Colorful's iGame GTX 460 is a rock solid implementation of an overclocker-friendly GTX 460 design. The card offers nice features like a CHL 8266 voltage controller and easy to use voltage measure points. The Turbo button is a unique feature that adds additional resilience in case a BIOS flash goes wrong. Unfortunately that's about the only use I can think of in the current implementation. It would have been nice to see better fan settings in this mode so it could be used for a "Silent" config. It seems Colorful has completely forgot to optimize the fan settings of their card. In both normal and turbo, both idle and load, the card will always run at 40% fan speed. This results in an elevated noise level in idle - other GTX 460 cards do a better job here. Under load the fan stays reasonably quiet but I do see some additional potential for optimization here.
When graphics card vendors deviate from the reference design and create their own PCB it often happens that power consumption goes up due to cost savings. This is not the case with the iGame GTX 460, it is actually about 10% more power efficient than NVIDIA's reference design which is partly thanks to the better CHL8266 voltage regulator.
The factory overclock of 820 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory helps the card unleash some additional performance - around 15% up from the regular GTX 460 1 GB. For users who don't want to spend any time overclocking and optimizing their settings this is the easiest way to maximize performance. It is also good to see that Colorful did not increase the GPU voltage to reach their 820 MHz clock target - this would mean increased power consumption and heat. When we first heard about the iGame GTX 460 it was rumored that the clock speed would be 900 MHz, so there was some disappointment at first. According to Colorful the 900 MHz were not an official announcement but came from an overclocking team who leaked the numbers which were quickly picked up by the news sites.
Overclocking potential on the iGame GTX 460 is decent, definitely higher than the majority of other GTX 460 cards. Colorful's cooling solution can be of help here. Its two fans ensure the card stays cool no matter what you throw at it.
All these improvements do come at a price though - literally. At € 220 the card is one of the more expensive GTX 460 variants. This means that if you are on a limited budget the better choice might be getting the cheapest GTX 460 you can find and overclock it to the max. Should you be afraid of overclocking though or don't have the time but can spend the money then the iGame GTX 460 will be a good choice.