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."
It took over 9 months... (Score:1, Interesting)
But it seems like they finally have a decent performing (temperature, power use and of course, in-game) card.
The 5830 is a terrible card. Maybe now ATI will lower the prices (they could probably afford a $200 5850 and a $300 5870).
There's only one problem (Score:3, Interesting)
They are months too late, and ATI's next offering will be released (or at least announced) relatively soon, given their track record. I'm glad to see Nvidia releasing something that gives ATI a run for their money in the budget arena, but still...I think that advantage is going to disappear once ATI updates their line again.
Re:Soundly beats the 5830? (Score:4, Interesting)
The GTX460 is an overclocking monster, you can bring it to within GTX470 speeds for 2/3 of the price.
ATI Users: A Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Are current ATI graphics cards, especially the cards with 1GB RAM, comparable or better than current Nvidia cards for PC gaming? I've heard for years people calling out ATI drivers as *^#@, convince me otherwise. This isn't a troll, it's a call for opinions from someone who would rather avoid an Nvidia purchase, even though game title after title splash the Nvidia logo in your face when you launch them. How are ATI's drivers now, how well do these cards "game"?
Re:NV has it made until... (Score:4, Interesting)
AMD lowers their prices, which they can do quite easily.
Whichever company restores sanity to their chipset numbering scheme will get my money.
"Bargain" or not, it's simply not worth my time to investigate each card and decipher how a 460 GTX would perform compare to my 8800 GTX. My four year-old card has so far handled every game I've thrown at it at 1920x1080 without giving me the impression that I'm lacking on the eye-candy.
I have the money to spare, but I no longer have the free time to make a hobby of staying up to date on all the graphics card releases. All the manufacturers are failing to sell me on how returning to a more frequent upgrade cycle would improve my life, and they certainly aren't making it easy (in terms of time) to find out the relevant details.
Re:There's only one problem (Score:5, Interesting)
An announcement doesn't mean much without a release. Also, I'd guess that nVidia will be offering updates fairly soon as well. Basically updates to cards are generally either because there's a new architecture, which isn't happening for either company in this case since that take a much longer time, or a new lithography process. I'm not sure what the companies are looking at next, but Global Foundries has a 32nm node online now. They could be looking at using that.
You have to remember that development continues all the time, and even as a card is being released the next gen, and the gen after that and probably even more than that are being worked on. Takes a long time to bring something from idea to released silicon. So this isn't a race where a company get ahead and the other one can never catch up. Were that the case, well then ATi would be long behind now, because the 8800 series was completely unexpected, and had performance ATi could not match. They had to delay their launch a cycle and still their hardware wasn't a match for it. However, as time went on, they caught up and now have exceeded nVidia in many regards (certainly in being first with DX11).
The only way this would be "too late" in any respect is if ATi already had a better card out. Remember that people do not wait forever to buy parts. You can't say "But something better will come in a few months!" because something better will ALWAYS come in a few months. Do that and you'll never have a system. If someone buys a computer now, and wants to spend $200ish on a video card, the 460 is a realistic choice.
Also note that despite the 480s being hot, and late to the game, it isn't a failure. They moved plenty of units. Not near as many as they'd like I'm sure, but people bought those things left and right.
Re:ATI Users: A Question (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not the end-all, be-all for all comparisons, but it gives you a good idea how the different brands and generations compare to each other in general. Before Nvidia released the GTX400 series months later, ATI had the two fastest video cards available (the HD5870 and the dual-GPU HD5970 which is still the fastest single card).
Nvidia seems to throw more money at developers with their The Way It's Meant To Be Played program, but I honestly haven't noticed any specific problems after upgrading to my HD5870 a few months ago (after having only Nvidia since buying my GeForce 2 GTS the week they were released). A lot of people seem to be coming to the conclusion that both camps' drivers suck but in different ways. I honestly think that most people running single cards in common configs with popular games will never notice a difference in gameplay either way.
You do get some bonuses like PhysX with Nvidia, but there are open options in the works, and the Radeons are more efficient. The 5870 uses about 15% less power than my old GTX285, and in the GPGPU apps I run (dnetc), it's actually about 6x as fast (and still over twice as fast as an overclocked GTX480, which is a little faster in most games). The efficiency difference probably won't be noticed on your power bill, but it does mean a cooler card, which in turn means less fan noise and less heat in your case/room.