MSI N460GTX Cyclone - Kicking Up a Storm

Storm's Coming

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 has been winning rave reviews all over and if you haven’t yet checked out our full review of NVIDIA’s awesome new card, you can do so here. And now, just a mere week after its launch, custom design versions of the GeForce GTX 460 are already appearing.

One of the earliest custom design GeForce GTX 460 to hit the market has to be the MSI N460GTX Cyclone. The card gets its name from the specially-designed Cyclone cooler, which was first seen on MSI's Radeon HD 4890 cards. Also, the N460GTX Cyclone will be available in both 1GB and 768MB versions. The one we have here today is the 768MB version.

The cooler retains its trademark odd-shaped design, which, to us, resembles a winged insect more than a cyclone. In any case, MSI dubs this the “Cyclone Thermal Design” and the most notable thing about it is that it features a large 90mm fan for better airflow. The cooler also has a nickel-plated copper heatsink core for better heat dissipation. And its rounded design it said to be better at keeping out dust.

The card also comes with the usual assortment of what MSI calls “Military Class Components”. This includes Hi-C Caps for better voltage regulation and solid state chokes for longer operating lifespan and enhanced overclocking performance.

Lastly, to complement the Cyclone cooler and military class components, the MSI N460GTX Cyclone is also factory overclocked. Although memory clock speeds remain unchanged, the core has been bumped up to 728MHz and 1455 MHz at the shaders - an increase of 53MHz and 105 MHz respectively.

Here’s a look at the card:

Test Setup

The cards will be tested using our high-end X58 system with the following specifications:

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

Naturally, we'll be comparing the MSI N460GTX Cyclone closely against the reference cards from NVIDIA. Given that the MSI card comes factory overclocked, we are expecting it to outperform the reference 768MB card from NVIDIA. However, it’ll be interesting to see if its performance will be able to match that of the 1GB reference card.

Another aspect that we’ll be playing close attention to is the performance of the custom Cyclone cooler from MSI and the card’s willingness to overclock.

The full list of tested cards and their driver versions:

• MSI N465GTX Cyclone 768MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 258.96)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 258.80)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 258.80)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 1GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 257.21)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 1280MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 257.21)
• ATI Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.6)
• ATI Radeon HD 5830 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.5)
• ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.5)

The list of benchmark used are as follows:

• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
• Crysis Warhead
• Far Cry 2
• Warhammer: Dawn of War 2
• Battlefield Bad Company 2
• “Heaven" from Unigine v1.0
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

3DMark Vantage Results

The MSI N460GTX Cyclone began brightly on 3DMark Vantage, comfortably outscoring the reference 768MB card and came close to outperforming the 1GB variant. To elaborate, the MSI card managed to outscore the 1GB reference GeForce GTX 460 on the Performance preset, but lost out on both the High and Extreme presets. Clearly, the higher clock speeds are not enough to make up for the card’s smaller framebuffer and narrower memory bus width.

Crysis Warhead & Far Cry 2 Results

On Crysis Warhead, the MSI N460GTX Cyclone was markedly quicker than the reference 768MB GeForce GTX 460. Overall, its uprated clock speeds gave made it on average about 5% quicker. It also came close to the 1GB reference GeForce GTX 460, even with anti-aliasing enabled.

And to add, despite sporting a smaller frame buffer size, the MSI card also comfortably outperformed ATI’s Radeon HD 5830.

 

On Far Cry 2, the MSI card continued to assert its dominance over the reference 768MB card, once again posting results that were on average about 7% quicker. And again, it almost got the better of the 1GB reference card, but its smaller framebuffer and narrow memory bus width was holding it back.

Dawn of War 2 & Battlefield Bad Company 2 Results

With its higher clock speeds, the MSI N460GTX Cyclone maintained its dominance over the reference 768MB card from NVIDIA. But even its higher clock speeds was not enough to outperform the reference 1GB card. Against the cards from ATI, we found the MSI card to be a good match for the pricier Radeon HD 5830.

On Bad Company 2, the MSI N460GTX Cyclone persisted in posting results that were about 6% quicker than a reference 768MB card. And once more, it came close to usurping the 1GB reference card, but its smaller frame buffer size and lower memory bandwidth was limiting its performance.

Unigine "Heaven" Results

With anti-aliasing disabled, the MSI N460GTX Cyclone was quicker than the reference 768MB card and even managed to outperform the 1GB reference card. However, its lead was slight and short-lived, because as soon as anti-aliasing was enabled, the 1GB reference card regained the upper hand. Fortunately, it was markedly quicker than both the ATI Radeon HD 5830 and HD 5770, it closest competitors from the red camp. 

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

The MSI N460GTX Cyclone continued to be faster than the reference 768MB card and kept pace nicely with the 1GB reference card. However, we did notice that it performed quite poorly on the Sunshafts run with anti-aliasing enabled. We are attributing this discrepancy to the new ForceWare 258.96 drivers, and will be paying close attention to this particular run in our future tests of the GeForce GTX 460.

Against the Radeon cards, the MSI card, surprisingly, was able to challenge the Radeon HD 5850, especially on the more intensive Sunshafts run. Clearly, this shows the superiority of the Fermi architecture in handling tessellation-heavy applications.

 

Temperature

What impressed us about the GeForce GTX 460 was how NVIDIA was able to bring operating temperatures of it down to manageable levels. At 60 degrees Celsius, we must say that the reference 768MB card is already doing well. But MSI, with the help of their custom Cyclone cooler, has managed to bring operating temperatures down to an impressive 55 degrees Celsius, which is very impressive. 

Power Consumption

Power draw figures of the MSI N460GTX Cyclone are in line with those of NVIDIA’s reference card. Note how much the GeForce GTX 460 improves upon the earlier GTX 470 and GTX 465.

Overclocking

The GeForce GTX 460 is an able overclocker and the MSI N460GTX Cyclone, with its military class components, custom cooler and support for the MSI Afterburner overclocking utility, didn’t disappoint, managing to achieve a maximum overclocking state of 880MHz at the core and 3850MHz DDR at the memory. As a result, it scored 7619 3DMarks on the Extreme preset of Vantage, eclipsing even the Radeon HD 5850.

First Blood

All things considered, the MSI N460GTX Cyclone, being one of the first custom designed GeForce GTX 460 to hit the market, is a commendable effort from the Taiwanese hardware giant. We were satisfied with its improved performance, thanks to its higher core clock speeds, but we felt that MSI could have done more by bumping up memory clock speeds too. This would have improved the card’s memory bandwidth, allowing it to pose a serious challenge to 1GB variants of the GeForce GTX 460.

Still on the subject of performance, we also found the MSI N460GTX Cyclone to be an able overclocker. Considering its factory core clock speed of 728MHz, reaching 880MHz is surely no easy feat and much of it can be attributed to the card’s efficient cooler, high quality components and MSI’s very own Afterburner overclocking utility, which is easy to use, but more importantly allows for the tweaking of core voltage values.

MSI has done really well in bringing this custom edition GeForce GTX 460 into the market so early, and now the pressure is on the competition.

Unsurprisingly, the MSN N460GTX Cyclone will cost more than a reference design card, but at US$209, it is, fortunately, only a tad more pricey than a reference design card, which typically costs around US$199. And we think that it's more than a fair price considering its added performance, custom cooler and overclocking potential.

As for local pricing, a regular 768MB GeForce GTX 460 will cost somewhere around S$300, whereas this custom edition card from MSI will set you back S$329, which we feel is still reasonable.

Looking ahead, we will be featuring a roundup of 1GB GeForce GTX 460 cards soon, so do check back then.

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