Introduction

NVIDIA's latest member of their DirectX 11 lineup is the GeForce GTX 460. 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. NVIDIA offers two variants of the GeForce GTX 460, one with 768 MB of GDDR5 memory and one with 1 GB. Due to the GPU architecture this change in memory size not only affects the actual memory but also other performance relevant figures. The reduction of memory size is achieved by installing less memory chips on the card which reduces the bus width of the GPU from 256-bit to 192-bit on the 768 MB version. Since the ROPs are coupled to the memory interface this also results in less ROP units. Combined all those changes reduce the fillrates and memory performance of the card by 25%.

Point of View's GTX 460 TGT Beast 1 GB is the highest performing POV GTX 460 in their lineup. All cards are tested at TGT Germany, who are a new company specializing in graphics card overclocking. This additional binning process enables Point of View to release cards that are able to run the high clock speeds of 855 MHz core and 1005 MHz memory reliably. It comes as no surprise that all this additional work has an effect on pricing. The GTX 460 TGT Beast 1 GB that we test today retails for about $280 - almost the price of a GTX 465.