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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Alroys - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Nice review, but i would have liked to see how well they overclock.beginner99 - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Not a bad card. I ordered a 5850 for my new build. 460 is a little less performing but more quite. The ordered 5850 is out of stock and no due date. However till the 460's arrive it will probably also be a few weeks...Need to wait on price. usually quite a bit higher here.KITH - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Quiet and Quite are different words...460 is a little less performing but more *quiet*
Usually *quite* a bit higher here.
See the difference? You even used both in your own post.
chizow - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Looks like a great part from Nvidia that seems to hit the same target price and performance markets as the wildly 8800GT before it. Much as the G92 and its derivatives dominated the gaming market while bringing DX10 to the mainstream, GTX 460 may be poised to do the same.Griswold - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Its not going to dominate anything but nvidias own lineup. AMD will just - finally - drop prices, and thats that.james.jwb - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
I agree. AMD will either drop the price on the 5850 to make this new card redundant, or not do it and make a major mistake.chizow - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
I doubt they're willing to drop the price on the 5850 enough to truly compete with the GTX 460, especially the 768MB version.. Maybe match the 1GB version's $230 price point by going to $250 but then what does that do to the 5870? Who's going to buy a 5870 at $400 when a 5850 only costs $250? Either way it looks like Nvidia has that $200-$250 market locked tight and in a few months with MIRs that'll shift to the $160-$220 range.Lonyo - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
Considering the launch prices were $260/$380, there's no reason to imagine a drop to $250 would leave the 5870 at $400.Maybe we would see something like $250/$350. Finally a drop from launch prices.
papapapapapapapababy - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
i mean why bother? to play ports like "singularity" with bump mapped ( and terrible low res textures?) i mean the pos3 game only uses about 140MB of my video ram! ati, nvidia, intel, amd, no real pc games? > no sale. adeus suckers!mindbomb - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
What does the presence of hdmi v1.4 ports mean?Does this card have 3d bluray capabilities not seen on other cards?