolution is extremely high (higher than 1920x1200) or even at 1920x1200 only if you wish to use SSAA and I'm not even sure Nvidia offers SSAA.

 

[killerchickens]

you totally edited your answer once you realized you had no clue what you where talking about :lol:

No actually I just really suck at typing/writing and try to fix all my mistakes any changes I make are added information or grammatical corrections. Thank god for spell check.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I would want to see the benchmarks that show 2GB of RAM having a significant benefit before I laid out any cash for the hardware.

 

[HavoCnMe]

So will this play Crysis or even GTA4 at Ultra High specs?

 

[brett1042002]

So will this play Crysis or even GTA4 at Ultra High specs?

No. You will also need a motherboard, CPU, RAM, PSU, HDD, keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

 

[rofl_my_waffle]

RAM isn't the thing getting in the way of ultra high settings. You want number crunching power, aka a better GPU core.

2GB is a lot, more than you can use for a buget monitor resolution and the GTX 460 core is low end. An intel core 2 with 12GB of RAM would not beat out an i7 980X with even 3GB of RAM. Storing more information than you can crunch isn't very helpful.

 

[Railgun1369]

If you have a single 4850 it doesn't have enough memory bandwidth to use 1gb of ram but if you put 2 4850s in crossfire it doubles the memory bandwidth so it can use the extra ram. It works the same with sli.

Bandwidth and quantity are mutually exclusive. Care to explain? The former being how much data can move. The latter obviously being basically a buffer. If you have a lot of bandwidth, but not a lot of storage, you're slow. If you have the opposite, it's a waste but only as fast as your bandwidth. This is why you see a performance bump, for example, with the 8800GTSs between 320 and 640MB variants. Same BW between them. The former wasn't enough memory to get the most out of it.

And since when does memory bandwidth double? The card's BW is static. You have two cards doing essentially half the work (with a lot going on in the background) but your BW stays the same.

 

[vfmjr]

I can see a 2 GB Palit at the same price as Overclocked 1 GB version. (£185)
I'm actually going to put my hands on a Gainward 1GB GLH version (£196). It seems to be the fastest GTX460 1GB version right now.

I haven't seen any review of the 2GB version yet but I see a few stores already selling them.

 

[bystander]

what??!! are you insane? i keep reading all these posts on this forum of how more video ram = better performance at higher resolutions!! how the GT240 1GB is better then the 9800GT 516mb, how the 9500GT 1GB will give 3x the performance of the 9500GT 256mb at 1920x1200 res. I was looking at a GTX460 768mb SLI build but with all this great advice im going with the CF 4350 1GB set up! I'm thinking 125FPS in crysis, if not more.....oh will that run with my athlon XP CPU and 300w PSU??

Tom's Hardware did an artical on ram less than a year ago. They tested 256mb to 1gb of video ram. What they found was that at lower resolutions, there was no benefit going from 512mb to 1gb of ram.

When you see the newer benchmarks that include these 2560x1600 resolutions, you'll also find that the 1GB cards start to choke, and the new 1.5GB nvidia cards perform very well. Especially when AA is on.

I've also found from personal experience, when at 1920x1200 and trying to use Supersampling AA beyond x4, my system just can't handle it. This is because supersampling increases the resolution then shrinks it in order to perform AA. It works great, but requires a lot of video ram.

 

[jyjjy]

If you have a single 4850 it doesn't have enough memory bandwidth to use 1gb of ram but if you put 2 4850s in crossfire it doubles the memory bandwidth so it can use the extra ram. It works the same with sli.

This is not the case. A single HD4850 does see some benefit from 1gb over 512mb when running at high resolutions. In crossfire each card uses it's own memory so the memory subsystems and associated bandwidth and quantity are redundant. While the dual processor cards are marketed as "2gb" and that is technically correct it is really exactly the same as running 1gb HD4850s in crossfire. Perhaps in crossfire that extra memory is more useful as that setup can handle higher resolutions and settings that can take better advantage of 1gb of memory but it has nothing to do with the bandwidth being doubled because it isn't.
Anyway, this is not relevant to a discussion of a 2gb single GPU card like a 2gb GTX 460 would be. I imagine in a single card the 2gb would be basically useless but if you were to put it in SLI with another and use a high resolution monitor(like 2560x1600) or a 3d Vision setup then you will actually see some benefit. Whether it is enough to justify the extra cost is another question entirely.

 

[bystander]

you still need a card capable of utilizing the RAM, slapping more RAM on a video card and calling it faster at higher resolutions means nothing. The Nvidia 8800GT 256mb will outperform the 8500GT 1GB at 2560x1600. doubling each card's RAM will only increase the performance of one of the cards, the one capable of handling the extra RAM.

I'm not sure about that. (I'm not sure either way.)

Essentially it works something like this: To display resolutions over 1280x1024, you need 512mb of video ram, or it starts having to access your CPU ram, and radically reduces performance. To display 1920x1200, you need closer to 1GB of video ram, or it has to steal from your system RAM also radically reducing performance.

Using AA without enough ram adds an increased hit on performance as well.

The question is, just how much of a hit does it take to use system ram compared to the performance increased by having a faster core. It's definately a balance. I'll try the find the artical on video ram needs.

 

[bystander]

soooo playing Sims 2, Civ III or Deus EX at 1280x1024, I require 512mb RAM............interesting theory there............

It obviously varies from game to game, and how much textures you need. There is a lot to it all, but most games today, you don't really need much more than 512mb at 1280x1024, but you'd start having issues at 1920x1200. Not all games are alike and want the same amount of memory.

 

[bystander]

I found the artical I was looking for. I didn't remember it 100% accurately, but as you can see, at 1920x1200 and up resolutions 512MB will hinder your ability to use AA. At 2560x1600 resolutions, 1GB can hamper your ability to use AA. (I didn't recall it being a problem with just AA on, but I think most of us like AA anyways).

"For the gamer, there are three main factors that have the most influence on how much graphics RAM you'll need: resolution, visual quality detail settings, and AA. For the most part, 512MB of RAM seems sufficient to push one of these factors to the limit, and in most cases, it can handle two of them at once. But if you plan to maximize all three--the highest resolutions, visual quality settings, and AA--then more video RAM than 512MB is a good idea."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-ram-4870,2428.html

 

[bystander]

its done with an ATI 4870, a card capable of utilizing more then 512mb. hence my point of its not the RAM its the entire video card. try the same test on an ATI 4670, you find very different results!!

I'm not sure you saw all the tests. Take a look at GTA and you'll see the 512MB version can't even play at high res and details. Regardless, he's looking at a 460 anyways.