Well, I'm sure this is late BUT since now the Nvidia GTX4xx is getting cheaper after the launching of the GTX5xx series and sure is the good time to consider getting some upgrades for the two year old gaming desktops.
The box outlook is filled with stickers, most notably is the 3 years warranty and the free game sticker.
These are the common contents in the box, a pair of molex to PCIE power converters, DVI to VGA converter and the Mini-HDMI to standard HDMI converter and ? a free online game which I don't care much. lol
Now, as you notice Gigabyte changed the cooler into something different instead of using the stock GTX460 fans. This is mostly due to improving the heat management of the card as nowadays GPUs are getting hotter and hotter albeit Nvidia or AMD cards.
Good thing to see that they sticked to using the conventional exhaust grills, some vendors did some fancy design that actually affect the airflow of the exhausted heat.
You can see the contact between the core and heatsink.
PCIE power connectors, now this card's power connectors are faced towards the front of the card instead of the top where some users might have problem with smaller cases, for example i'll be having less problem fitting into my Silverstone SG03. However things may be differ if the case had alot of hdd blocking its way.
No caps touching the heatsink, no problems.
Testing Methodology
- All the settings of the free benchmarking tools are running on default resolution and settings.
- All the settings of the applications especially on games are tested on maximum detail, what differs is the resolutions of the display.
Results
TESTS | RESULTS |
HWMonitor (Celsius) | |
20 Min Stress | 70c / 73c |
20 Min Idle | 36c / 38c |
3DMark Benchmarking - 3DMarks(GPU) | |
3DMark06 Basic Edition | 19247 (SM2.0 = 7107) (SM3.0 = 8922) |
3DMark Vantage | 9195 (Total H9946) |
3DMark 11 Basic Edition | P3298 |
PCWizard 2010 Graphics Benchmark | |
Texture | 6998 FPS/Marks |
Texture Fullscreen | 487 FPS/Marks |
Particles 3D | 37 FPS/Marks |
Vertex | 33 FPS/Marks |
Billboard | 1463 FPS/Marks |
Crysis Demo– GPU Timed Bechmarking 1280x1024 / 1920x1080 @ 2x AA @ Max Settings | |
Min FPS | 23.40/ 16.58 |
Max FPS | 31.40/ 20.28 |
Average FPS | 36.63/ 23.64 |
GTA4 – TBoGT 1920x1080 | |
Average FPS | 22.62 |
Unigine Heaven DX11 Benchmark 1920x1080 (Tessellation Off/On – Extreme) | |
FPS | 41.0 / 21.8 |
Scores | 1034 / 549 |
Min FPS | 23.5 / 11.5 |
Max FPS | 76.7 / 53.7 |
Conclusions
Now, after seeing how the card performed I'm actually impressed by its performance but disappointed due to the faulty card at first and got it replaced with another one within two days. First card gave problems with artifacts after two weeks usage, suspected overheat due to faulty heatsink fan and the second came in good so far after few months now.
Based on a price point view, its totally worth getting if user is looking for a long lasting gaming + bang for the buck hardware for the next 3 years, look no further. Currently since the release of the GTX560 Ti especially the card is priced pretty much close to RM700~RM800 and the GTX460 is priced around RM600~RM700 with a little lesser and unnoticeable performance difference when playing at 1920x1080 at high or medium-high details and some AA turned on.
My first choice was the AMD HD5850 or the AMD HD5830 at the time, the release of the Nvidia GTX460 changed everything i thought of during the time for mid range graphic cards. The GTX460 1Gb performance comes very close to the HD5850 and priced below or equivalent to the HD5830, making it a killer card at the ranks. Not too long after that, AMD released a re badged-or-simple redesigned HD6xxx series card with characteristics almost similar to the HD5xxx series, that didn't caught my eye though.
www.sonoftrinity.blogspot.com - More reviews coming real soon !
