NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460: The $200 King
by Ryan Smith on July 11, 2010 11:54 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- GeForce GTX 400
- GeForce GTX 460
- NVIDIA
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
The latest game in the Battlefield series - Bad Company 2 - is another one of our new DX11 games and has been a smash hit at retail. It’s also surprisingly hard on our GPUs, enough so that we can say we found something that’s more demanding than Crysis. As BC2 doesn’t have a built-in benchmark or recording mode, here we take a FRAPS run of the jeep chase in the first act, which as an on-rails portion of the game provides very consistent results and a spectacle of explosions, trees, and more.
Bad Company 2 is a game where at the launch of the GTX 400 series NVIDIA started well behind before finally catching up with the 256-series driver release. It’s still not a game where they shine in, but it does at least keep them competitive. Here the Radeon 5830 basically ties the 768MB GTX 460, while the extra RAM/L2/ROP of the 1GB card gives it a 7% lead. At that delta, overclocking the GTX 460 can close the gap. Meanwhile the GTX 465 and 1GB GTX 460 return to trading blows, with the GTX 460 edging out the GTX 465.
As for our worst case scenario Bad Company 2 waterfall benchmark, we get an interesting shakeup. As has been the case with the other GTX 400 series cards, the 1GB GTX 460 does better here than it does on the Chase benchmark, putting it between the Radeon 5850 and 5870. However in turn the GTX 465 edges the GTX 460 out for a slight lead, in which case we’re probably shader bound.
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san1s - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
I hope this is the card that finally brings price drops, they have been stagnant for far too long.JGabriel - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
It should. The 768MB version seems to perform about 5% better than the 5830, and the 1GB version comes to ~90% of the 5850.
Just on a performance per dollar basis, that means ATI should drop the 5830 to $189 max, with somewhere in the $170-$180 range being more reasonable, and the 5850 needs to drop down to about $249. Basically, we should be looking at 10%-20% price cuts for the 5670, 5750, 5770, 5830, and 5850.
It should force the GTX 470 under $300, too.
.
medi01 - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Best way to drop prices would be to ramp up production. Now, if what I've heard is true (fab treats nVidia as a preferred customer, unlike AMD) we will get yet another round of unfair competition, which in the end will hurt us, customers. :(PS
Is it me, or articles on this side seem quite a bit to be more positive on what nVidia does, than what would feel neutral? Marketing hints like "it’s not a simple reduced version of GF100 like what AMD did" all over... :(
jonup - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
It is you! Only need to go to the GTX465 review to disptove your point.teohhanhui - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Giving credit where it is due?nafhan - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Ryan said that because the GF104 isn't a simple reduced version of GF100. Did you notice the part of the article where they talked about superscalar processing? That's not only a marketing bullet point, it's a pretty big change from an architecture point of view, too!medi01 - Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - link
And this detail brings what particular benefit to the user? In particular, contrasting it with competitors (otherwise superior, cooler and faster) solution? Someone makes something wrong, then he has to rework it (the competitor, that did it right from the beginning, doesn't) and this somehow makes he deserve "some credit"?Ben90 - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
About that "marketing" comment about not a shrink of GF100, its completely true and how does that make this site pro-NVIDIA?You should check out the next article; very first paragraph:
"In 2007 we reviewed NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GT. At the time we didn’t know it would be the last NVIDIA GPU we would outright recommend at launch."
medi01 - Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - link
It's completely true, yet it is confusing at best. Piece of silicon is "praised" for something, that has no practical value to the consumer.And please, don't compare nVidia article to nVidia article, compare it to AMD:
When 5830 was reviewed, and mind you, it's a nice card that runs cooler, has eyefinity, but is a tad slower than older 49xx, this fact was PUT INTO TITLE, mind you. It was mentioned in the very NAME of the article, that new 200$ card is a tad slower than older ones. (basically the only "bad thing" that one could say about the card)
In case of 465 it's barely mentioned "oh, it's slower than older 200$ cards".
=(
Lonyo - Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - link
Anandtech is a tech site that often goes more into the under the hood bits.On some sites you will see them calculating performance per currency numbers, or performance per watt.
On Anandtech you will have them discussing things like changes to the architecture, the way the threading works etc.
That's not a new thing, and it's not a biased thing, that's just what they do here at AT in their reviews. It just so happens that the GTX460 has some of those under the hood changes compared to the earlier cards based on the same architecture, so they are discussed in the article.
If you don't care too much about that sort of thing, you can just skip to the benchmarks. If you are interested in it, then it's a nice addition.