MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone OC 1 GB Review

Item: MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone OC 1 GB
Author: TPU Staff

W1zzard

on Jul 10th, 2010,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: MSI

Packaging & Contents »

Introduction

Today NVIDIA introduces the latest member of their DirectX 11 lineup. Their new GeForce GTX 460 is based on the all new 40 nm GF104 GPU which is based on the Fermi architecture introduced earlier this year. The GTX 460 is positioned at the lower end of the mid-range performance segment around the $200 price bracket. NVIDIA offers two variants of the GeForce GTX 460, one with 768 MB of GDDR5 memory and one with 1 GB. Due to the GPU architecture this change in memory size not only affects the actual memory but also other performance relevant figures. The reduction of memory size is achieved by installing less memory chips on the card which reduces the bus width of the GPU from 256-bit to 192-bit on the 768 MB version. Since the ROPs are coupled to the memory interface this also results in less ROP units. Combined all those changes reduce the fillrates and memory performance of the card by 25%. One important aspect of this review is how much of a difference this can make in real life.

We have five GTX 460 reviews for you today, making this the most covered VGA card launch in TPU history:

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
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SLI: Two 1 GB cards running in SLI.

Architecture

NVIDIA's GeForce Fermi (GF) 104 GPU comes with 384 shaders (CUDA cores) in the silicon but NVIDIA has disabled 48 of them to reach their intended performance targets and to improve GPU harvesting. Unlike with GF100, the GF104 has more populated streaming multiprocessors (SMs), 48 cores per SM vs. 32 cores per SM on GF100. I marked the disabled units in red in the diagram above, please note that any of the eight SM blocks can be disabled, not only the "last" one. On the 768 MB version, there are also less units as in the original architecture diagram, as indicated above.

	Radeon HD 5770	Radeon HD 5830	GeForce GTX 275	GeForce GTX 460	GeForce GTX 460	GeForce GTX 465	GeForce GTX 285	Radeon HD 5850	GeForce GTX 470	Radeon HD 5870	GeForce GTX 480
Shader units	800	1120	240	336	336	352	240	1440	448	1600	480
ROPs	16	16	28	24	32	32	32	32	40	32	48
GPU	Juniper	Cypress	GT200	GF104	GF104	GF100	GT200	Cypress	GF100	Cypress	GF100
Transistors	1040M	2154M	1404M	1950M	1950M	3200M	1404M	2154M	3200M	2154M	3200M
Memory Size	1024 MB	1024 MB	896 MB	768 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	1280 MB	1024 MB	1536 MB
Memory Bus Width	128 bit	256 bit	448 bit	192 bit	256 bit	256 bit	512 bit	256 bit	320 bit	256 bit	384 bit
Core Clock	850 MHz	800 MHz	602 MHz	675 MHz	675 MHz	607 MHz	648 MHz	725 MHz	607 MHz	850 MHz	700 MHz
Memory Clock	1200 MHz	1000 MHz	1107 MHz	900 MHz	900 MHz	802 MHz	1242 MHz	1000 MHz	837 MHz	1200 MHz	924 MHz
Price	$159	$230	$230	$199	$229	$279	$350	$310	$349	$400	$499