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:
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
Packaging
MSI's package is easily recognizable as such. The front lists the product highlights while you find more details information on the back.