On The Bench: EVGA GeForce GTX 460 FTW

[gwg666]

[citation][nom]gwg666[/nom]just went to Newegg to see pricing n reviews on people who purchased one (FTW EE or FTW) sure looks to me as i said before ATI/AMD has value ,performance and the consumer in mind...over 50% unsatisfied...go read for yourself...by the looks of most/lots/few whatever you want to hear...Tom's must have stock in Nvidia[/citation]
at least the ignorant popup page is a radeon

 

[17seconds]

According to guru3d.com, power consumption for a GTX 470 will cost ~$20 more per year than a HD6870 when gaming 5 days a week, 4 hours per day; that's less than $1.70/month on your electricity bill.

 

[demonhorde665]

"There are a handful of 13 and 20 MHz speed bumps, and a couple of 40 MHz increases that command higher prices. However, for the folks ready to hit the comments section with, "Sure, compare overclocked Nvidia hardware to stock AMD cards," bear in mind that this is representative of today's retail landscape."


you obviously didn't think your defence through , sure the few overclocked 6000's demand a premium price , but do you seriously expect us to beleive that this card doesn't also demand a premium???? so sighting premium prices as a defence for not having overclocked 6000's is a poor excuse. not that i'm jumping on the side that says toms in pro nvidia , because i'm not. just saying you really hurt your case as much as helped it when you said this. better to just not say any thing at all , if the readers don't like your article just tell them to stuff it up thier wazoo's.


p.s. i use both ati/amd and nivida cards so i dont really care rather or not tom's is pro nvidia or pro amd.

 

[senshu]

[citation][nom]matto17secs[/nom]According to guru3d.com, power consumption for a GTX 470 will cost ~$20 more per year than a HD6870 when gaming 5 days a week, 4 hours per day; that's less than $1.70/month on your electricity bill.[/citation]
When looking at saving on your electric bill, all the more efficient options will only yield a small savings. Going from my aging 105w core 2 quad to a 65w version wouldn't even pay for itself in a year. But all of these little savings add up. Also, if you just generally care about your carbon footprint and all that, any little bit helps.

 

[Guest]

LORD_ORION: "
How about if I put it like this? Pay 20$ less for a downgrade in card class to get an overclocked card that performs slightly worse, is already tapped out and is adding more noise and heat to your chassis. "

Oh, you mean like how the overclocked 460 makes so much more noise and heat than the stock 470? Hmmmmm?

And as to "shortened life"--have you looked at EVGA's warranty on its overclocked cards? Hint: it's the same as on their non-overclocked ones. THAT is a big reason for many of us to go with factory overclocks.

 

[danbfree]

MSI has a nicely cooled and built one for $159 after rebate on the egg... clocked at 780 for this price too and they claim you can 1GHz on air with it and has some voltage tweeks as well... Just sayin' that has to be the best deal on a video card in the world right now!

 

[tpi2007]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Someone in development broke the ratings system. A bug report has been filed, and we're all eagerly awaiting the fix so that, once again, you guys can vote them up or down![/citation]

Actually, they are only half broken, you can still look at the ratings if you look at this in the forums. But, yes, you can't see it from here.

 

[solymnar]

[citation][nom]RADIO_ACTIVE[/nom]Agreed I don't know why people buy factory OCed cards, it seems silly to me[/citation]

Amazingly enough, many people greatly fear overclocking anything, but are OK if a company does it for them. That and very often factory OCed parts have better fans/heatsinks which sometimes covers the price difference alone.

 

[Guest]

any gtx 460 is for the win, most of the card can be overclocked a lot at least to 820 core without adding voltage which is as fast as overclocked 6850 and really good value too, just bought one for 140 euros while cheapest 6850 was 155 euros.
I could hit 890 core but need a lot of juice and thats mean lot of noise too, without additional voltage i can get 830 which is quite nice

 

[tpi2007]

The power consumption of a GTX 470 is terrifying. 110w more than a GTX 460 FTW ? Ouch!

And now imagine if you do like that user who said he'd prefer and buy a GTX 470. Imagine the heat. The noise. The power. You could light the whole house on economic lightbulbs. And you're not factoring air conditioning needed during the summer when using a GTX 470, let alone if you overclock it.

Anyway, those who want GTX 470 performance without the Overclock factor, it's better to wait a month for the GTX560. That GF104 (or 114 as it will be called with the GTX560) is much, much better for gaming than GF100 or even GF110.

And I bet it will be good, Nvidia will release it with conservative clocks, and EVGA will release a GTX560 FTW that can go to GTX570 performance levels (or at least GTX480).

Anyway, speaking of overclocking, only time will tell if the GTX460 FTW will have a big lifespan or not, but I can tell my personal sotry with an 8800GT Turboforce Edition from Gigabyte.

I bought it in August 2008; it had the GPU at 700Mhz, 100 Mhz up from the stock 600; and th shaders at 1715 Mhz, a whopping 215Mhz up from the standard 1500 Mhz, and a slight memory overclock, from 900Mhz to 920 (1840 effective).

How much time did it last me ? Two years and two months. But it didn't die on me. I sold it to someone else, and it's still making that person a happy gamer right now! Oh, and as a sidenote, I bought it for € 98 back in August 2008, and managed to sell it in November 2010 for € 40! Talk about value for money! Best purchase I ever made!

 

[oneblackened]

[citation][nom]nevertell[/nom]There is no point in buying these, you can overclock and overvolt pretty much any videocard, and you can get a better performing cooler for a lot less.[/citation]
keep in mind this really just shows how hard you can push a GTX 460. Pretty hard, I'd say.

 

[LORD_ORION]

[citation][nom]senshu[/nom]Did you even read this article before posting? You certainly didn't read the page on power usage and temperature benchmarks, or you wouldn't have made that ludicrous comment. Here's a direct link for you so you can save yourself from further embarrassment. http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 95-14.html[/citation]

Congratulations, you based your argument on the narrow comparison of 3 additional cards in the article. Now please... post links for every card in existence and we'll see how it stacks up.

 

[LORD_ORION]

[citation][nom]Pixel13[/nom]LORD_ORION: "How about if I put it like this? Pay 20$ less for a downgrade in card class to get an overclocked card that performs slightly worse, is already tapped out and is adding more noise and heat to your chassis. "Oh, you mean like how the overclocked 460 makes so much more noise and heat than the stock 470? Hmmmmm?And as to "shortened life"--have you looked at EVGA's warranty on its overclocked cards? Hint: it's the same as on their non-overclocked ones. THAT is a big reason for many of us to go with factory overclocks.[/citation]

Warranty is not the issue, longevity is. Plenty of cards will keep on going for years more, which is useful if you need a spare.

Also, I'm not saying factory overclocks are bad (look at the entire argument, generalize it and not just the select a few points to use as sniping fodder)... I am saying paying a price/performance prorated value for factory overclocks are bad when there are a decided number of disadvantages attached to that overclocked card. If you can get a factory overclocked card for a reasonable premium, then it might very well be worth it.

Real example of what I am getting at: I myself just purchased an MSI 460-768 Cyclone, which is a factory overclocked card with non-standard cooler... but I paid $149 for it last week from Newegg and have another $30 rebate to add (which I admit is kinda a crap shoot). The MSRP of the card is $189. It is currently going for 169 on newegg. 149 is a good price for a 460-768, 169 is questionable considering all other choices. 189 is idiotic for that card.

When the price is in 5-10% striking range of the class above, what is the malfunction in thought process that this is a good value?

 

[falchard]

Usually if a Toms review is close between an AMD part and a nVidia part, the AMD part is faster even if its a few percent lower.

 

[senshu]

[citation][nom]LORD_ORION[/nom]Congratulations, you based your argument on the narrow comparison of 3 additional cards in the article. Now please... post links for every card in existence and we'll see how it stacks up.[/citation]
You said, in so many words, not to bother with overclocked cards because you're drawing more power and giving off more heat than you would if you paid $20 more for the next card up. The next card up is in this review for comparison, and the power draws just aren't even comparable. You didn't bother to read the review that might as well have been tailor-made for someone like you; who doubts the worth of overclocked cards. That is the question that was asked, and answered, in this review. It's a shame you couldn't be bothered to even skim it before mouthing off in the comments.

 

[geok1ng]

All of the article and most of the comments sounds like very old subject now.

The 6950 costs $299 and no one sane recommend ANY of the cards on the article over a 6950, especially if the gamer is planning for multi-monitor setups or going 25x16. The "great power x performance" of the 460 is old school now, with the 570/580 and 6950/6970 delivering better thermals for performance. Not to mention that 1GB of memory is too little for 25x16 and multimonitor setups.

Even a 5670 would offer good enough fps at 1080p without AA, as a recent small form factor article showed, but there is simply NO excuse to pay $240 ( or $220 after rebate ) when there are vanilla 460s for $160. Just go the extra mile and SLI the cheapo babys or pickup a 6950.

the article goes AGAINST the forces of the market: NVIDIA has to drop 570s prices, not try to push overpriced 460s. And NVIDIA can quite easily dominate sales this generation by simply bringing 580 prices inline with the rest of the market, as of right now the 570 and the 580 are priced beyond the point of reason ( that IMHO ends at the 6950).

 

[skeeziks]

Great article! The $220-$230 price point has some good competition. I noticed a typo on the Just Cause 2 (DX11) page, where in the 2560x1600 graph, you labelled the 6870 as achieving 23.4 fps, but its position in the graph looks like 33.4 fps.

It would be nice to see a user-overclocked 6850, 6870, & 470. Even though this kind of overclock does not represent the retail market, the power-gamers that read these articles are the users most likely to overclock any card they have.

 

[plum]

Good article.

However, RIGHT NOW, this is the best 460 hands down:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127518
MSI HAWK GTX 460 1GB @ 179.99$

(And there is also a Rebate of 20$, which drops that to 159.99$)

 

[eodeo]

I enjoyed the article. I would like to have seen what made more of an impact- the shader or the memory OC for gtx 460, and how difficult would it be to OC a cheaper 460 to these levels. (I do realize that you had only this card... but still.)

 

[nforce4max]

[citation][nom]matto17secs[/nom]According to guru3d.com, power consumption for a GTX 470 will cost ~$20 more per year than a HD6870 when gaming 5 days a week, 4 hours per day; that's less than $1.70/month on your electricity bill.[/citation]

What about is addicts that game for more than 4 hours a day? For me try 12-15 till school starts up again.

 

[pandemonium_ctp]

[citation][nom]macer1[/nom]Why not use the 10.12 beta drivers from AMD ? The current test used a 10.10 Beta driver which was more problematic then the 10.9 AMD drivers. Makes no sense to me.[/citation]

Because a lot of the data that was used here is the same data acquired in the previous review involving the GTX 460 FTW found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6870-radeon-hd-6850-barts,2776-8.html

 

[cirslevin]

6870 is reference and can still be OCed, how much can you OC on a 460 FTW?

 

[eodeo]

Happy New Year everyone!

All the best from Serbia

 

[airborne11b]

Personally, I think Nvidia always makes a great product. ATI's cards require you to get 3rd party drivers just to make them bearable, from my experience with them.

And I don't think 400's are at the end of their lifecycle at all. Especially when you consider that 3 monitor surround gaming, DX11, 3D gaming, and great FPS that the 460, 470, and 480s offer, there is no real need to upgrade to the 500's when they come out if you already have 400s. But upgrading from a 200 series to a 400 or 500 is a great jump in both performance and utilities that justifies the jump.

Great job Nvidia, keep it up. And as always, EVGA is king.

 

[JoeMomma]

I swear by EVGA and Nvidia. I have never heard of one dying, and you can't beat a lifetime warranty from a company that might actually still be around if you ever need to use it. That said, this FTW card is strictly for newbies that are afraid of or do not know how to O/C by themselves. I own an EVGA GTX465 that I selected because the GF100 GPU can be soft-modded into a Quadro. I have since soft-modded my $180 GTX465 into a $260 GTX470. I unlocked 448 CUDA cores by flashing he GeForce BIOS. And I have mildly O/C it about 10%. I could have gone higher, but as many people have noted the 470 runs hot and the fan gets really noisy. It does not really need to be O/C, it was plenty fast out of the box... But you know how that goes or you would not be reading this.