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EVGA GTX 460 For The Win reviewed

by on15 October 2010

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Review: So, is it a winner?



Geforce GTX 460 is currently pretty popular so many Nvidia partners are trying to lure customers with nonreference designs, factory overclocks or gifts. Today we’re talking about EVGA GTX 460 1GB FTW (For The Win) card that sits among the fastest factory overclocked GTX 460 cards. The GTX 460 FTW’s GPU was pushed from reference 675MHz to 850MHz, with the memory also getting a boost from 900MHz to 1000MHz. Factory overclock usually provides improved performance but of course, this comes at a price.

All the GTX 460 cards we’ve tested so far (regardless of the company or operating clocks) had no trouble running at 800+MHz, which says enough of the GF104’s overclocking potential. Those who dare not risk their warranty or doubt that they’ll manage to hit 850MHz for the GPU can thankfully resort to factory overclocked cards such as EVGA GTX 460 FTW.

GF104 is derived from Fermi architecture so no worries about DirectX 11 support. Unlike the GF100 (GTX480/470/465), the GF104 packs less transistors and runs cooler. GTX 460 will allow for pleasant gaming at 1920x1080 and its main red-team competitor is the HD 5850, although EVGA GTX 460 FTW comes pretty close to HD 5870’s scores. Bear in mind though that AMD will soon announce its HD 6800 series, which doesn’t make the GTX 460’s task of proving itself any easier.

Before we move on, not that Nvidia offers two versions of GTX 460 cards – one with 768MB and the other with 1024MB of GDDR5 memory. However, it’s not only the frame buffer that is different and it ultimately affects performance so the GTX 460 768MB is a bit slower. Furthermore, the 768MB version of GTX 460 cards come with 192-bit memory bus, whereas the 1024MB versin comes with a 256-bit bus. This directly affects ROP units as well, so the 1024MB version of the card comes with 32 ROPs whereas the 768MB version comes with 24. Clocks for the GPU and memory are identical on both cards.

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Last modified on 15 October 2010
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