NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460: The $200 King
by Ryan Smith on July 11, 2010 11:54 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- GeForce GTX 400
- GeForce GTX 460
- NVIDIA
Crysis: Warhead
Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead, still the toughest game in our benchmark suite.Even 2 years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question.
Crysis can be particularly memory-dependent, which in this case highlights the difference between the 768MB and 1GB GTX 460. 2560x1600 is not a viable option on the 768MB card here (or in most other games) due to the lack of VRAM, while at lower resolutions we can still clearly see the impact of having less RAM, less L2 cache, and less ROP power. At both 1680 and 1920, the 1GB GTX 460 is roughly 10% faster than the 768MB card. This much less than the 33% lead the 1GB GTX 460 has in terms of RAM/L2/ROP, but it’s still clear that there is a price to pay on the 768MB GTX 460.
Meanwhile the Radeon 5830 - already a hobbled card due to having half the ROPs of a full Radeon HD 5870 – takes a hard loss here. The 768MB GTX 460 comes ahead at 1920 by roughly 14% even with its RAM disadvantage. AMD definitely has their work cut out for them. As for the Radeon 5850, the 1GB GTX 460 trails right behind it until we hit 2560, where AMD’s continued advantage at high resolutions helps the card pull away some.
Looking at the minimum framerates, the difference in RAM/L2/ROPs becomes more pronounced. Here the 1GB GTX 460 has a 15% advantage at 1920, and strangely enough even beats a 5850 here. With the greater overhead of SLI this becomes even more of an issue, with our ragtag SLI set of 1GB GTX 460s beats our pair of factory overclocked EVGA 768MB GTX 460s by 33%. Finally the 5830 fares even worse, losing to the 768MB GTX 460 by 35%. In Crysis there is no substitute for more RAM and more ROPs.
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threedeadfish - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
I know you guys are all up in arms when a company releases information about up coming products, but you know that's information that can help a consumer.. I was looking for a card that was powerful enough while being quite and not using too much power. I ended up with a 5770 and I think it's a great product, however this the 460 offers 5830 performance at 5770 power and noise for only $30 more. I would have waited another week if I had any idea this was coming. You can't tell me nobody at Anandtech knew this was coming. Your anti-paper launch campain has a down site, it doesn't give consumers valuable information and as a result the video card I'll be using for the next couple years will be much less powerful then it would have been if the 465 artical just gave me a heads up, or just a little message saying hold off on $200 video card purchases something's coming. I only buy a new video card every few years please give me the information I need to make the best purchase. In this case waiting another week is what I should have done.notext - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
If you notice, everyone put out their info on this card today. That is because an NDA. Even suggesting anything about this card without nVidia's permission is a quick way to guarantee you won't get future releases.Phate-13 - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Euhm, where can you find the "at 5770 power consumption"? The tables are quite clear that it uses 40-70Watts MORE under load then the 5770.And indeed, there is something called and NDA.
Phate-13 - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
**** this. I want to be able to edit my posts.'something called AN NDA.'
Death666Angel - Thursday, July 15, 2010 - link
This is a review site, not a news or rumours site. If you are interested in the what the next couple of months bring from companies like Intel, AMD and nVidia, you need to start using sites like Fudzilla, that report hardware news and rumours.And trust me, there was plenty of information on the 460 being in the making and probably outperforming the 465 at a lower price point. :)
And if you regret the purchase of a 9 month old card because one that just got released has higher performance (20%-40%?), while using more electricity (20%), costs more (60% - 130€ to 210€ for the cheapest cards each), you are going to be a very sad PC buyer, because normally, a new product will be faster _and_ cheaper, while now it is just faster, but a hellovalot more expensive too. :-)
Lord 666 - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Definitely some details missing for a complete picture on this card.Lonyo - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
There's more too.No real discussion of the reduction in polymorph engine to shader ratio, such as tessellation benchmarks (synthetic or otherwise).
Nothing on minimum frame rates (and anything which is put up uses the older 10.3 drivers for ATI).
In addition to the general compute performance benchmarks that you mention.
Nothing about CUDA games (e.g. Just Cause 2) comparing the GTX465 to the GTX460.
No consideration of ROP vs memory changes (i.e. is it memory bandwidth limited or is it purely the ROP reduction causing the performance hit on the 768MB card).
Maybe the cards didn't come out in time. Maybe everything, or more stuff at least, will be covered in Pt 2, but it is somewhat disappointing that so many things are totally missing.
Ryan Smith - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
You hit the nail on the head with your comment on time. I actually have the data, but with the limited amount of time I had I wasn't able to write the analysis (most of my time was spent on better covering the architecture). That will be amended to the article later today, but for now you can see the raw graphs.http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/gtx460_07111017...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/gtx460_07111017...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/gtx460_07111017...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/gtx460_07111017...
Lonyo - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
I hope I didn't come off as too harsh. I started writing and then towards the end realised it could be a time thing, and didn't go back to amend what I had written.After looking at most other sites, their reviews are sometimes even worse, covering only a very small handful of games.
Thanks for the early graphs, much appreciated. Shame NV didn't give more time for proper reviews.
jonny30 - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
- maybe in your country my dear friend.......maybe there i tell you ;)- in my country is 300 you see.......300 as a price start i mean :)
- and for those 100 extra i buy another hdd for example, not another video card if you know what i mean
- so, maybe is worth for you, but for me to jump from 4870 to this......
- i am sorry, but it is not wort it........