Thursday, June 24th 2010
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Reference Design Pictured
Here are the first pictures of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460 graphics card, an upper-mainstream model based on the company's new GF104 GPU which was pictured earlier. The pictures reveal the reference design card to be shorter than any of the GF100-based graphics cards (such as GTX 470, GTX 480), and compacted in many ways. The cooler is dual-slot, and instead of an air-channel that's draws air from the interior and blows it out from the rear, the cooler has a centrally-located fan right over the GPU. As expected from the older article, the GPU package indeed is rectangular in shape rather than square.
The PCB is black, though a green PCB cannot be written off given the product's positioning. There are traces for eight memory chips on the card (looking at the components on the reverse-side of the PCB), confirming a 256-bit wide memory interface, though six chips are occupied (indicating that for this SKU only, a 192-bit wide memory interface is used. There is only one SLI finger showing that it only supports 2-way SLI multi-GPU standard. Connectivity on the rear panel is consists of the usual 2x DVI-D and mini-HDMI. Power is drawn in by two 6-pin PCI-E power inputs. Other specifications include DirectX 11 compliance, 336 CUDA cores, 768 MB of 192-bit GDDR5 memory (or another SKU with 1 GB of 256-bit GDDR5 memory), and clock speeds of 675 MHz core, 1350 MHz shader (CUDA cores), and 900 MHz (or 3600 MHz effective) memory. The GTX 460 768 MB is expected to launch next month at a price of US $230.
Source:
PCinLife
The PCB is black, though a green PCB cannot be written off given the product's positioning. There are traces for eight memory chips on the card (looking at the components on the reverse-side of the PCB), confirming a 256-bit wide memory interface, though six chips are occupied (indicating that for this SKU only, a 192-bit wide memory interface is used. There is only one SLI finger showing that it only supports 2-way SLI multi-GPU standard. Connectivity on the rear panel is consists of the usual 2x DVI-D and mini-HDMI. Power is drawn in by two 6-pin PCI-E power inputs. Other specifications include DirectX 11 compliance, 336 CUDA cores, 768 MB of 192-bit GDDR5 memory (or another SKU with 1 GB of 256-bit GDDR5 memory), and clock speeds of 675 MHz core, 1350 MHz shader (CUDA cores), and 900 MHz (or 3600 MHz effective) memory. The GTX 460 768 MB is expected to launch next month at a price of US $230.
63 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Reference Design Pictured
maybe a 260
So it wouldn't surprise me one bit if GF104 derivatives perform close or even better on occasions than Fermi derivatives (470/465) with much higher SP count, but lower cluster number. I think that GF104 will perform very well compared to GF100 on current games, but GF100 will obliterate it (and other current GPUs) once that new engines start popping up (if that ever happens before PS4, "Xbox720" launch, which tbh seems pretty unlikely at the moment, as sad as it is).
GF100's problem is not in the architecture, but the chip itself and the process, so chances are many, but it all depends how late GF100 and GF104 developments took different paths.
Let's see if we clear this out. Take both cards use the 260 on DX10 and 470 on DX11, but use the same settings (I'm aware this is not always possible), that is, do not use DX11 only features like tesselation and the 470 rapes the 260 big time.
Problem is that many games use higher settings (this means more accurate lighting and shadows, higher resolution post effects, etc) when DX11 is enabled, because they assume you have a much faster card and in fact, you do, but yeah the effect is that you may get similar fps. The visual improvement is there tho and if you are not able to see it, you shouldn't have invested in a new card to begin with. There's still the fact that when used under DX10 the new cards are almost twice as fast, except the highest end versus previous generation highest end, because of what I said above. Since usually only 2-3 clusters are disabled the lower derivatives fare better against their predecessor, like 470 fares much better against 260 than 480 does against 280.
280 10 clusters
480 15 clusters
50% improvement
260 8 clusters
470 14 clusters
75% improvement
EDIT: Let me note, that I understand your point, but I do not agree in the complain. Fact of the matter is that I'm still on a 9800GTX+ and not because I cannot afford a new card. It's because I can play every game out there with enough eye candy and the improvements that newer cards can offer are not enough to bother going to a PC shop. The thing is that I'm very aware of the visual improvements, but I do not consider them enough to bother me when I'm playing. Objectively, the difference (in the settings that are posible) is enormous between my 9800GTX and your 260 and again between 260 and 470, but subjectively I refuse to upgrade in order to play a game that is a console port anyway. I'm waiting for Crysis2 or id tech 5 (or maybe Source Engine 2? haha) in order to upgrade (and still, we'll see).
A new card is supposed to dominate on all levels not just on the aspect of better eye candy is I think the general idea that most expect. *shrug*
Like I said, like you, I do not consider the improved eye candy enough to make me upgrade, but it's undoubtely there.
You may not need a 240 bhp car and have enough with a 120 bhp one, especially since you are going to be limited by your country's top speed limit, but the 240 one is not pointless (it has other extras other than speed, like responsiveness). You might not find it usefull or worthy. Does not mean that it isn't.
I don't even have a car now. The one I had broke and I'm using public since then. You get the point of what I'm saying?
It is the same with every dx version, from 9-10 the fps dropped as the eye candy was somewhat improved :rolleyes: