Today I’ll do a review of Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC graphic card with 768MB of GDDR5 memory. You can check this card at Gigabyte’s official web page
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3531#ov As we probably all know there are two different GTX 460 graphic cards – one with 768MB and other 1GB but that’s not all the difference as they have different number of ROPs and different memory interface as well. So, this two cards aren’t the same as it would seem at the first sight.
GeForce GTX 460 768MB characteristics are supplied below:
Graphics Processing Clusters – 2
Streaming Multiprocessors – 7
Shader processor – 336
Texture Units – 56
ROPs – 24
Core Clock – 675MHz
Shader Clock – 1350MHz
Memory Data rate – 3600MHz
Graphics Memory – 768MB
Memory interface – 192Bit
Memory bandwidth – 86.4GB/s
Texture Fillrate Bilinear – 37.8GigaTexels/s
Fab node – 40nm
TDP – 150W
This being custom made graphic card from Gigabyte you will notice some changes mostly on custom cooling design but also in better „out of the box“ performance.
So, why don’t we start with photo gallery ( I'm sorry I had to use official pictures because my camera is on a vacation)?!
As you can see, Gigabyte has done a proper job on making this graphic card looking nice but still being able to have very good cooling solution combined with very low noise and very good OC potential! But on that later on.
This card’s characteristics are displayed belove:
Chipset GeForce GTX 460
Core Clock 715 MHz
Shader Clock 1430 MHz
Memory Clock 3600 MHz
Memory Size 768 MB
Memory Bus 192 bit
Card Bus PCI-E 2.0
Memory Type GDDR5
DirectX11 OpenGL4.0
Digital max resolution 2560 x 1600
Analog max resolution 2048 x 1536
Multi-viewYes
You have probably noticed that this card comes factory overclocked so it’s a good solution for those who aren’t good in overclocking because it has 5% better performance than the standard model which is nice.
Installation of this card is easy and all you have to do is to put it in PCI-E slot on your motherboard and check if everything fitted correctly. You will also need two 6pin PEG connectors from your PSU.
This card isn’t too power hungry and the power consumption is almost the same as on standard model. To run it smoothly you will need 500W PSU which isn’t bad at all because good PSUs with this kind of power aren’t too expensive. You should still check out your PSU before doing anything seriously because bad PSU can cause a lot of problems!
Gigabyte is very proud on its cooling solution WINDFORCE and I don’t see the reason why they shouldn’t be because it works perfectly on this card.
I used Furmark for this test and as you can see temperature never went above 68°C which as very good considering that all the test were done in normal room conditions which make more than 70% of users. I kind of don’t like when they do the tests in perfect conditions just to make good temperature scores and when the user buys the card, he thinks that he got ripped off because his card is hotter than that in tests…
Second good thing on that WINDFORCE is the noise or, better said, lack of noise! You simply can’t hear it if you have at least one fan in your case!
And did I mention that this card looks very good?!
Here you can see WINDFORCE 2/3 cooling solution:
Now the performance ( Testing machine is the one in my signature )
First to say that this card is clearly not meant to be used by those who want to play absolutely every game at max settings and with enormous FPS value but for those who want to play in 1080p resolution but have no problems at lowering their graphic details.
That being said I wont consider detailed tests in games such are Crysis and Metro2023 even though you’d be impressed how well this card performed. Lets just say that you will be able to play both of those two games just fine on 1080p resolution, high graphic detail (not max) and still be averaging 45FPS!
Performance tests I chose are 3d Mark Vantage, Splinter Cell Conviction and newest Medal of Honor and all are displayed below:
Now, overclocking…
First, to overclock your card you’re going to need some OS software such as MSI Afterburner or RivaTuner. I recommend MSI Afterburner because it has more of a friendly interface and it’s a good choice for those that are new to overclocking.
Also, I must say that you should be careful when overclocking because you can damage your graphic card!
My OC scores for this card are: GPU – 850Mhz, Shaders – 1650MHz, Memory – 4300MHz without increasing voltage and I find this score to be very good! Fan configuration was left at auto and even still I couldn’t hear this card! Amazing!
In the end, I can say only this:
If you can’t afford high tech graphic card but you still want to enjoy in good gaming then you don’t have to look further! Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC 768 is a card for you. Nice looking, very cool and very silent with good OC potential and with price 130-150euro and 2-3 years of warranty this card can only be highly recommended!
