Nvidia 460 gtx overclock: NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460: The $200 King

93 Comments

IndexGF104: NVIDIA Goes SuperscalarThe Rest of GF104Meet the GTX 460The TestCrysis: WarheadBattleForge: DX10BattleForge: DX11HAWXLeft 4 DeadBattlefield: Bad Company 2STALKER: Call of PripyatDIRT 2Mass Effect 2WolfensteinCompute & Tessellation PerformancePower, Temperature, & NoiseOverclockingConclusion

Overclocking

Last but not least on our tour of the GeForce GTX 460 is a look at the overclocking abilities of the card. As we discussed earlier, NVIDIA is heavily promoting the overclockability of the card to the press, proclaiming that they are regularly able to get most cards up to 800MHz. We’re in a unique situation today to put that to the test, as along with our 2 reference cards, we have an additional 4 vendor cards from our GTX 460 roundup to tinker with. With 6 cards on hand we have a non-definitive but still very useful sample set to work with to verify just how overclockable these cards are, and what kind of a power penalty this entails.

For the purposes of this section we are focusing on the overclockability of the core, but not the memory. NVIDIA’s weaker GDDR5 memory controller coupled with the tendency for memory overclocking to reduce performance through the need to use error detection and retransmission makes memory overclocking much more difficult and often a bust entirely.

As not all of our cards are exactly alike, we’ll quickly run down the differences between the various cards

• 
  1x NVIDIA GTX 460 768MB Reference
• 
  1x NVIDIA GTX 460 1GB Reference
• 
  2x EVGA GTX 460 768MB SuperClocked: Reference PCB and cooler, factory overclocked
• 
  1x Zotac GTX 460 1GB: Reference-derived PCB, custom blower-style cooler
• 
  1x Asus ENGTX460 768MB TOP: Custom PCB, custom cooler, factory overclocked, voltage tweak
  
   

	Stock Clock	Max Overclock	Stock Voltage	Overclocked Voltage
GTX 460 768MB Reference	675MHz	840MHz	0. 987v	N/A
GTX 460 1GB Reference	675MHz	825MHz	1.025v	N/A
EVGA GTX 460 768MB SuperClocked #1	763MHz	850MHz	1.000v	N/A
EVGA GTX 460 768MB SuperClocked #2	763MHz	840MHz	0. 975v	N/A
Zotac GTX 460 1GB	675MHz	835MHz	1.000v	N/A
Asus ENGTX460 768MB TOP	700MHz	930MHz	0.975v	1.062v
GTX 460 1GB SLI	675MHz	800MHz	N/A	N/A
EVGA GTX 460 768MB SuperClocked SLI	763MHz	840MHz	N/A	N/A

Among our 5 cards without voltage tweaking capabilities, all of the cards are closely clustered together in terms of the final stable overclock, with only a 25MHz difference between the top and bottom cards. The 1GB cards ended up with slightly lower overclocks than the 768MB cards, which is likely a product of the 1GB cards containing further enable ROPs and L2 cache than the 768MB cards. Meanwhile the best overclock on a card we got without a voltage tweak was one of our EVGA cards, which was able to go to 850MHz. On average we were able to attain a 24% overclock over the GTX 460 reference clock of 675MHz, and in the case of the EVGA cards a 10% overclock over their factory speed of 763MHz.

The lone standout in the group is the Asus card, which has voltage tweaking capabilities that allow us to increase the core voltage beyond the GPU’s VID. Asus’s SmartDoctor software allows for the card to be overvolted to 1.087v in 0.0125v increments, however in testing we found that anything over 1.062v would ultimately cause the card to fall back to 405MHz, which we believe to be the card’s VRM protection kicking in after the VRMs overheated. At 1.062v we were able to get the card to up 930MHz, a 33% overclock from the factory overclocked speed of 700MHz, and 38% faster than the GTX 460 reference clock of 675MHz.

Overall the impact of overclocking is heavily game dependent. Core overclocking favors games that are ROP/shader limited and has little effectiveness on games that are limited by the total available RAM or by memory bandwidth. For this reason out of our subset of games core overclocking was most effective on Battleforge and Bad Company 2, while only moderately effective on Crysis and STALKER. On Crysis and STALKER overclocking was at best only marginally more useful than having a 1GB card. And even with its greater core overclock, the Asus ENGTX260 is not immune to this effect once the 1GB cards are overclocked – it still falls behind an overclocked 1GB card ¾ of the time.

Currently the sweet spot would look to be a 1GB card with a lesser overclock. The additional RAM/L2/ROPs more than makes up for the higher overclocks the 768MB cards can attain in most situations.

For the cards without voltage tweaking capabilities, the power consumption penalty for overclocking is very minor due to the fact that power consumption increases with voltage much faster than it does with frequency. For the stock-clocked cards this is a 15W-25W penalty, while the factory overclocked cards are even lower (thanks to binning) at just 9W. Meanwhile as expected the Asus card with its voltage tweaking capabilities ends up witnessing a larger jump in power consumption in return for its greater overclock capabilities: 70W.

With only a minor increase in power consumption and the use of very efficient coolers, the GTX 460 only experiences a minor rise in temperature when overclocking without voltage modification. All of our cards with the exception of the Zotac under Furmark only rise in temperature by a few degrees, leaving temperatures well in the safe range for these cards. Even the Asus card with voltage modification stays fairly cool thanks to its more aggressive fan, rising by up to 10C under Furmark but still only becoming as warm as our stock-cooled cards in the first place.

Last but not least we have the noise factor. Thanks to the very low increase in power consumption these cards experience when overclocking, the coolers on these cards have to do very little to handle the extra heat. For the cards without voltage modding, the amount of noise generated increased by less than 1.5dB, and in the case of our EVGA cards didn’t increase at all. This results in our GTX 460 cards remaining as some of the quietest mid and high-end cards we’ve ever benchmarked, even with a 24% overclock.

The Asus card is of course the exception to the rule here, once again due to a combination of the more aggressive cooler and voltage modification. Here the amount of noise generated shoots up by 4.4dB when overclocked, which is a fair trade for the overclock but is definitely going to be more noticeable than the rest of the cards in our collection.

With all of this taken in to consideration, there’s little we can do to argue with NVIDIA’s claims about the GTX 460’s overclocking capabilities. One thing we need to make clear before going any further though is this: overclocking is not guaranteed. In our briefings with NVIDIA, they have told us that they know not every GTX 460 can hit 800MHz+, which in turn is part of the reason why the stock clock is only 675MHz. We believe a majority of cards will be strong overclockers, but this cannot be applied to all cards. Buying a GTX 460 is still going to rely on the luck of the draw, only the odds are very good at the moment. So if you absolutely must have an overclocked card, then a factory overclocked card is still the way to go.

At this point if you do receive a strong card it makes little sense not to overclock thanks to the very small increase in power consumption (and as a result, temperatures and noise) that overclocking causes. This is as close to as free of an overclock as there can be for a video card, so run with it and enjoy performance approaching a Radeon HD 5850.

Finally, if you are going to overclock, what kind of a card should you be shooting for? As it turns out the reference cooler does a very good job of hitting a balance between cooling needs and noise, while Zotec’s cooler does worse and Asus’s cooler does better at a cost of additional noise. We will add that we believe that overclocked 1GB cards are a better way to go just like we believe that 1GB cards are the way to go when at stock clocks, but ultimately this becomes a matter of affordability. 

Power, Temperature, & Noise
Conclusion
IndexGF104: NVIDIA Goes SuperscalarThe Rest of GF104Meet the GTX 460The TestCrysis: WarheadBattleForge: DX10BattleForge: DX11HAWXLeft 4 DeadBattlefield: Bad Company 2STALKER: Call of PripyatDIRT 2Mass Effect 2WolfensteinCompute & Tessellation PerformancePower, Temperature, & NoiseOverclockingConclusion

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

GTX 460 Max overclock | Overclock.

net

JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.

Sup yall!

Ok, so this is the story…

When I bought my GTX460 the box had a large badge saying ‘Voltage tweak!’ and well you can imagine my first impressions… «no way I’m going to do any voltage changes on this baby…» lol. Well I did a little research and found that there really isnt anything to worry about changing the voltage on the GTX460, as the max limit in MSI Afterbuner is safe.

So this morning I did a little overclocking on it to see how high I could go…
Here are my results…

885MHZ! and 2000MHZ! on the memory! total ownage if you ask me.
It’s 10 minutes Furmark stable and seems to run smoothly in Bad Company 2 at max settings.
I threw in my cpu clock too, hehe

Stock voltage on the card is 0.975v and I have raised it to 1.035v to achieve 885mhz, it also maxes out at 74c at full load.
It’s an Asus Geforce gtx460 1gb version.

The max that MSI Afterburner allows is 1.087v, I’m pretty sure I could get it to 900mhz although I dont want to push my luck.

One thing I noticed about this card while overclocking, is that it never artifacts? Instead when it becomes unstable it simply crashes furmark, BSOD’s or locks up. This makes it slightly harder to interperate weather the card is running stable

Also the card makes an almighty whining noise from the onboard capacitors when it’s under full load, this baby is pulling more than 300w at 885mhz!

Really happy with the results and would love to know what you think

See less

See more

4

Reply

Save

Like

1 — 20 of 23 Posts

I had mine at 900MHz, but I don’t remember the specs I had it at. I’ve got a Sparkle GTX 460 1GB.

I ended up getting a messed up driver and it just threw up my GPU, had to uninstall and reinstall, and I lost my GPU specs for it’s OC. So I copied yours. Thanks.

See less

See more

Reply

Save

Like

lol, not what I expected but glad I helped

See less

See more

Reply

Save

Like

nice overclock, but you need to run OCCT for a min 20min in full screen with shader complaxity 8 and enable error check. if you get no errors then you got a stable over clock.

Reply

Save

Like

Nice OC….. m thinkin about pickin one up. Wanna go back to my first luv nvidia too badly.

Reply

Save

Like

Nice oc, my max stable OC was 950/1900 (core/shader) and 2100 mem. but my 24/7 clock is 900/1800/2100

Reply

Save

Like

Quote:

Originally Posted by marduke83;12094298
Nice oc, my max stable OC was 950/1900 (core/shader) and 2100 mem. but my 24/7 clock is 900/1800/2100

Click to expand…

mine are very similar just the memory it’s @2000MHz and run everything stable all day playing games and watching movies, also making some benchmarks and stress test like kombustor (of course not at the same time, i won’t push my luck to much lol)

voltage 1.087v
core 900MHz
shader 1800MHz
memory 2000MHz

then i raise 930/1860/2200 and there was problems, with this setting the heaven benchmark run fine but in crysis and aliens vs predator (DX11) the graphics are not good, in both games the buildings and vegetation seems their images are repeated in the sky it’s like the kaleidoscope effect, I don’t know exactly how to explain, and in crysis the map only see the bottom half, the other half is blurry, and objects marked on the minimap are also fuzzy.
The OS never crash but is not fun to playlike this, and every time the game just frozen and had to close and restart again

I think that’s happen because of the memory @2200MHz, i will try again with the memory at stock speed

I forgot to tell my card is the 768Mb version but i think is similar in the core and shaders frecuency

See less

See more

Reply

Save

Like

Nice overclocks!
Been pushing my card a little further and have managed to achieve this…

OCCT 20 minutes stable at shader complexity 8.
Furmark stable for 10 minutes.
Will test my card for longer though.
So far 100% stable though.
Only thing worring me now is the temps, my 460 hit 80c in occt :/

Anywayz, it runz beast tho, lol.

Peace everyone

See less

See more

Reply

Save

Like

Mine only goes to 850

Need to up the voltage i think. What’s the max voltage i can push through this thing??? 1.050???

Might be getting 570 at the end of the month so i’d like to hit this cards peak.

Reply

Save

Like

mine goes up to 875 ( carnt get 880 stable lol )
but hey stock volts

pretty sure someone was running 2 460’s in sli @ 900mhz each..
and heard people getting them up to 1ghz. but yeh lol i dnt think ill be pushing my card that far for now.

friend can get 900mhz think.. idk what volts and think 1ghz lasted like 10min under furmark xD idk what volts again lol

nice oc btw :]

See less

See more

Reply

Save

Like

Quote:

What’s the max voltage i can push through this thing??? 1.050???

Click to expand…

Well the default voltage on the 1GB version of the gtx460 ranges from 0.975v to 1.05v depending on the make of your card. 768mb version is .975v.
The maximum voltage that the GTX460 BIOS allows is 1.087v on all makes and models, this voltage is safe to max out as long as the cooling is good enough around the vrms. It is possible to mod the BIOS to allow 1.21v but this is advanced stuff that isnt really worth it unless you are an overclocker with a mission, lol.
If you hear whining when you stress test the card, dont worry, it’s because there is more load on the capacitors to keep the voltages on the card in check.

Temp threshold is 105c and shutdown at 120c so I wouldnt worry about gpu temps.

Hope this helps

See less

See more

Reply

Save

Like

Quote:

Originally Posted by GreenNeon;12100647
Well the default voltage on the 1GB version of the gtx460 ranges from 0.975v to 1.05v depending on the make of your card. 768mb version is .975v.
The maximum voltage that the GTX460 BIOS allows is 1.087v on all makes and models, this voltage is safe to max out as long as the cooling is good enough around the vrms. It is possible to mod the BIOS to allow 1.21v but this is advanced stuff that isnt really worth it unless you are an overclocker with a mission, lol.
If you hear whining when you stress test the card, dont worry, it’s because there is more load on the capacitors to keep the voltages on the card in check.

Temp threshold is 105c and shutdown at 120c so I wouldnt worry about gpu temps.

Hope this helps

Click to expand…

That does help actually Thanks for replying.

And i always wondered about the whining thing too. Glad it’s nothing to worry about, always thought i was damaging my system lol.

Gonna whack up the volts and try 900mhz. Cheers.

Reply

Save

Like

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyster;12100749
That does help actually Thanks for replying.

And i always wondered about the whining thing too. Glad it’s nothing to worry about, always thought i was damaging my system lol.

Gonna whack up the volts and try 900mhz. Cheers.

Click to expand…

Ok my MSI cyclone never pass the 60 ºC at full load OC @900MHz core and there are no capacitors noise, but i think is because the military components that MSI use really is very cool and quite, i had an HD 4890 recently and the buzzing noise was excessive, but i think that is normal too

My voltage is 1. 087

Reply

Save

Like

Quote:

Originally Posted by Liighthead;12100314
mine goes up to 875 ( carnt get 880 stable lol )
but hey stock volts

pretty sure someone was running 2 460’s in sli @ 900mhz each..
and heard people getting them up to 1ghz. but yeh lol i dnt think ill be pushing my card that far for now.

friend can get 900mhz think.. idk what volts and think 1ghz lasted like 10min under furmark xD idk what volts again lol

nice oc btw :]

Click to expand…

ewan hit 930/1860/2100 in SLI with the msi gtx460 768mb cyclone

Reply

Save

Like

Well TBH I think the whining noise varies from card to card and the benchmark/stress test you use. For example…, my 460 whines under load when I run furmark but when I run the more demanding OCCT stability test, my card doesnt whine at all? So I think it makes me believe that depending on the way a program has been designed to test your card you may or may not hear the noise. I’m not sure if its dependant on the quality of the parts, my ASUS Geforce GTX460 is built with high grade components as is pretty much every other GTX460 on the market. The military grade components linked with the MSI 460 is only marketed for the heatsink and shroud… Anyone want to back me up on this?

P.S. tested BFBC2 and it runs fine without and issues at 920mhz, have noticed that every now and then I see purple dots flash on the screen, usually when there is a sharp transition in the colours, like looking from the ground to the sky.

Peace

See less

See more

Reply

Save

Like

gunna correct something here: maximum temperature for GTX 460 is 104 C

anyway i got mine folding stable at 900MHz 1.087v running at 69-72 C. currently at 69 C

i tried going higher but that get me artifacts on OCCT when temp breach like 75

See less

See more

Reply

Save

Like

Here is mine. I do 975 core for gaming but this for folding.

Reply

Save

Like

Desert, are your 460’s on water?

Reply

Save

Like

Quote:

Originally Posted by spice003;12094121
nice overclock, but you need to run OCCT for a min 20min in full screen with shader complaxity 8 and enable error check. if you get no errors then you got a stable over clock.

Click to expand…

Ooorrrr just play a game with Vsync off and play for a while to see if it’s stable? AvP is the best choice since it drives your card fairly hard.

Reply

Save

Like

Quote:

Originally Posted by Desert Rat;12114002
Here is mine. I do 975 core for gaming but this for folding.

Click to expand…

dam nice temps!

how they cooled
;D pics? what rad u useing?

Reply

Save

Like

1 — 20 of 23 Posts

This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could
be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.

Top

GTX 460, GTX 560, HD 6870 and HD 6850 overclocked and cold (page 3)

Explanation of table .

Areas of maximum overclocking level for specific video cards are highlighted in black. It was under these parameters that they took part in testing. This does not mean at all that if you buy the same video card in the store, you can expect similar results. For the most part, the scatter of the results of video cards is placed in the 50 MHz range. Let’s go through the instances.

HD 6850 Standard design. The maximum voltage threshold in MSI Afterburner is 1.3V. Up to 1.18V, there is a slight dip in the PWM regulation, but as soon as the voltage on the GPU overcomes the 1.2V mark, an overabundance appears. In other words, Vdrop is visible up to a certain point, and after that, its compensation. The potential of the graphics core is excellent.

It scales up to 1 GHz with a penny, and reached the level of HD 6870 without changing the voltage. But with what efforts is given gigahertz for Barts’a! Voltage increase +13%, electricity consumption +16%, GPU temperature +11%, frequency +29%. Not bad for a start, but keep in mind: at such a high frequency, the temperature is close to 90 degrees Celsius. Further growth is complicated by a weak cooling system that is unable to curb the strongly growing heat release.

GTX 460 is MSI’s original design graphics card. The maximum voltage threshold in MSI Afterburner is +0.1 V; in the program itself, the count is carried out in arbitrary units, up to exactly +100, which corresponds to 1.075 V. The number set in Afterburner is not quite equal to the real value. This situation is quite typical for all video cards. The delta between the two values ​​remains constant throughout the entire voltage range, and only in the region of ~1.1 V is a serious surge noticeable.

The standard frequency of the graphics core according to NVIDIA specifications is 675 MHz, MSI «overclocked» the card to 810 MHz. GPU scalability is higher than HD 6850 by as much as +41%. Further “overclocking” was held back by physical limitations in the BIOS and in the software. Absolute figures for voltage growth + 14%, electricity consumption + 23%, GPU temperature + 25%, frequency + 41%.

HD 6870 is MSI’s original design graphics card. The maximum voltage threshold in MSI Afterburner is 1.3 V. The delta in the difference between the voltage set through Afterburner and the real value from the multimeter remained constant. Light compensation can be counted as a bonus in the maximum value. Unlike a video card based on the same core, but ranked lower, the HD 6870 demonstrated the character of a fighter.

Gigahertz with a tail — this is not a joke to you, even without the use of extreme cooling means! In principle, 1 GHz is available «for free», with a slight increase in voltage. The next step required a much larger VGpu. In absolute terms, it looks like this: voltage increase + 10%, electricity consumption + 15%, GPU temperature + 13%, frequency + 18%.

recommendations

GTX 560 Ti is MSI’s original design graphics card. The maximum voltage threshold in MSI Afterburner is +0.1 V, in the program itself the counting is carried out in arbitrary units up to +100, which corresponds to 1.15 V. The standard frequency of the graphics core according to the NVIDIA specification is 822 MHz, MSI «overclocked» the card to 880 MHz . The delta between two values, real and software, is constant until a certain moment, until it exceeds the mark of ~1.2 V. This is followed by a jump along the exponential dependence.

I was not lucky with the card, gigahertz was not reached at the factory voltage parameters. It subdued only after a significant voltage mod of +0.11 V. For statistics, the video card “tuning” figures look like this: voltage increase + 22%, electricity consumption + 22%, GPU temperature + 19%, frequency + 22%.

Graphics card overclocking depending on the Vgpu voltage.

Power consumption of the system with installed video card depending on the frequency of the graphics core.

GPU temperature versus frequency.

And now, having marked all the video cards on the graphs, I will allow myself to write a few words about the state of affairs.

The GTX 460, thanks to the good cooling of the Twin Frozr II, overclocked the best. The threshold of a reasonable limit lies in the region of 915-930 MHz, a further increase in voltage leads to a deterioration in acoustic characteristics. For lovers of silence, I advise you to limit yourself to the factory frequency of 810 MHz, in this form the video card not only heats up a little, but also makes little noise. GF104 feels great in MSI performance up to 850-875 MHz.

Its upgraded version of the GTX 560 Ti continues the tradition of NVIDIA graphics cores. An increased number of SP units implies an increase in consumption. Using my skills and experience as an engineer, I managed to create a balance between the frequency and execution units, in parallel increase the frequency to 822 MHz, and MSI even higher — 880 MHz. The GTX 560 Ti with a cooling system similar to the GTX 460 (by the way, both cards have the same PCB) easily overclocked to 975 MHz and froze. It froze for a long time, up to ~ 1.2 V, thought a little and allowed it to move forward by another 15 MHz. After that, the overclocking process died.

The intersection of two maps near the 880 MHz point allows us to draw some conclusions. Previously, all video cards were disassembled, and the thermal paste was replaced with Arctic Cooling MX-2, but attempts to equalize the participants were in vain. The significant difference between the GTX 560 and GTX 460 is mind-boggling. The same GPU temperature is achieved at different fan speeds, and if it were not for the power consumption, then everything would be in order. But it turns out that the GTX 560 Ti “eats” more, heats up less. Nonsense, and I can’t explain this with anything like a faulty radiator or part of the heat pipes in the cooling system. Due to the fact that the cards were in the hands in turn, it was not possible to rearrange the CO.

The difference between the HD 6850 and HD 6870 is roughly the same as for the GF104/114. The slight gap in power consumption is due to the low temperature of the 6870. The Twin Frozr III on the 6870 is not only quieter than the turbo on the 6850, but also cools the hotter GPU better. The HD 6850 heatsink, devoid of any technical modern solutions, is of little use for overclocking. If you want silence and a light gigahertz, change it urgently.

MSI HD 6870 Twin Frozr III impressed with its properties. I have not seen such a quiet video card for a long time, and in addition to deathly silence, you still have the opportunity to seriously overclock it, up to 1 GHz without damaging the acoustic characteristics. In parallel, the manufacturer has saved you the hassle of fighting for the temperature of the graphics core.

Of course, if you look at video cards objectively, then junior solutions arouse more interest. Both NVIDIA and AMD have put such a large margin of safety into them that one cannot but recognize the makings of the GTX 460 and HD 6850 to become the best choice in their class.

---

Operating temperatures

Degrees, °С

Plain | Load

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs

---

Noise level

dBA

Plain | Load

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs

The relatively cool state of the MSI GTX 460 is achieved by increasing the speed of the fans. It is necessary to reduce the speed a little, and the MSI GTX 560 becomes a very quiet video card. By the way, not to the detriment of the temperature state, +4°C does not create a critical situation. If there were no MSI HD 6870 Twin Frozr III among the test participants, then one would never know how quiet video cards are. Two fan operation modes (productive P, quiet S) are displayed on the graphs. None of them reach the temperatures or noise levels of the standard card.

In absolute terms, the HD 6870 has dropped from 9 to 13°C, and the acoustic comfort has increased significantly. The HD 6850, as mentioned above, is not equipped with a highly efficient cooling system, and besides, it is quite noisy.

---

Electricity consumption

Watt

Plain | Load

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs

NVIDIA GTX 460/560 graphics cards consume more electricity under all conditions, which is not a big secret.

Listen to the cooling system (.wma):

• msi460hawk [2150 Kb]
• msi560 [2150 Kb]
• msi6870p [1800 Kb]
• msi6870s [2300 Kb]

And compare:

• 6870 [2205 Kb]
• 6850 [1747 Kb]
• 6990 830 [2200 Kb]
• 6990 880 [2384 Kb]
• 6970 [2689 Kb]
• 6950 [3215 Kb]
• 5970 [3013 Kb]
• 470 [2564 Kb]
• 570 [2564 Kb]
• 480 lightning [2335 Kb]

List of video cards and their frequencies:

Name	Nominal GPU/Mem frequencies, MHz	Overclocking GPU/Mem, MHz	Extreme overclocking GPU/Mem, MHz
HD 6870	900/1050	1000/1150	1200/1300
HD 6850	775/1000	1000/1150	1050/1250
GTX 460	675/1350/900	975/1950/1050	1050/1050
GTX 560 Ti	822/1645/1000	1000/2000/1050	1150/1100

Crossfire and Sli configurations worked at nominal (standard) frequencies.

GTX 460 performance is taken as the starting point of reference.

---

Settings:

• Extreme, Extreme profile 2560×1440.

Score GPU | Score X

2560×1440 | 1920×1080

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs

Model:	Average 1920%	Average 2560%
GTX 560 Ti	33	33
HD 6870	35	40
HD 6850	7	eleven
GTX 560 Ti OC	57	56
GTX 460OC	38	38
HD 6870 OC	47	54
HD 6850 OC	28	26
GTX 560 Ti XOC	81	82
HD 6870 XOC	72	80
GTX 460 XOC	59	60
HD 6850 XOC	40	45

---

Benchmark version 1. 0.
Settings:

• DirectX 11.0.
• General settings — ultra.
• Render — improved full lighting.
• Full screen anti-aliasing — 4x.
• Anti-aliasing for Alpha test — off.
• SSAO — HDAO mode.
• SSAO quality — ultra CS version.
• Tessellation — incl.
• Realistic shadows — incl.
• V-sync — disabled.

Frames/sec

Min | Avg | Max

1680×1050

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs
1920×1200

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs
2560×1440

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs

Model:	Medium 1680%	Medium 1920%	Average 2560%
GTX 560 Ti	34. 0	33.6	37.6
GTX 460	0.0	0.0	0.0
HD 6870	23.6	25.8	18.0
HD 6850	-2.2	1.5	2.5
GTX 560 Ti OC	55.7	52. 7	57.3
GTX 460OC	38.0	37.6	34.8
HD 6870 OC	35.3	39.3	29.2
HD 6850 OC	17.5	20.8	20.8
GTX 560 Ti XOC	74.7	73.8	78. 7
HD 6870 XOC	65.2	63.8	56.2
GTX 460 XOC	54.6	53.7	48.9
HD 6850 XOC	39.4	42.6	40.4

---

Benchmark version 2.0.
Settings:

• DirectX 11.
• Shaders-high.
• Tessellation — normal.
• Anisotropy — 16x.
• Anti-aliasing — 2x.

Frames/sec

Min | Avg | Max

1680×1050

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs
1920×1200

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs
2560×1440

Please enable JavaScript to see graphs

Model:	Medium 1680%	Medium 1920%	Average 2560%
GTX 560 Ti	34. 3	35.4	35.1
GTX 460	0.0	0.0	0.0
HD 6870	-3.5	0.0	1.0
HD 6850	-17.9	-14.9	-14.1
GTX 560 Ti OC	51.9	53. 5	53.7
GTX 460OC	36.4	36.8	37.1
HD 6870 OC	5.6	9.4	10.7
HD 6850 OC	-0.3	0.3	3.4
GTX 560 Ti XOC	74.5	75.0	75. 1
HD 6870 XOC	24.3	28.5	29.3
GTX 460 XOC	57.5	56.3	55.6
HD 6850 XOC	2.1	5.6	5.9

Subscribe to our channel in Yandex.Zen or telegram channel @overclockers_news — these are convenient ways to follow new materials on the site. With pictures, extended descriptions and no ads.

Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 1GB Super OC review. Maximum factory overclock.

Introduction.
Galaxy could not stay away from the GF104 core and provided users with a whole quartet of video cards based on this core. Indeed, in June the company presented four video cards of the GeForce GTX 460 series, which can already be purchased on the shelves of component shops in our country.

On all four video cards, the company uses a cooling system of its own design, which we already got acquainted with when testing the Galaxy GeForce GTX 470 video card on our portal. The uniqueness of this cooling system is a reinforced radiator and an easily removable cooling fan integrated into the casing covering the radiator.

Naturally, the cooling systems on the GeForce GTX 470 and GeForce GTX 460 video cards differ from each other, which is due to the lower heat dissipation of the last board and its reduced size.
Complete set.

The video card comes in a box similar to the design of the Galaxy GF GTX 470 video card. The manufacturer emphasizes the fact that its video card is one of the first in the world to have an easily removable fan. It also emphasizes the presence of factory overclocking of the video card, which we will discuss below.

It should be noted that among the presented graphics cards of the GF GTX 460 series from Galaxy, there are only overclocked versions. Two video cards have 768 MB video memory and operate at 700 MHz (GC Edition) and 810 MHz (Super OC Edition). Two video cards have 1 GB video memory and operate at the above frequencies.

In the box with the video card were found:

— instruction

— CD with drivers

— DVI-to-VGA adapter

— mini HDMI-to-HDMI cable

— two 6-pin power adapters.

The package bundle of the video card turned out to be complete, not truncated, which many previously tested products from various manufacturers sin.

---

Visual inspection of the video card.

A key feature of the video card is a modified cooling system. The casing of the cooling system is blue, which in combination with the blue textolite of the board looks less flashy.

The cooling fan is easy to flip out. The main task of the folding fan is to provide easy access for the user to the radiator of the cooling system. This access may be necessary when cleaning the radiator from dust. It is unlikely that it will be possible to replace it, since fans of a similar design are not found on sale.

However, the user can discard this fan and mount an 80mm or 90mm fan on the shroud on their own, which will provide more efficient cooling combined with reduced noise levels.

The passive component of the cooling system is a radiator based on two heat pipes.

Otherwise, the video card is standard and does not differ from the previously presented reference solutions. On the side wall there are two six-pin connectors and one SLI connector for connecting the bridge.

The video card has a dual-slot design. Among the soldered ports for image output, we can note the presence of a standard triple of two DVI ports and one mini-HDMI.

---

Video card specifications.

Traditionally, GF GTX 460 video cards with 1 GB of video memory on board have the following specifications:

1. Number of processor units: 336

2. Video core frequency: 675MHz.

3. The frequency of the blocks: 1350 MHz.

4. 64 texture units.

5. Memory type: GDDR5

6. Bus: 256-bit.

7. Video memory frequency: 900 MHz

8. Video memory capacity: 024 MB.

9. Power consumption up to 160 watts.

But our Galaxy product has the highest factory overclock we’ve seen among the cards we’ve tested so far. The core frequency is 810 MHz, the memory frequency is 1000 MHz.

Previously, among the tested products, the leader in factory overclocking was the video card from Palit Sonic Platinum, which operates at a core frequency of 800 MHz and a memory frequency of 1000 MHz. As you can see, Galaxy overclocked its product by 10 MHz higher than Palit Daytona.

---

Video card testing.
We test all the latest video cards on the following configuration:

1. Intel Core i7 920 processor.

2. Motherboard ASUS P6T.

3. 2×3 Gb Samsung Original DDR3-1600

4.WD 1TB WD1001FALS Caviar Black SATAII

5. Hiper M1000 power supply.

6. Thermaltake Mambo case.

7. The room is 27 degrees.

8. The system is assembled in a closed case.

This system allows you to fully evaluate the performance level of video cards based on the GF104 core.

The system is running Windows 7 64 bit operating system.

1. The temperature regime of the video card.

The cooling system of the Galaxy video card shows the temperature mode of operation, which is not much different from the operating modes of the reference design video cards. At the same time, we must not forget that the Galaxy company made the maximum overclocking of the video card in the factory, which could not but affect the heat dissipation of the product.

2. Video card overclocking.

The video card from Galaxy pleased us with overclocking potential, as we conquered the coveted 900 MHz in the core and stopped at 916 MHz.

From memory, the results are more modest — we were not able to go above 1058 MHz.

3. Performance level in Crysis Warhead.

The image was displayed on the LCD panel, so only FullHD resolution was used.

The high level of factory overclocking of the Galaxy graphics card allows it to perform better than the GeForce GTX 465 platform-based graphics card without any problems. This is especially noteworthy given the fact that the new product has lower power consumption and heat dissipation.

4. Performance level in BattleForge DX 11.

In the second gaming test, we also get performance that is more than 15% faster than the performance of the Galaxy GF GTX 465 graphics card. At the same time, even the maximum overclocking of the GF GTX 460 graphics card does not allow it to show the performance level of the GF GTX 470 series graphics card.