newtekie1
Semi-Retired Folder
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- Nov 22, 2005
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- Indiana, USA
| Processor | Intel Core i7 10850K@5.2GHz |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | AsRock Z470 Taichi |
| Cooling | Corsair H115i Pro w/ Noctua NF-A14 Fans |
| Memory | 32GB DDR4-3600 |
| Video Card(s) | RTX 2070 Super |
| Storage | 500GB SX8200 Pro + 8TB with 1TB SSD Cache |
| Display(s) | Acer Nitro VG280K 4K 28" |
| Case | Fractal Design Define S |
| Audio Device(s) | Onboard is good enough for me |
| Power Supply | eVGA SuperNOVA 1000w G3 |
| Software | Windows 10 Pro x64 |
Well I was asked to compare these cards, and I have. This will mainly be a review of the GTX460 EE, so lets look at that.
I'll talk a little about some interesting things about the card before I go into the performance comparision between the GTX460 and GTX470.
The first thing that struck me the moment I openned the package was the size of the card. For such a powerful card I was shocked at how short it was. It is hard to pick up on this from the reviews and pictures. The GTX460 is a good inch shorter than the GTX470. I took a shot of the GTX460 next to the GTX470 and a 9600GT LP to give an idea of the size:
Now, about the cooler. It actually gives a very good impression of quality. The shroud is not just a standard shroud with a sticker stuck on it. The letters and design are actually silk-screened on the cooler shroud. The eVGA symbol is actually inlayed into plastic with another chrome/silver type plastic. It is very nice, the only down side which you can see in my picture is that it is a finger print magnet. Even though it is a matte finish, it really shows fingerprints.
It also uses at least one heatpipe that I can see, however it might be two. I didn't take the cooler off to check, but I will once I recieve the mosfet coolers and I'll update this.
The cooler does also cool the memory chips on the card, which is a rare thing with the GTX460 cards.
Also, the fan on the GTX460 was a little confusing when I first started using the card. First of all it is obviously a larger diameter than the fan on the GTX470. However, it is louder than the GTX470 fan, which struck me as odd at first. Then I did a little more looking at the card. When you look at the back of the card it becomes obvious why the fan is louder. The fan is only half the height of the card. So while the fan on the GTX470 is two slot tall, the fan on the GTX460's cooler is only a single slot tall.
I tried to take a picture of this:
You can see how the fan only goes to the top of the PCI-E Power connectors, unlike the GTX470's fan which goes from the top of the cooler all the way to the PCB.
The good thing about this is that it leaves plenty of room for coolers to be added to the mosfets at the back of the card. In fact the FTW edition of this card has this same cooler and a mosfet cooler already installed, and the PCB has the holes for the mosfet cooler. This makes me believe that eVGA had planned a mosfet cooler all along. Obviously the bad thing is the fan noise.
Speaking of fan noise, lets talk about that a little more. Leaving the card to it's auto settings, the fan will sit at about 50% under F@H load, which is pretty quiet. At this setting the temperature on the card is right at 70°C. However, I use more agressive fan profiles with my cards because I prefer cooler running cards and don't mind the fan noise. So I set the fan to start at 40%@40°C and ramp up to 100%@80°C. With these setting the fan does become noticeable over the rest of the fans in my case. The fan sits at about 70% but the temperature is around 60°C.
Now for overclocking the card. I just cut to the chase, I managed to get the GTX460 to 875MHz core speed, which puts the shaders at 1750MHz, and 1000MHz memory. These clocks surpass the FTW edition card's clock speeds.
My GTX470 does 815MHz core speed, which puts the shaders at 1630MHz, and the memory does 1000MHz as well.
Now lets look at performance!
Test Setup:
Core i7 875K@3.6GHz
8GB Corsair 1600MHz 7-7-7-20-1T
eVGA P55 FTW 200
1TB Seagate 7200.12 SATA 3.0Gbps
Corsair HX800
3DMark Vantage: All "Performance" Presets used, resolution changed. This is the GPU score only.
Unigine Heaven 2.1: Tessellation set to Extreme, Anisotropy set to 16, Anti-Aliasing set to 8x.
Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark: All setting maxed out.
Batman Arkham Asylum: All setting maxed out, PhysX set to High.
Mafia II: All settings maxed out, PhysX set to Medium.
Just Cause II: All settings maxed out, CUDA effects enabled, Concrete Jungle map.
Conclusion:
Can the GTX460 compete with the GTX470? Well, yes generally the overclocked GTX460 will surpass the stock GTX470 in performance, which is a great thing considering it is about $100 cheaper. However, once the GTX470 is overclocked it just smokes the GTX460. Also, it seems like heavy DX11 Tessellation titles will likely also favor the GTX470, even at stock, over the overclocked GTX460. So while DX11 isn't really that important right now, in the future if tessellation becomes more prominent, the GTX460 might not be able to keep up even if it is overclocked.
If I had to pick one card to buy out of the two, I would definitely go with the GTX470 just to make sure I was set for the future. However, I certainly would not be disappointed if I had the GTX460, and the $70 price difference would certainly be something I would consider as well, and would make the GTX460 even sweeter.
I'll talk a little about some interesting things about the card before I go into the performance comparision between the GTX460 and GTX470.
The first thing that struck me the moment I openned the package was the size of the card. For such a powerful card I was shocked at how short it was. It is hard to pick up on this from the reviews and pictures. The GTX460 is a good inch shorter than the GTX470. I took a shot of the GTX460 next to the GTX470 and a 9600GT LP to give an idea of the size:
Now, about the cooler. It actually gives a very good impression of quality. The shroud is not just a standard shroud with a sticker stuck on it. The letters and design are actually silk-screened on the cooler shroud. The eVGA symbol is actually inlayed into plastic with another chrome/silver type plastic. It is very nice, the only down side which you can see in my picture is that it is a finger print magnet. Even though it is a matte finish, it really shows fingerprints.
It also uses at least one heatpipe that I can see, however it might be two. I didn't take the cooler off to check, but I will once I recieve the mosfet coolers and I'll update this.
The cooler does also cool the memory chips on the card, which is a rare thing with the GTX460 cards.
Also, the fan on the GTX460 was a little confusing when I first started using the card. First of all it is obviously a larger diameter than the fan on the GTX470. However, it is louder than the GTX470 fan, which struck me as odd at first. Then I did a little more looking at the card. When you look at the back of the card it becomes obvious why the fan is louder. The fan is only half the height of the card. So while the fan on the GTX470 is two slot tall, the fan on the GTX460's cooler is only a single slot tall.
I tried to take a picture of this:
You can see how the fan only goes to the top of the PCI-E Power connectors, unlike the GTX470's fan which goes from the top of the cooler all the way to the PCB.
The good thing about this is that it leaves plenty of room for coolers to be added to the mosfets at the back of the card. In fact the FTW edition of this card has this same cooler and a mosfet cooler already installed, and the PCB has the holes for the mosfet cooler. This makes me believe that eVGA had planned a mosfet cooler all along. Obviously the bad thing is the fan noise.
Speaking of fan noise, lets talk about that a little more. Leaving the card to it's auto settings, the fan will sit at about 50% under F@H load, which is pretty quiet. At this setting the temperature on the card is right at 70°C. However, I use more agressive fan profiles with my cards because I prefer cooler running cards and don't mind the fan noise. So I set the fan to start at 40%@40°C and ramp up to 100%@80°C. With these setting the fan does become noticeable over the rest of the fans in my case. The fan sits at about 70% but the temperature is around 60°C.
Now for overclocking the card. I just cut to the chase, I managed to get the GTX460 to 875MHz core speed, which puts the shaders at 1750MHz, and 1000MHz memory. These clocks surpass the FTW edition card's clock speeds.
My GTX470 does 815MHz core speed, which puts the shaders at 1630MHz, and the memory does 1000MHz as well.
Now lets look at performance!
Test Setup:
Core i7 875K@3.6GHz
8GB Corsair 1600MHz 7-7-7-20-1T
eVGA P55 FTW 200
1TB Seagate 7200.12 SATA 3.0Gbps
Corsair HX800
3DMark Vantage: All "Performance" Presets used, resolution changed. This is the GPU score only.
Unigine Heaven 2.1: Tessellation set to Extreme, Anisotropy set to 16, Anti-Aliasing set to 8x.
Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark: All setting maxed out.
Batman Arkham Asylum: All setting maxed out, PhysX set to High.
Mafia II: All settings maxed out, PhysX set to Medium.
Just Cause II: All settings maxed out, CUDA effects enabled, Concrete Jungle map.
Conclusion:
Can the GTX460 compete with the GTX470? Well, yes generally the overclocked GTX460 will surpass the stock GTX470 in performance, which is a great thing considering it is about $100 cheaper. However, once the GTX470 is overclocked it just smokes the GTX460. Also, it seems like heavy DX11 Tessellation titles will likely also favor the GTX470, even at stock, over the overclocked GTX460. So while DX11 isn't really that important right now, in the future if tessellation becomes more prominent, the GTX460 might not be able to keep up even if it is overclocked.
If I had to pick one card to buy out of the two, I would definitely go with the GTX470 just to make sure I was set for the future. However, I certainly would not be disappointed if I had the GTX460, and the $70 price difference would certainly be something I would consider as well, and would make the GTX460 even sweeter.
So I just said fuck it and used the performance presets with resolution changes.