NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Performance Preview

Priced from $199-$229, the GeForce GTX 460 cards bring NVIDIA's Fermi architecture to gamers on a budget. Armed with 336 CUDA Cores, 7 PolyMorph Engines for tessellation, and high clocks, it doesn't disappoint when it comes to 3D performance, power consumption, or heat output. Firing Squad examines how the board performs in comparison to cards ranging from the GeForce 8800 GTS to the Radeon 5830 in 3D gaming, PhysX, and 3D Vision. Here's a taster:

As for how the GTX 460 stacks up to the previous generation of GeForce graphics cards, it’s actually very close with the GTX 275. Both versions of the 460 perform on par with or better than the 275 in just about every DX10 game test, even when PhysX and/or 3D Vision are enabled. Two GTX 460 768MBs in SLI evenly traded blows with dual GTX 275s, which are substantially more expensive. Obviously, there’s no contest where DX11 support is available.

Power consumption and cooling performance have been improved by leaps and bounds over the high end of the GTX 400 series. While the GTX 460s are the overall best performers out of the cards tested, they’re also among the most energy efficient. Because of this, temperatures never rose above 70 degrees C under load, nor did the cooling fans need to rev up enough to become audible over a few quiet case fans.

Whether you pay $199 or $229, the GTX 460 is an amazing performer for the price, not to mention the added value from terrific overclocking potential. Gains of 20-25% were easily had on core clocks and memory clocks, leading to directly proportional increases in performance. That’s more than the difference between the 768MB and 1GB versions, so you could certainly save $30 that way if you like.

NVIDIA is predicting that those mainstream gamers who have been waiting for something to replace their 9800 GTs will really latch on to the GTX 460. It’s certainly a fantastic way to break into the DX11 era for cheap, considering it beats the similarly priced Radeon HD 5830 while bringing exclusive features like PhysX, 3D Vision, and CUDA to the table. As much as some gamers seem to despise these GeForce-only perks, anyone in their right mind would have to take them into consideration when looking for a new graphics card.