GeForce GTX 460 Roundup Part 3 - Trio of Extremities

Extreme GTX 460 Trio

Before AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850’s arrival, the GeForce GTX 460 was the king in US$200 to US$250 price segment. Nothing came close to offering its explosive combination of price and performance.

However, with the introduction of AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850, NVIDIA had to do some price shuffling to stay competitive. As a result, they brought the price of the 1GB GeForce GTX 460 from US$229 to US$199, which is good news for us consumers.

As it is, the GeForce GTX 460 has been out in the market for about 6 months now and there’s no shortage of custom designed editions. We’ve already covered custom version of the GeForce GTX 460 extensively in two roundup articles (part 1, part 2), and we are following up with yet another roundup involving three extreme edition cards from Gigabyte, Sparkle and Zotac.

The three cards comes factory overclocked with aggressive clock speeds and sport equally aggressive cooler designs, and the three cards that we will be taking a look at are:

• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 Super Overclock
• Sparkle Calibre X460G
• Zotac GeForce GTX 460 AMP! Edition

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 Super Overclock

Gigabyte’s Super Overclock series of graphics cards marks their return to the high-end customized graphics scene and like other cards of the series, the GeForce GTX 460 Super Overclock is aggressively overclocked for superior performance - 815MHz at the core and 4000MHz DDR. In comparison, a reference card is clocked only at 675MHz at the core and 3600MHz DDR.

Furthermore, each GPU has been cherry-picked and specifically tested to endure the highest clock speeds. And to add, the card also features Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable VGA components such as ferrite core chokes, solid capacitors and a 2oz copper PCB.

Finally, to top it all off, the GeForce GTX 460 Super Overclock also sports the company’s recognizable Windforce 2x cooler and comes bundled with Gigabyte’s own OC Guru software tuner which allows for easy manipulating of clock speeds.

The Sparkle Calibre X460G

Not to be outdone is Sparkle’s Calibre line of customized graphics card. The Calibre X460G is instantly recognizable thanks to the massive dual-fan Accelero Twin Turbo PRO aftermarket cooling from Arctic Cooling. It is also suitably factory overclocked seeing that core clock speeds have been given a significant bump to 790MHz, whereas memory clock speeds too have been boosted up to 3900MHz DDR.

The Zotac GeForce GTX 460 AMP! Edition

The final card in our line-up is the Zotac GeForce GTX 460 AMP! Edition. Those familiar with Zotac will know that only the company’s best will make it into their AMP! Edition, and this card is no different. Clock speeds are among the highest we’ve seen on any GeForce GTX 460 card - 810MHz at the core and 4000MHz DDR. And to keep things cool, the card has a custom design cooler with an unique heatsink design.

Test Setup

To test the three cards, we’ll be using our Intel X58 setup which has the following specifications:

• Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)
• Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard
• 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
• Windows 7 Ultimate

Clock speeds are usually a good indication of a card’s performance and we are expecting these cards to be substantially faster than a reference GeForce GTX 460. The Gigabyte and Zotac cards’ clock speeds are very comparable and so they should be performing very similarly. The Sparkle card with its lower clock speeds will be at a slight disadvantage here. In terms of comparisons, we'll be throwing in some of the previously reviewed cards, but not all as the list and comparisons could grow too long.

Raw performance aside, we are also interested to find out how effective their coolers would be. The aftermarket Accelero Twin Turbo Pro cooler from Arctic Cooling has proved to be very effective in the past and it’ll be intriguing to see how it’ll match up against the more compact Windforce 2x cooler from Gigabyte.

Here’s a quick summary of the cards’ clock speeds:

The full list of cards tested and driver versions used:

• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 Super Overclock (ForceWare 258.96)
• Sparkle Calibre X460G (ForceWare 258.96)
• Zotac GeForce GTX 460 AMP! Edition (ForceWare 258.96)
• MSI N460GTX Hawk (ForceWare 258.96)
• Palit GeForce GTX 460 Sonic Platinum (ForceWare 258.96)
• Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 Super OC (ForceWare 258.96)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 258.96)
• AMD Radeon HD 6850 (Catalyst 10.10)

The full list of benchmarks used:

• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
• Crysis Warhead
• Far Cry 2
• Warhammer: Dawn of War 2
• Battlefield Bad Company 2
• “Heaven" from Unigine v2.1
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Crysis Warhead Results

Far Cry 2 Results

Dawn of War 2 Results

Battlefield Bad Company 2 Results

Unigine "Heaven" 2.1 Results

 S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Results

Temperature

Power Consumption 

Overclocking

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.

<img height="227" width="320" src="https://cassette.sphdigital.com.sg/image/hardwarezone/34c2dff9d037024721d09312798f7fc7f2b1b009dc8e168262d5cb239d272a8b" title="The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 Super Overclock " class="caption" alt="">
<img height="226" width="320" src="https://cassette.sphdigital.com.sg/image/hardwarezone/5f052493e2d841ac5a4e6efbee6d9d3aff4525ecc6ca654583d3924b3fee2665" title="The Zotac GeForce GTX 460 AMP! Edition " class="caption" alt="">

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