Introduction

Today NVIDIA introduces the latest member of their DirectX 11 lineup. Their new GeForce GTX 460 is based on the all new NVIDIA GeForce GF104 GPU which is based on the Fermi architecture introduced earlier this year. The GTX 460 is positioned at the lower end of the midrange performance segment around the $200 price bracket. NVIDIA offers two variants of the GeForce GTX 460, one with 768 MB of memory and one with 1 GB of GDDR5.



In this review we will test how well two of the 1 GB cards run in SLI. Considering the price this might be an alternative to getting a single GeForce GTX 480, for example. It also give insight into what we can expect from a future NVIDIA dual-GF104 card which is rumored to be released later this year as something like GeForce GTX 495. Unfortunately NVIDIA has removed the possibility to run more than two GeForce GTX 460 cards in triple or quad SLI.

If you haven't done so, please check out our single card reviews to get more details about the cards. This review will focus on performance only, noise and power can simply be estimated by doubling the single card numbers.

• AXLE GeForce GTX 460 768 MB: Reference design 768 MB
• MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone OC 768 MB: Factory overclocked 768 MB
• ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 1 GB: Reference design-like 1 GB
• MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone OC 1 GB: Factory overclocked 1 GB

Test System

• All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
• All games were set to their highest quality setting

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

• 1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
• 1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
• 1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
• 1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
• 2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

BattleForge

BattleForge, a card based RTS, is developed by the German EA Phenomic Studio. A few months after launch the game was transformed into a Play 4 Free branded game. That move and the fact that it was included as game bundle with a large number of ATI cards made it one of the more well known RTS games of 2009. You as a player assemble your deck before game to select the units that will be available. Your choice can be from forces of Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow to complement each other.
The BattleForge engine has full support for DX 9, DX 10 and DX 10.1, we used the internal benchmark tool to acquire our results.