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
The Test
For our test we are using NVIDIA’s latest 256-series drivers, currently at version 258.80. As far as performance goes these drivers are virtually identical to earlier 256-series drivers on the GTX 400 series, so performance has not significantly changed since the launch of the drivers alongside the GTX 465. As the 256-series drivers did improve performance across a number of games for the GTX 480 and GTX 470, numbers have been updated where applicable.
As for our Radeon cards, we are continuing to use the 10.3a drivers. Radeon 5000 series performance has not changed for the games in our suite since those drivers were released.
Included in our test results are our vendor cards from Asus, Zotac, and EVGA. You can read the full review for those cards in Part 2 of our launch coverage.
For testing the GTX 460 in SLI, we used our 1GB reference card in SLI with Zotac’s 1GB card. This is suitable for performance but not for noise testing. Testing the reference 768MB GTX 460 in SLI was not possible due to the lack of a suitable matching card; however we do have the EVGA GTX 460 768MB SuperClock in SLI.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard: | Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Summit (120GB) |
| Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 5970 AMD Radeon HD 5870 AMD Radeon HD 5850 AMD Radeon HD 5830 AMD Radeon HD 5770 AMD Radeon HD 5750 AMD Radeon HD 4890 AMD Radeon HD 4870 1GB AMD Radeon HD 4850 AMD Radeon HD 3870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB Zotac GeForce GTX 460 1GB Asus ENGTX460 768MB EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB SuperClocked |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 197.13 NVIDIA ForceWare 257.15 Beta NVIDIA ForceWare 258.80 Beta AMD Catalyst 10.3a |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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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.