Nvidia GeForce GTX 460: The Fermi We Were Waiting For

[jonnyboyC]

gf104 is the core that's going to save nvidia this generation, finally competitive at a more mainstream price point, and on top of it's going head to head with the 5830 at stock speeds, overclocked, it will be a very applying item

 

[noob2222]

heh, this reminds me of the "broken and unfixable" article. GF100 was too big, too hot, and impossible to run at 100% (every 480 card has disabled shaders). Nvidia went back to the drawing board with this one, I wouldn't be suprised to see a dual version, but it still won't catch the 5970s. And it will probably will be just in time to compete with the 6xxx Ati cards.

 

[scrumworks]

Interesting. Let's see if AMD will drop prices. They can easily do it if they want, because they use considerably smaller die sizes than nvidia. And there is SI coming of course.

 

[shin0bi272]

So judging from this review you should get a 480 unless you are concerned with power, heat, or price. If you are concerned with price but want good performance and have a halfway decent power supply and ventilation then get a 470. That's what youre saying here right? I like the changes they made to the chips but by limiting them to 384 cores guarantees lower performance (meaning if they had done 512 cores at the same speeds as the 480 it would be the gtx485 or 490). I know they kept the performance down on purpose for heat, cost and power but its sort of disappointing to see chip improvements going to low end cards.

 

[squallypie]

yes! finally, the card i've been waiting for.. ( hope the 5770 go down in price!!! )

 

[mikewong]

It's a good thing I've been holding back my purchases for my new system. NVidia didn't disappoint us.

 

[masterjaw]

A decent card with good overclocking headroom. This should shake the mainstream GPU prices in favor of the consumers. Quite impressed with its performance. I'm actually expecting this to perform along with the 5770 area but to my surprise, it can sometimes even taunt the 5850 especially when having high AA settings.

Nice article Chris. Kudos!

 

[eddieroolz]

I think NV has a winner here. Performs well for its price, sips power and doesn't deafen the user while at it.

If I were looking for a new board I'd definitely get the 460 1GB.

 

[erraticfocus]

I see that this card as being aimed at a mid level audience, but for a mid range card those tests are done at high res, with a machine designed to spank benchmarks hard.

I guess it is to stress it while allowing it to be unhindered by the system, but how well does it perform at lower resolutions and with an older more common CPU setup?

Would really appreciate a test at 1280 x 960 or close on SD res, with an older C2D / C2Quad.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]scook9[/nom]This is the same GPU as the laptop GTX 480m isn't it? Same GF104?[/citation]
The GTX480m uses the gf100... unfortunately. I also thought they were sure to use the gf104, but for some inexplicable reason they decided to go with the gf100. The only reason I can think of, is so that the GTX480m could be released a month or two earlier then any potential date had the gf104 been used. So in other words I can't think of a good reason. It's pretty obvious that at 336 SP's the gf104 produces more performance per watt then a comparative gf100 derivative, which would've given Nvidia a lot more options in a mobile form factor. They could have either activated more SP's, increased clock speeds, decreased power consumption, or done some combination of the three. Some how I have a feeling a GTX485m is around the corner, incorporating the gf104 instead.

 

[brianmoz]

"The GeForce GTX 460 768 MB, priced to match the Radeon HD 5830, is a little less attractive. The smaller frame buffer hurts performance at high resolutions with AA turned on, and a narrower memory bus translates into less bandwidth, consequently slowing things down in the rest of our tests. I’d rather spend the extra $20 and get the faster card, quite frankly."
Im confused it gets the rare recommend buy but it seems like in the end he doesnt fully recommend it...

 

[berk98]

Personally, I'm not very impressed by the GTX 460. It's not a whole lot faster than the GTX 260 Core 216, which could be had for $150 when it was still sold. To me, Directx 11 and some other improvements isn't worth $50. At least, not yet.

I would like to see one more die shrink, a bump in clock speeds, all SMs enabled, and one less power connector. The 1GB variant takes 160w. A decrease in just 10w would mean the board needs just one power connector, and a 10w decrease in power is totally possible with a die shrink.

This very thing happened with the G92 when the 8800GT evolved into the 9800GTX+ (the only difference being the 9800GTX+ gained a power connector) and eventually into the $100 GTS 250. This process took nvidia 9 months to do, so I think a prime Fermi card has yet to arrive. But if they do it, I for one will be their first customer!

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]brianmoz[/nom]"The GeForce GTX 460 768 MB, priced to match the Radeon HD 5830, is a little less attractive. The smaller frame buffer hurts performance at high resolutions with AA turned on, and a narrower memory bus translates into less bandwidth, consequently slowing things down in the rest of our tests. I’d rather spend the extra $20 and get the faster card, quite frankly."Im confused it gets the rare recommend buy but it seems like in the end he doesnt fully recommend it...[/citation]
Two paragraphs lower...
"The GeForce GTX 460 1 GB centering on that chip is truly worthy of a rare Recommended Buy award."
...He's referring to the 1 GB version for the recommendation.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Nice looking card will put pressure on AMD to reply, and a good review.

Coulda used some non-traditional test like BluRay playback and some workstation apps or GPGPU stuff (not F@H which is architecture biased) just to mix things up a bit and see how they stack up for the non-gaming roles.

 

[Guest]

Towards the end of the article the author said he, as a user of three monitors, thought bitstreaming would be a nice feature. I wasn't familiar with bitstreaming so I looked it up and what I found suggests that bitstreaming is for audio, so I'm just curious what does the lack of bitstreaming have to do with the fact that the author has three monitors? And what "productivity requirements" do the 5850 fulfill that the 460 does not? Thanks!

 

[Guest]

This is a good card, make no mistakes.

The GTX 460 are right where they needed to be to compete, I was thinking they would fail if they came in between 5770/5830 in performance terms, but also summised they cant be near 465gtx or it will EOL the 465.

Looks like 465gtx will EOL surely, I feel sorry for everyone who bought a 465, hotter power hungry, more expensive than 460 but preyty much same performance.

The 460 will OC like a demon as well, look on Guru3d where some are going over 900mhz, with 5850 matching performance in lower resolutions..

This is what Nvidia needed to do, It will surely eat a few sales from ATI in Midrange (5830) sales.

I dont think it will affect 5770 sales, these cards are still alot cheaper and perform where they are budgeted!

5850 may possibly see a price drop by $10/20 to tempt the step up (Small step mind you in most lower res solutions.)

personally am pleased with 460 launch, will be using these for Customer builds over 5830 in the price segment!

Am still glad I went 5850 though, just want a little price drop on them for my next 5850 for xfire.(should really take the 5850 out of GF machine and get her a 460 thinking of it)

 

[Reynod]

Nice read Chris ... the temps under load were a refreshing surprise !!

Is this the new 7900GS ?

 

[triplebug]

Oh God should I sell and replace my current 5770 to this one?

 

[wiinippongamer]

cheapest 5830 is $180 after rebate, cheapest 1gb 460 is $220, so as long as you have enough room in your case, i think the 5830 is still a better deal

 

[LaloFG]

Nice review!
I'm glad Nvidia did this new core revision... because I hope ATI drop price of his graphics cards, I want to buy one, and I need it right now and cheaper hehe. (duh).

Note: In "Test setup..." page, you mention 5850, 5830 and 5870! (must be 5770, not 5870).

 

[rmmil978]

Can't wait for a 480 revision based on GF104! (My next card)

 

[FreeBeak]

Why in the work do you test a mainstream $200 card with a $950 CPU? How about a test in a mainstream system without over clocking!

 

[c_schwab]

So will there be a 384 sp version? It doesn't seem like there's a good spot in nvidia's lineup for it though. They could probably make a dual gpu version but it wouldn't beat the 5970.

 

[Pei-chen]

Good review and good card.

My mainstream pick is 5770 < 460 1GB < 5850 depends on the price.

 

[billyg45]

I'm not too impressed when last generations gtx275 beats the gtx460 in a couple of benchmarks. I'm not sure if it's worth an upgrade from my gtx275. I want something that runs at the speed of the gtx470, has the temperature of the gtx460, and with a price under $300. Hopefully there will be a gtx475 in the future that will answer all these request.