stevenwright6379
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Introduction
The GTX460 is powered by the Fermi GF104 GPU architecture, which is a cut down version of the Fermi GF100 GPU architecture but just because it is cut down doesn’t mean it is worse. The main problem with the GF100 chip is that it is very power hungry and produced a lot of heat. The GF104 aimed to fix that in the mid-range market of graphics cards.
In this review I am going to be looking at ASUS’ most premium offering of the GTX460 768MB graphics card range, which in the ASUS ENGTX460 768MB TOP edition graphics card. As with all “TOP” edition cards from ASUS it comes with a factory overclock, the core is clocked at 700MHz only 25MHz higher than reference specifications. The overclock given to the shader and memory frequencies are equally unspectacular. The shader is clocked at 1400MHz (vs. 1350MHz) and the memory a disappointing 3680MHz (vs. 3600MHz.) Not what I had in mind from a “TOP” edition card.
Hopefully the cooler will help the ASUS redeem itself. The card comes with the ASUS Direct CU cooler, which ASUS claims to keep the card 20% cooler than the generic cooler from NVidia. It achieves this with the 2 8mm flattened copper heat pipes that have direct contact with the GPU. Whether this is true or not we will find out in the overclocking and temperature section of this review.
Not only will I be testing the card on its own, I will also be testing them in a 2-way SLI configuration.
Specifications
Core Clock: 700MHz
Memory Clock: 3680MHz (Effective)
Shader Clock: 1400MHz
Processing Cores: 336
Bus Type: PCI-E 2.0
Memory Detail: 768MB GDDR5
Memory Bit Width: 192 Bit
Memory Speed: 0.5 ns
Memory Bandwidth: 86.4 GB/sec
One Mini-HDMI 1.4a Connector
Two Dual-Link DVI-I Connectors
Closer Look
ASUS is well known for providing outstanding packaging which offers added assurance that the card will arrive in one piece even if the courier plays football with it. Yet again ASUS does not disappoint. The front of the box is perfect you have the right amount of information about the card as well as a flashy design of a man, angel and tiger all in one.
The back of the box is the usual mass of text telling you the features in many different languages.
When you open that box you then get to the accessories and obviously the card nicely organised in to compartments.
In the tube like compartment you will find a VGA-DVI adaptor, a HDMI-DVI adaptor and 2 Molex to 1 6pin PCI-E adaptor, weird to not find a Mini-HDMI adaptor of some kind included.
In the smaller box you will find a VGA driver & manual disk, ASUS speed step quick installation guide in multiple languages and a nice leather CD wallet with the ASUS logo on the front of it.
We then get to the card itself. Where as you can see not only is there 2 cards there is an 80mm fan cooling the card. I personally would have preferred a 92mm fan for added quietness. You also see the 2 8mm copper heat pipes to help dissipate the heat away from the card.
On the back of the card you see the single SLI connector showing it only supports a max of 2-way SLI. But that is not all you see on the back of the card, you will also see a back plate for the heat sink cooling the power regulations that deliver the power throughout the card and of course there is 2 6pin PCI-E connectors.
On the front of the card you see a full slot for ventilation as well as a range of connectors for fitting your monitors, which include 2 DVI-I and 1 mini-HDMI connectors.
As for the cooler, you soon learn why it is called the Direct Cu (copper) cooler. The copper heat pipes have direct contact to the GF104 chip powering the card allowing for better cooling.
No review is complete without a picture of the PCB without the cooler attached and here it is. As you can see it uses a non-reference PCB. Which Is going to make it impossible to cool with any 3rd party cooler that’s air or water.
Test setup
I7 920 @4.0GHz
6GB Kingston Hyper-X T1
GIGABYTE X58A-UD7
Corsair AX750w
Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit
Prolimatech Megahalems with arctic cooling MX-3
2x ASUS ENGTX460 top 768Mb in SLI (using 260.99 drivers)
In this test I will be testing one card on its own as well as in SLI and will also be overclocking the cards in both configurations to help provide an insight at what configuration is best for you.
Overclocking and temperatures
With the cards slightly disappointing factory overclock I had to see if I could get the card running a higher overclock. For this I used MSI afterburner to increase the volts to 1087mV I then increased the core clock to 850MHz and the shader to 1700MHz. I never increased the memory frequency as it made little to no difference to the results given below but can the cooler handle the overclock…
I was very impressed with the direct CU cooler, I found when in single card use and at stock settings the card never went above 68C under load and never made a sound. When overclocked in single use the card reached 74C and again I could hear the fan but when in SLI and at stock settings the top card reached a modest 81C and the bottom reached 66C and it is a good job they don’t advertise the cooler as being quiet on the box, at one point I looked out my window to see if a jumbo jet was flying low over my house to find out it was the cards making all the noise. As expected the temps were worse and so was the noise. The top card reached a nice and toasty 99C with the bottom a respectable 74C but both fans were on 100% and I even mounted a 120mm fan next to the SLI Bridge to help give the card more air to breath but it never helped. Let’s see if the overclocks are worth the extra heat.
3Dmark vantage
(Please note the purpose of this test the performance pre-set mode was used.)
In single card use the card scores about the same as a HD5770 but when you team it up with another card it beats a GTX480 and even more shockingly it is very close to beating a HD5970.
Unigine
No set of benchmarks for a direct X 11 graphics card will be complete without the Unigine Heaven 2.1 benchmark. For this I tested it with tessellation set to extreme and AA was switched off.
(DX11, shaders: high, tessellation: extreme, anisotropy: 16, AA off, 1680x1050)
These results are by far the most impressive results so far. Just going from one card to 2 gives you almost double the performance. Even overclocking offers a very respectable increase. But do we see the same benefits when gaming…
Resident evil 5 benchmark
(1680x1050, 16xQ AA, DX10, motion blur –on, everything else set to high)
Resident evil 5 depends heavily on the graphics cards used. In earlier tests i found that overclocking the CPU made little to no difference in the score so I felt this was a perfect game to use to test the benefits from overclocking the card. Now unlike the Heaven benchmark overclocking never made a huge difference on the other hand going from 1 card to 2 cards made I big difference with the average frame rate going from 75.4fps to 129.7fps giving a 54.3fps increase.
Crysis warhead
(1680x1050, AA off, gamer settings)
Now the question with any new hardware seems to be. Can I play Crysis? The answer in this case is yes it can. When looking at these results it is hard to believe that this card on its own costs around £120-£140 even at stock on its own the frames per second don’t go below 17. The really shocking result though is the difference in the average frames per second between SLI and SLI overclocked mainly because there wasn’t one, the reason behind this is unclear but was most certainly a shock.
Metro 2033
(1680x1050, normal, DX11, AAA, AF 4x)
Currently the biggest resource hog there is. Metro 2033 is the Crysis of the current generation of gaming and has seen the likes of the GTX480 and HD5970 struggle to keep it at steady frame rates. So it is not surprising to see the GTX460s find it near on impossible to keep it under control until they double teamed the game in SLI at which point you still needed to overclock the cards to keep it above 60fps.
Conclusion
The ASUS GTX460 TOP preforms around 4% faster than the generic cards but that is to be expected from a card that is ever so slightly overclocked. I also showed the card has a lot of headroom for overclocking and begs the question. Why ASUS didn’t launch the card with a higher overclock? This is something that ASUS should consider next time around especially when company’s like EVGA one of the biggest graphics card manufactures on the NVidia side are bringing cards to the table that are 88MHz over the standard stock speeds with the generic design.
When looking over the results mainly overclocking and temperature section it does become apparent why ASUS only overclocked the cards slightly. With any justifiable overclock on these cards when in SLI you quickly hit thermal limitation with the cooler, which raises even more questions like why did they choose a cooler that’s not up to the job when in SLI? The reason for that is simple. With previous generations of graphics cards, SLI and crossfire was reserved for the enthusiasts as it took a while for stuff like drivers to be perfected (something both AMD and NVidia are still working on) and also games to support it in a positive way, so the only real reason for it was for benchmarks but all of that changed with the current generation of Direct X 11 graphics cards, They have brought SLI and crossfire to the masses and more and more people are choosing it, so not only has the number of people building or buying multiple GPU setups increased so has the number if non-reference coolers being manufactured, leaving company’s like ASUS in a very tricky territory where they have to make a decision that when they design the cooler what do they want it to support more, single or multi-GPU setups. In this case I would conclude that ASUS tried to compromise between the 2 by lowering the included overclock.
Overall the card disappoints more than it should from a company of ASUS’ standards and I hope that when the next gen of NVidia cards hit the market ASUS will bring something to the table that can actually compete with other cards in the same price range. Though the biggest disappointment by far is the non-reference PCB which makes sure there is no escape from the disappointing included cooler.
Price seems to be the most important thing at the moment and ASUS have done well in that section as this card costing £129.99 it is one of the cheapest GTX460s on the market.
Pros-
Good for single card use
Nice price
Cons-
Non-reference PCB
Loud when in SLI
Lack of mini-HDMI to HDMI adaptor
