Introduction

NVIDIA recently launched their GeForce GTX 460 as price/performance king in the $200 segment. It 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.

Colorful is a Chinese graphics card manufacturer that is mostly unknown outside of the APAC region. In China they are one the of the most popular and well-respected AICs.
Their GeForce GTX 460 iGame is built for the enthusiasts and offers several unique features such as a dedicated Turbo switch and a large dual fan thermal solution. The iGame GTX 460 uses a completely custom designed PCB and comes with a nice overclock out of the box that can be enabled by using the Turbo button. We tested the card in both "Turbo" and "Normal" modes.

Packaging

Colorful's package is not so colorful and it is clearly targeted at an Asian market with highlights being pointed out such as "Ultra-much silver plating technology" and "breathing cooler technology".

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver CD + Documentation
• Mini-HDMI to HDMI cable
• 2x PCI-Express power adapters
• Cotton gloves (which are sized for Asian hands)
• Multi-function tool with screwdriver bits
• DVI Adapter
• Reusable zip ties

The Card

The Colorful iGame GTX 460 uses a unique design with accented edges and polygonal flat surfaces.


Due to the cooler's design, the card requires three slots in your system. An additional heatsink near the top of the card might also pose a problem in slimmer cases.


This is the Turbo switch, it selects between two BIOSes on the card. One runs at the NVIDIA default clocks of 675/900, the other at 820/1000. You can change the switch position at any time, but the BIOS will only be loaded at reboot. This enables easy BIOS recovery in case of a bad flash: boot from the working BIOS, switch to the non-working before flashing. Done!


The card has two DVI ports, and one Mini-HDMI port (adapter cable is included). Unlike AMD's latest GPUs, the output logic design is not as flexible. On AMD cards vendors are free to combine six TMDS links into any output configuration they want (dual-link DVI consuming two links) - and use them all at the same time. On NVIDIA cards you can use only two displays at the same time, so for a three monitor setup you would need two cards.

NVIDIA has included an HDMI sound device inside their GPU, which does away with the requirement of connecting an external audio source to the card for HDMI audio. The HDMI interface is HDMI 1.3a compatible which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit output. NVIDIA also claims full support for the 3D portion of the HDMI 1.4 specification which will become important later this year when we will see first Blu-ray 3D titles shipping.


Putting two of these cards in SLI requires the use of a long, flexible SLI bridge - the normal fixed straight one would not fit due to the heatsink being in the way.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.