Shootouts

GeForce GTX 460 Roundup - Sparking NVIDIA's DX11 Revival

By Kenny Yeo - 2 Aug 2010

Temperature, Power Consumption and Overclocking

Temperature

The reference cooler of the GeForce GTX 460 is already a decent one, but it never hurts to have a cooler operating card. The stand out mention here has to be the ASUS ENGTX 460 DirectCU TOP, because in spite of its fairly high clock speeds (775MHz at the core), it managed to be the coolest card here, recording an unbelievable 61 degrees Celsius. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 with its Windforce cooler did well too, coming in at 62 degrees Celsius. The Sparkle card, despite sporting NVIDIA’s reference cooler, managed 64 degrees Celsius.

The most disappointing performer, however, is the Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 Super OC. Evidently, it’s blazing fast performance has come at a price, because it runs even hotter than the reference card. Clearly, the unique “flip-fan” cooler is not up to the task.

 

Power Consumption

Despite being overclocked the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC and Sparkle GeForce GTX 460 both recorded readings that were similar to a reference GeForce GTX 460. In fact, the Gigabyte card fared the best of the lot. On the other hand, the ASUS and Galaxy cards both recorded significantly higher power draw, particularly the Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 Super OC as we recorded a peak power draw reading of a whopping 272W.

 

Overclocking

Thanks to its effective cooler and Voltage Tweak software, which allowed us to adjust the card’s core voltage values, the ASUS ENGTX 460 DirectCU TOP was our most able overclocker, as we achieved a maximum overclocking state of 900MHz at the core and 4100MHz DDR at the memory - compared to the reference card’s 675MHz and 3600MHz DDR. This was simply amazing, allowing us to attain 8654 3DMarks on the Extreme Preset, a significant 12% greater than even a GeForce GTX 470.

The Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 Super OC did commendably too, reaching 870MHz at the core and 4100Mhz DDR at the memory, resulting in 8392 3DMarks. That said, Galaxy’s Xtreme Tuner HD software, like MSI’s Afterburner and ASUS’ Voltage Tweak software allowed for easily core voltage manipulation, and this was crucial to its performance here.

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC didn’t come with Gigabyte’s OC Guru overclocking utility, but that didn’t stop it from reaching a respectable 860MHz at the core and 3950MHz DDR at the memory. This gave us 8147 3DMarks, which is still greater than both the GeForce GTX 470 and Radeon HD 5850.

Lastly, we managed to get the Sparkle GeForce GTX 460 up to 830MHz at the core and 3950MHz DDR, which was enough for it to outscore the GeForce GTX 470 and Radeon HD 5850 on the Extreme preset of 3DMark Vantage.

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