IF THE LEAKED information in a Gigabyte presentation is indeed correct, then the GeForce GTX460 is set to launch on the 12th of July. Normally product presentation leaks contain the usual details you’d expect such as clock speeds, ports, bundles, pricing etc. except this time a full set of benchmarks were also included which makes this leak slightly more interesting than usual.
So let’s start with the basics, the card itself. Gigabyte’s first card is called the GV-N460D5-768I-B and as the model name suggests, this is a 768MB card. The core is clocked at 675MHz, the shaders at 1350MHz and the memory at 3.6GHz effectively, so in other words, stock clocks. It should hit retail at around $199 while 1GB models will, according to the presentation, cost between $229 and $239.
So what about the benchmark numbers? Well, the card scores 14005 points in 3DMark Vantage’s performance mode test at 1280×1024, although the test system isn’t specified. For some comparison figures, a GTX465 comes in at 14439 and a 5830 manages 13358. In Unigine Heaven 2.1 at 1920×1200 with 8x AA and 16x AF the GTX460 doesn’t fare so well as it only manages a mere 8.1 fps compared to 16.1 for the GTX465 and 10.5 for the 5830.
Moving over to some real games it looks better in Dirt 2, again at 1920×1200 but only with 8x AA where the GTX460 musters 39.6 fps compared to 42.4 for the GTX465 and 33.1 for the 5830. In Lost Planet, again at 1920×1200 with 8x AA and 16x AF, the GTX460 doesn’t excel at 24 fps compared to 28.2 for the GTX465 and 27.8 for the 5830. In Crysis at 1920×1200 with no AA the GTX460 is pretty much on level with the other two cards at 23.1 fps compared to 24 for the GTX 465 and 22.6 for the 5830.
There are more benchmarks to have a look at if you head over the Expreview who got their hands on the leaked slides. It’s fairly obvious from this that the lower shader count combined with a reduced memory bus has had a fairly severe impact on performance, despite the difference being a mere 16 shaders. The GTX460 is clocked higher than the GTX465 both in terms of core clock, shader, and memory clock but it doesn’t seem to be enough to make up for the lower shader count and narrower memory bus.
So is the GTX460 going to be worth the money? Well, it’s a direct competitor to the Radeon HD 5830 and it seems to beat it in terms of raw performance in most cases. Gigabyte’s presentation mentions a minimum of a 450W PSU which is cutting it fine, although we don’t have the actual power draw of the card; the fact that it needs two 6-pin 12V power feeds suggests that it can draw some 225W of power all on its own. We’ll have to wait a wee bit longer to find out what the actual power draw is, but at least that wait seems to be over come Monday next week.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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