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EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB Superclocked Review July 15, 2010 Jacob Vandy VanDerWerf |
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Summary: If you're one of NVIDIA's board partners, how do you improve upon the GeForce GTX 460 GPU? If you're EVGA, you OC the board, add a lifetime warranty with their Trade Up program, and bundle the card with killer utilities for OC'ing and stress testing your graphics card...And don't forget a free game. See how the board fares in today's review!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 16 ) |
With the release of the GeForce GTX 460, NVIDIA’s board partners are trying all sorts of things to make their product stand apart from the crowd. Between designs like the dual-fanned ECS Black edition, Galaxy’s removable fan, and MSI’s completely different cyclone cooler, there are a lot of creative ideas for you to check out. However, most of these are not yet available, with most of the dozen GTX 460s listed on Newegg being based on the reference design.
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The products that EVGA currently has available are comprised of the latter, baseline models that retail for right around the $200 MSRP. Their GTX 460 768MB is a carbon copy of NVIDIA’s reference board and comes in two flavors, regular and Superclocked. They also have plans for both 768MB and 1GB versions with more efficient EE (external exhaust) coolers using turbine fans.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB SC comes from the factory at higher clock speeds than normal. At 763MHz core, 950MHz memory (3800MHz effective), and 1526MHz shader clocks by default, it’s 13-19% faster than a run-of-the-mill GTX 460 768MB. That’s great news for those who aren’t comfortable enough to do any overclocking themselves.
This pre-overclocking service does come at a premium, however, so the SC version will run you an extra $10. There is also a $220 version, and while the difference is very subtle, it could be considered very important by most people: a lifetime warranty. If you don’t make sure the part number is 768-P3-1362-AR, you will only get a 2-year warranty (TR model), though others may decide that that is enough.
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Bundle and accessories
Included with all three EVGA SKUs (as well as some other GTX 460s) is a coupon code for a free copy of Just Cause 2. Beyond that, you’ll find the usual assortment of accessories included with your EVGA graphics card:
- User manual, quick-start guide, software disc
- Two 6-pin PCI-E power adapters
- VGA to DVI adapter
- Mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter
- EVGA case badge and bumper sticker
| Perks of Buying EVGA | Page:: ( 2 / 16 ) |
EVGA Precision
Exclusive to owners of EVGA products, Precision is a nifty little piece of software that allows you to easily tweak the speed of graphics clocks and fans, monitor temperatures and GPU usage, or even track FPS and take screenshots when you’re in-game. Save your settings as profiles that you can assign to hotkeys and change between them anytime, or simply have Precision automatically apply your OC whenever Windows starts up.
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On one side of the main screen you have sliders and numbers indicating the current clocks of the core, shader, and memory, as well as the fan speed. There is a button that toggles synchronization of the shader and core clock speeds (keeping them at a 2:1 ratio) and another that can be used to synchronize settings among all of the GPUs in the system. Unlike previous versions of the software, you can set each of the cards to run at different speeds. So, if one card in your SLI setup can OC further than another, you can bump up its clocks a little more and get the added performance.
The other side depicts a compact view of the hardware monitoring graphs. Double-clicking it will detach the constantly-updating graphs as an always-on-top, resizable window. If you hover your mouse over any point on the graph, it shows specific numbers for that particular time. You can also configure Precision to display hardware data in the system tray, via an in-game on-screen display, or on your Logitech keyboard’s LCD display.
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EVGA OC Scanner
EVGA released a new graphics utility earlier this year, this time exclusive to owners of a GeForce GTX 400 series video card. OC Scanner is a combination stress test, benchmark, and artifact scanner that is meant to be used in conjunction with Precision to push your graphics card to its limit.
Once you’ve overclocked the GPU to the level you want to test for stability, you can use the stress test to check your load temperature(s) and detect artifacts, if there are any. If you’re satisfied, you can then run the benchmark to be assigned a score that you can use to compare your graphics performance with that of others.
It also has built-in GPU protection, which automatically shuts it off once a configurable thermal threshold is reached. More advanced users can even control the GPU power draw delay, which is configurable in milliseconds.
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Warranty and 24/7 Technical Support
Register your graphics card on EVGA.com within 30 days of purchase to take advantage of the 2-year or lifetime limited warranty available for the GTX 460 768MB SC. If anything goes wrong, you will be able to RMA it back to EVGA for free repair or replacement. If you have any questions concerning your graphics card or any related issue, you can contact EVGA by phone or online at any time of day or night.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 3 / 16 ) |
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield @ 3.6GHz (Turbo Off)
EVGA X58 3-Way SLI
6 GB OCZ Gold Triple-Channel DDR3-1600 @ 1440 MHz
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB SC
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 896MB
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB
ForceWare 258.80
ATI Radeon HD 5830 1GB
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
Catalyst 10.6
1 TB Western Digital Caviar Black
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Benchmarks
Unigine Heaven 2.1
Colin McRae DiRT 2
Aliens vs. Predator
Metro 2033
STALKER: Call of Pripyat
Just Cause 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Far Cry 2
Resident Evil 5
Crysis: Warhead
| Unigine Heaven 2.1 – DirectX 11 | Page:: ( 4 / 16 ) |
| DiRT 2 – DirectX 11 | Page:: ( 5 / 16 ) |
| Aliens vs Predator – DirectX 11 | Page:: ( 6 / 16 ) |
| Metro 2033 – DirectX 11 | Page:: ( 7 / 16 ) |
| STALKER: Call of Pripyat – DirectX 10/11 | Page:: ( 8 / 16 ) |
| Just Cause 2 – DirectX 10 | Page:: ( 9 / 16 ) |
Notes
*Both the Bokeh Filter and GPU-Simulated Water settings were left off for these tests because Radeon cards do not support them.
| Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – DirectX 10/11 | Page:: ( 10 / 16 ) |
| Far Cry 2 – DirectX 10 | Page:: ( 11 / 16 ) |
| Resident Evil 5 – DirectX 10 | Page:: ( 12 / 16 ) |
| Crysis: Warhead – DirectX 10 | Page:: ( 13 / 16 ) |
| Overclocked Performance | Page:: ( 14 / 16 ) |
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 15 / 16 ) |
Pros
A new class of Fermi. This video card brings you all of the performance characteristics of the brand new GF104 GPU.
Overclocks like a champ. Even though it’s already Superclocked, there is still some additional overclocking headroom for you to exploit if you so choose.
Energy efficient, runs cool and quiet. With a TDP of 150W, this graphics solution won’t bleed you dry with expensive electricity bills. Less power equals less heat, and even though EVGA uses a more aggressive fan speed configuration to keep the temperatures in the mid-60s, it still never revs up beyond a whisper.
Free enthusiast graphics utilities. By providing Precision and OC Scanner, EVGA empowers do-it-yourselfers to squeeze every last bit of performance out of their GPU.
Top-notch customer service. With 24/7 technical support and available lifetime warranty, EVGA is right up at the top of the heap when it comes to service after the sale.
Free copy of Just Cause 2. Why? I think you know.
Cons
Higher price for moderate factory overclocking. Paying extra for something you can easily do yourself won’t sit well with a lot of people. And it’s not like these are hand-picked to be better overclockers, either, so there is comparably less to gain from your own tweaking.
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 16 / 16 ) |