Nvidia's $200 GTX 460 Ups Bargain Performance 197
NervousNerd writes "Nvidia's first DirectX 11 offerings ran hot and offered a negligible performance difference compared to ATI's Radeon HD 5800 series for the cost. Also missing was the $200 mid-range part. But that stopped when Nvidia released the GTX 460 based on a modified version of their infamous Fermi architecture. The GTX 460 offers incredible performance for the price and soundly beats ATI's $200 offering, the HD 5830."
Soundly beats the 5830? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bargain? $200? (Score:2, Informative)
Why is this modded funny? He's right - $200 isn't a "bargain price". I don't think I've paid that much for a video card ever - and if I have, it was back around 2001, and only once.
A "bargain" card is under $100, at most. To most people, that's what the cost of an upgrade (to pretty much anything) should cost. Most products try really, really hard to get in under that $100 mark on account of people trying to not spend more than that amount on a given item.
In my book, a "bargain" card is $50 or less. You know, the ones being discounted because they're being discontinued, which will serve as a good upgrade for an aging machine. These cards won't even work in most aging machines (whether due to bus or power requirements).
Another review, with architecture comparison (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=954 [pcper.com]
This review also has a page that attempts to compare the new GF104 architecture on a clock per clock basis with the original GF100: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=954&type=expert&pid=12 [pcper.com]
Re:NV has it made until... (Score:3, Informative)
ATi's numbering has been pretty easy to follow lately. The first number is the series, this tells you the basics in terms of features, process, and so on. 5 series are DX11 40nm parts, 4 series are DX 10.1 40nm parts, etc. The next number tells you the major performance class. The ones they seem to like to use are 9 for their high end dual boards, 8 for their high end single boards, 7 for their midrange boards, and 5 (and sometimes 6) for low end boards. The final two numbers are the sub category for performance, 3 being on the lower end, 7 being on the higher end.
So a 5870 is a 5 series board, one GPU, high end performance line, with high clocks. A 5750 is a 5 series board, midrange, middle clocks.
In terms of numbering, that's about as good as it can get. They can't give you a single "goodness" number and if you demand one that simply shows you want an oversimplification where one cannot be had. Different things will have different performance. For example in Uengine 2.0, the GTX 480 out scores the 5870 by a wide margin. The reason is that benchmark has a very heavy tessellation mode, and the 480 has some heavy hitting tessellation hardware. Ok, but that only tells the story for something that heavily uses tessellation, which at this time games don't, though the might later. For, say, Bad Company 2, the difference is much smaller, both cards are rather similar when working on the problem it presents.
With video cards you have to turn your brain on a bit and do some research to determine what you are really getting. No way to give you a single, universally applicable, number.
However, if you don't want to do that, you don't have to. What you do is figure out what you are willing to spend every 12-18 months on a video card. Then, spend that. Video card technology moves fast, so frequent upgrades are better than big infrequent upgrades. So if $200 is what you are willing to spend, then keep an eye on video card releases and after about 12 months, start looking. When a new launch happens with a card you like for that price, get it. Repeat the process 12-28 months later.
Re:Soundly beats the 5830? (Score:3, Informative)
The GTX460 runs cooler and produces less noise than a GTX470... Even overclocked...
EVGA also warranties their cards even if you overclock them.
A video card that will live in infamy! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bargain? $200? (Score:2, Informative)