GeForce GTX 460 Roundup Part 3 - Trio of Extremities

Conclusion

Fast & Furious

As we had anticipated, the three cards were amongst the fastest GeForce GTX 460 cards currently available in the market. Thanks to their aggressive clock speeds, the three cards had explosive performance, performing markedly quicker than a reference GeForce GTX 460.

That aside, the custom coolers of the three cards also did a reasonably good job of keeping the cards cool. Special mention, however, goes how to the Gigabyte and Sparkle card for they were considerably cooler to run in comparison to the the Zotac card. The Windforce 2x anti-turbulence cooler from Gigabyte has proven itself thus far to be a pretty effective cooler as is the humongous Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo PRO cooler that is employed in the Sparkle card.

Here’s a quick summary of the card’s clock speeds and summary of scores.

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 Super Overclock is a fine take on the GeForce GTX 460 by Gigabyte. It is super quick right out of the box and has a very efficient cooler to boot. What’s more at US$214, it is reasonably priced too, considering the amount of performance and features it offers over a reference card. The only downer however is its slightly disappointing overclocking performance. Considering that the chips used for these cards were supposedly 'cherry picked', we had expected better.

The Sparkle Calibre X460G is a decent card, offering excellent all-round performance. It might be a smidge slower than both the Gigabyte and Zotac cards, but it’s still a good deal faster than a reference GeForce GTX 460. And thanks to its giant dual-fan cooler, it was remarkably cool to run.

We are no stranger to Zotac’s AMP! Edition line-up of cards while they have traditionally been ultra-fast, they do sacrifice a tad in the way of efficiency and cooling. Sadly, the Zotac GeForce GTX 460 AMP! Edition is no different. It’s blazing fast to be sure, one of the fastest GeForce GTX 460 cards in the market, but it does so at the expense of being one of the hotter ones as well. Furthermore, it is also the priciest, coming in at US$224.

Final Ratings