AXLE's GeForce GTX 460 Ace Edition is the first triple slot GeForce GTX 460 card that reaches our labs. It comes with a big, potentially silent running dual fan triple slot heatsink by Arctic Cooling. Unfortunately AXLE didn't properly adjust the fan settings in the BIOS to make best use of the new cooler. Currently the fans runs at 40% no matter if the card is idle. 40% because NVIDIA put it as a fan speed limit into their BIOS. As a result the card is way too noisy, especially in idle. I did some testing on my own and changed the fan speed to 2% in idle and 15% under load, remember normally it's 40% for both cases. This results in an incredible reduction in fan noise and temperatures are still fine: unchanged in idle and 76°C (+15°C) under load. I only hope AXLE gets a fixed BIOS out fast.
In terms of performance the card delivers well above reference GTX 460 1 GB expectations. We see a 6-7% improvement averaged over all our benchmarks. Assuming a price of $239 this puts the card at a slightly better performance per dollar ratio than the 1 GB reference design. The 768 MB reference design is still better in that regard though. Even though the ACE Edition comes overclocked out of the box there is a good amount of extra performance to be gained by manual overclocking. The manual overclock limits are roughly the same as we have seen on other GTX 460 cards so far, core slightly lower, memory slightly higher. This and the similar power consumption is also evidence that AXLE's PCB redesign did not have any negative effects on performance, overclocking capability or power consumption of the GeForce GTX 460.
Overall AXLE's GeForce GTX 460 ACE is a potentially very capable solution for all upper mid-range gamers - if they get the fan noise fixed, or you don't care about noise.