Zotac GeForce GTX 460 768Mb review

• Content:
• Introduction
• Technical specification
• Package content
• Testbed configuration
• Voltages and temperatures levels
• Design features
• Overclocking
• Test results
• Conclusion

Overclocking

Although there is a way to control voltage using special software, tested graphic cards are overclocked with default voltages. This way we can define overclock potential for different cards equally. (Some graphic cards do not support voltage change the software way). For overclocking we use specialized programs such as MSI Afterburner and NVIDIA Inspector. I am not a fan of stress testing for graphic cards (OCCT, Furmark) — the true stability indicator for me is games. Continuous test revealed that card is fully stable at 850MHz for GPU with default voltage of 1.0 V:

Lets see how overclocking effects temperatures:

Stock cooling systems does a great jobs even when overclocked, moreover, the noise level remains to be comfortable.

Test results

Well, I think it is enough to speak about GTX 460 features, lets move to testing. Starting from this article, game test results will be published as a separate topic and will be updated as new models get tested. Fresh results can always be found here and we are moving right to conclusion.

Conclusion

In the end, during testing of ZotacSYNERGY GeForce GTX 460 768Mb [ZT-40401-10P] we detected the following pros and cons.

Pros:

• Price. MSRP is about $200 which is affordable for many people
• Temperature level. Both in idle and at full load card’s temperature remain to be excellent
• Noise level. In my opinion, the noise generated from stock cooling system even at full load is quite comfortable. GTX 460 it is significantly quieter compared to GeForce GTX 465 and GeForce GTX 470
• Overclocking. The card showed excellent overclocking result — 850 MHz without additional voltage increase
• Supports DirectX 11
• Supports NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround
• Supports CUDA, PhysX and 3D Vision

Cons:

• No additional cooling for memory chips and power transistors
• Non-standard distance between cooling system mounting holes

As you can see, there are more advantages than disadvantages. So this novelty, including test results, proved to be very successful. GeForce GTX 460 768Mb handles its job pretty well at resolution up-to 1680×1050, competing against its hotter and more expensive elder “sister” GTX 465. However, even overcooked to 850MHz GTX 460 768Mb can’t keep up with the performance of EVGA GeForce GTX 470 SuperClocked at stock clocks (625MHz).

Summing everything up, graphic cards based on GPU GF104 are quite a successful product — fast, cold, and inexpensive video cards that support the latest technologies which, no doubts, will be appreciated by consumers.