EVGA is currently selling the fastest GeForce GTX 460 available, and yet this board didn't make it into our Radeon HD 6800 coverage, just to keep things fair. Now we're back with a look at how an overclocked 460 compares to the GTX 470 and Radeon HD 6870.
When the Radeon HD 6800-series cards were launched in October, Nvidia representatives wanted us to include EVGA's GTX460 FTW in the benchmarks to represent the Radeon HD 6870’s competitive landscape. We didn’t go that route because the idea of benchmarking a GeForce GTX 460 with the highest available factory overclock against AMD's standard Radeon HD 6870 didn’t sit very well with us. Although EVGA’s highly overclocked GeForce GTX 460 is a perfectly valid product, it’s not a reference design, and is only offered by one company, while many manufacturers produce cards based on the Radeon HD 6870 reference standard.
With the Radeon HD 6800-series launch behind us, though, we’re certainly interested in seeing what EVGA’s top-of-the-line GeForce GTX 460 can do, and how it compares to its competition, Radeon- and GeForce-based cards alike.
From what we’ve seen, EVGA’s card boasts the highest factory overclock of any GeForce GTX 460 1 GB available to date. With 850/1700 MHz core/shader speeds and a 1000 MHz GDDR5 memory clock, this card has a significant 175/350 MHz core/shader and 100 MHz memory advantage over Nvidia's original design.
This overclock looks especially impressive when you compare stats against the reference GeForce GTX 470. EVGA’s GTX460 FTW has the potential to perform about 5% more shader operations per second than a reference GeForce GTX 470, and practical memory bandwidth is brought within 5% of the GF100-equipped card. The overclocked core and shader speeds push raster performance into an even higher realm. This suggests that EVGA’s factory overclocked GeForce GTX 460 should perform in the neighborhood of the GeForce GTX 470, and maybe even beat it in some situations. It’s no wonder Nvidia partially crippled the GF104 GPU and kept its reference clocks lower than they probably could have been—the company didn’t want its mid-range offering showing up in high-end products.

If you were expecting a magnum-force custom-cooling solution, prepare to be surprised. EVGA’s wunderkard humbly makes use of the reference cooler, tastefully arrayed in EVGA colors.

As far as we can tell from the back of the board, the PCB is reference fare, too. The only hardware upgrade that EVGA mentions in its marketing materials is an upgraded MOSFET heat sink.

This card requires two PCIe power connectors, just like every other GeForce GTX 460 we’ve seen.

The card’s outputs are also standard-issue GeForce GTX 460 equipment: two dual-link DVI outputs, complemented by a single mini-HDMI output.

The bundle includes a DVI-to-VGA adapter, two Molex-to-PCIe power-connector adapters, a user guide, a driver CD, and what appears to be a bumper sticker.
- EVGA Overclocks The GeForce GTX 460
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark Vantage And Unigine Heaven
- Benchmark Results: Metro 2033 (DX11)
- Benchmark Results: Lost Planet 2 (DX11)
- Benchmark Results: Aliens Vs. Predator (DX11)
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield Bad Company 2 (DX11)
- Game Benchmarks: StarCraft 2 (DX9)
- Benchmark Results: Civilization 5 (DX11)
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 2 (DX11)
- Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2 (DX11)
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 2 With Anti-Aliasing
- Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2 With Anti-Aliasing
- Power Usage And Temperature Benchmarks
- Conclusion: EVGA GTX460 For The Win!
The current test used a 10.10 Beta driver which was more problematic then the 10.9 AMD drivers. Makes no sense to me.
Bombard the the HD 6950? Maybe at a lesser price? Keeping my fingers crossed for the GTX 560
Because articles take time to write esp when you need to benchmark things.
They didn't have enough fun tricking me into putting lame stickers on my expensive case when i was young so now they want me to put lame stickers on my car.
My 470's are a force to be reckoned with but they're also incredibly loud on hot days (Which i can do Nothing about, even with Air conditioning) and according to these power figures suck up so much more power on average.
I still think i made the right choice though, it isn't like i notice the sound when i'm playing games anyway.
And WHY don't ratings work?! Seriously someone has to know..
Lolz your post almost exactly replicated touchdowntexas13's post right above.
But anyways, that's always the punishment for early adoption. Of course, these cards here are already close to the end of their lifecycle (when the Geforce 500 series is fully unveiled)
Someone in development broke the ratings system. A bug report has been filed, and we're all eagerly awaiting the fix so that, once again, you guys can vote them up or down!
Haha! oh well stuff happens, thanks for the explanation.
But the fps are so high that the difference is negligible. Most users playing the game run moniters at 60Hz. The real kicker would be to throw in Eyefinity and 3D Vision/Surround and see the impact of that. Still most users don't use those technologies either.