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Nvidia's $200 GTX 460 Ups Bargain Performance
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 $200 offering, the HD 5830."
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
AMD lowers their prices, which they can do quite easily.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Can we have ONE video card news posting discussion without a flood of people preaching how it's supposedly stupid to spend anything more than 100$ on a videocard? Please? People have different needs and expectations.
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).
I don't think it's stupid to spend more than $100 on a video carrd (I definitely have), but it does seem hard to argue that $200 is a bargain priced video card. I would probably call it mid-range?
Did you consult the dictionary before typing that? Bargain isn't related to how much something costs, but how much it is worth compared to how much it costs. This is a bargain.
Well for a hard core gamer that is pretty cheap. I do not spend that much on video cards but if it is your hobby.
Ever see how much golf clubs costs? Or motorcycle gear? How about the cost of gas for a boat?
This isn't that bad in comparison.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I don't think it's stupid to spend more than $100 on a video carrd (I definitely have), but it does seem hard to argue that $200 is a bargain priced video card. I would probably call it mid-range?
If 200$ is mid-range, what does that make 300$ and 400$ videocards, assuming we call 500-600$ videocards the high-end?
mid-range.
If 200$ is mid-range, what does that make 300$ and 400$ videocards, assuming we call 500-600$ videocards the high-end?
Upper middle class with distinction
After two Nvidia video cards and one chip-set died early on me from overheating, despite additional cooling, I am not buying their trash again. Maybe "pro-gamers" do not mind an expensive card or main-board dying after 1-1.5 years, but I do mind rather strongly.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I would probably call it mid-range?
So would the TFS, apparently. I guess Taco's got some cash to play with. :)
That said, if it beats out the other cards in it's price range, and has the same price then it's probably fair to call it a bargain within that slice of the market.
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.
Living With a Nerd
Soundly beating the 5830 is a stretch at best. On Tom's Hardware's Benchmark Results, the 460 is outperformed by the 5830 in every benchmark, Crysis, and AvP test. It loses sparingly in the rest of the games, but calling it the clear better of the 2 is just isn't realistic.
My other sig is clever.
Maybe we can call them "Gaming video cards" in which case $200 may well be bargain priced.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
No it does. When you use this card you have to negotiate with it for it to decide what performance it will give, and what you will do for it in return.
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).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=954
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
The summary reads like it was written by someone at nVidia; based on the summary you'd think this card could do cold fusion and mow my lawn at the same time while creating mind-blowing graphical displays.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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"?
When a decent computer sells for $500, how is $200 "mid" range?
I must be getting old... I still have to hold my nose to pay more than $100 for a video card.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
I know cooling is important to keep things running smoothly but we've gone from video cards to video bricks. I swear I could take a bunch of those things and use them to lay as brick for a house. Next thing you know they're going to put enough cooling hardware on these things to have em the size of cinder blocks.
I'd love it if they could work on the cooling and/or materials to get it back down to a heat sink only, card sized, and still retain great performance.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Remember Nvidia's last great bargain card, the 8800 GT?
You know, the one everyone bought at $200?
You know, the one everyone said was the best value?
You know, the one with the bad bumps?
For GPUs:
If you don't need to play games, go integrated or go with cheap, cheap shit.
If you want to play games, ALWAYS go with a flagship line.
For Nvidia, these have been 6800, 7800, 8800, 9800, 280, 480.
For ATi these have been 9700/9800, x800 x1800, HD 2850, HD 3870, HD 4870.
If you can't afford the latest and greatest, get a used one from the last generation. The flagship cards are the only ones that undergo any worthwhile testing. The flagship cards are the only ones where the OEMs and Nvidia/ATi work together and formulate a gameplan.
Maybe you forgot that price points are not based on U.S. currency only. 100 may be a nice round number in dollars but it is certainly not such a nice number in other currencies.
Something is a "bargain" when it has a very good price/value ratio.
A full frame DSLR camera for $1000 would be a bargain, though you can get a DSLR for $400 easily, and if you're not picky and just want any digital camera at all you can get it for $50.
Many builds I've done have used integrated where the toughest task the card would have is compiz/aero/video scaling. Memory bandwidth and contention will only kill you if you do something significantly more than that.
I do agree that the flagship is overrated, and while the 8800* parts were afflicted by poor quality, that is not a good reason to extrapolate across the board on the quality of midrange parts. Generally, the benchmarks are what you get and quality isn't a big problem.
His last point has some merit though, a 4870 can perform admirably against the current generation and can be had at lower prices. Counteracting this though is that for a little more you can have a current midrange that eats less electricity/puts out less heat to get roughly the same performance.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I didn't see a scatter plot of price vs fps. Does this $200 card get you twice the fps of a $100 card? What do you get for the extra hundred that's actually worth an extra hundred?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If 200$ is a bargain, what does that make all those 50$ last generation cards with proper drivers on many platforms? Oh, "the right choice for most applications".
After all, I am strangely colored.
Also not everything is about speed or horsepower but capability.
I would buy the ATI card all things being equal for the "Eyefinity" technology alone.
It would let me use 3 monitors not just 2 (tho one needs to be a special new one with a "display port" apparently)
It would also let me set different resolutions on my different monitors.
With my current setup I would likely have HD 1080 resolution set on my 37" HD TV DVI-HDMI 16:9 connection, and then run my 4:3 normal LCD monitors at a more usable resolution.
With my current video card I have to set my TV basically at 720p because it is the highest supported resolution between both TV and Monitor, and they have to be the same but due to different aspect ratios this is problematic.
Eyefinity would change that, and that's a pretty big deal to me. To my knowlege the Geforce cards cannot do it.
I would even go cheaper and get a 5750 or 5770 in the 125-150$ range as they still have that technology even in the lower range cards.
You realize thats as silly as arguing some people only need a windows 95 machine, right? Why would that kind of article be exciting?
You shouldn't even need to spend anything on a video card, everything now-adays has something integrated, from laptops to desktops there is always some form of output. That would fit most people's needs.
People who need stronger video cards should be expecting to shell out a bit of money.
Perhaps you should read my post.
"If you don't need to play games, go integrated or go with cheap, cheap shit."
" If you don't need to play games , go integrated or go with cheap, cheap shit."
As to my second point:
"If you can't afford the latest and greatest, get a used one from the last generation."
Please read next time.
There are very real reasons to avoid refreshes and clock variations. The top of the line crap that comes out soon after the launch of the flagship are simply parts that have been clocked up after some sampling and binning, and a few tweaks to the game plan between Nvidia/ATi and the OEMs regarding power and cooling. These parts DO NOT undergo the same level of testing, and are simply the same silicon with more current pumping through it.
The same holds true for the under clocked, feature-disabled, versions. These are typically BROKEN parts that have been binned down.
Refreshes that come out many months later are even riskier. They represent a complete change in the fabrication process and very little testing to go along with it. This is what caused Nvidia's bumpgate fiasco.
Flagship GPUs are the only GPUs that are reliable.
But I bet you think that the "ZOMG HYPER SPEED" RAM you buy is hot shit, too. Enthusiast RAM is BAD regular RAM with a shiny heatsink, maybe some LEDs, and a higher voltage requirement to get it to behave properly.
The dirty little non-secret is that people buying the expensive shit are idiots. They'll probably never see the memory errors. And if they do, they'll blame it something else, or just accept it.
Those that do jump through the hoops to get the memory replaced are covered by the ridiculous margins, and the fact that the RAM they send back will be sent out to someone else, as new, once the rebate program starts.
Off-topic pedanticism here: "Infamous" means that something or someone is famous for negative reasons or for having a very bad reputation, along the lines of "notorious". Methinks that it really isn't the word you were looking for, and that "famous" or some synonym would do nicely.
The bandwidth needed to supply an integrated graphics card is about 0.00001% of what's available in a modern PC. You're just not going to notice it.
Plus ... integrated undergoes an awful lot of testing. eg. Intel drivers are always rock solid, unlike some 'high end' cards I've bought where I had to wait a couple of months before I could even put it in the machine.
No sig today...
It's a bargin priced performance video card not a bargin priced video card. Interestingly enough, "bargin performance" is the phrase used in the summary.
You're not going to get solid performance at a respectable resolution in modern video games for below $150-200 or so. If you spend below that you're either having to drastically cut resolution or you're cutting way back on the settings. The $200ish range of cards will let you run with most all of the pretty stuff turned on at approximately 1080p resolution with a solid framerate that's not being killed by stuttering or slowdowns. (i.e., acceptable mins)
The mid-range and high-end cards allow you to run at yet higher resolutions and/or with lots of AA. And yes, there are people that play modern FPSers at 2560x1600 with AA. I'm not one of them. I tend to go the budget performance card route and game at 1600x1200 with low or no AA but with high settings and a good frame rate. I'll likely need to upgrade come this fall though, and this card is definately on my radar.
Here's a story about a video card and I don't see any posts on how it works with Linux.
And the number of "new, weird and/or funky Linux distro" stories has fallen to less than one per week. There used to be two a day.
My, how times have changed.
I can only speak for myself (different needs as has been mentioned already) but I think of $500-600 video cards as fucking insane. A $400 video card is (again, just "in my eyes") plain ridiculous and buying a pair of them to connect for even "MORE EXTREME VIDEO!!!!!!" is functionally retarded. Somewhere around my 40th birthday I decided this was all just a big scam and can no longer bring myself to pay more than $100 for a video card.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
The term isn't 'stronger video cards.'
You're not stronger if you are better at playing video games. Having a more powerful video card does not make you stronger.
Can we have ONE video card news posting discussion without a flood of people preaching how it's supposedly stupid to spend anything more than 100$ on a videocard? Please? People have different needs and expectations.
It's not about whether it's stupid, it's about the definition of the word bargain. Frankly, even $100 is stretching the term in this economy, but we're still so awed by not-even-raytraced 3D graphics in realtime that we're willing to accept that we should be grateful to pay a hundred bucks for a couple wafers of fiberglass with some plastic-packed chips of interestingly impure sand that we're going to replace in a few years at most* anyway. And I say that as someone who was grateful to get a GTS 240 for $100ish when it was a newish card. (I wanted low power, no fanboys ranting about how I could have got more card for less money please kthxbye)
Suggesting that $200 is a bargain for a video card is nuts. You can buy a whole PC capable of playing a generation-ago's games at medium quality for that, shipped! At least you still can't accomplish that for $100. (Willing to be proven wrong)
* (statistically)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's true. The first 30FPS are pretty worthless. But after you reach 60FPS, that's pretty worthless too. A $200 card that gives you 120FPS is not twice as good as a $100 card that gives you 60FPS.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The critical difference here is that the other three will at least get you out of the house and into the sunshine and fresh air.
What's your point?
+1 Disagree
You can buy a whole PC capable of playing a generation-ago's games at medium quality for that, shipped!
From where ?
You are right about the framerates until gamers start to embrace... drumroll... 3D. Then we pretty much need to double our framerates.
Ha, mine's free now. I use a solar panel to charge a deep cycle battery to run an electric trolling motor. Ya, no water skiing with it, but I clean up on the bass for the frying pan ;)
Anyway, I don't have any huge problem with richer guys being the earlier adopters of more modern tech (usually), it's the only way people with lower incomes can ever get anything better.
Notice, I didn't ever drop the coin on an expensive video card, I am always several generations back (currently running an nvidia fx 5500, works fine..) but I did on the solar panels, wanted to do my part (besides using them obviously) to get prices down and quality up so that eventually they are a lot more affordable and get wider use for "the masses" guys.. Today, the little trolling motor, maybe tomorrow, the all electric ride...
The critical difference here is that you can play computer games in summer or winter, sunshine or rain.
True but riding a motorcycle and or riding around in a boat will not always burn any more calories than playing video games.
Off road riding or track time on a motor cycle probably will. Getting on your cruiser and going to the bar for a beer not so much.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I can do that with my motorcycle. I live in Florida :)
The thing is simply what do you want to spend your money on for fun.
Truth be known it would probably be better if we used it to pay down any debt that we have and or put into our retirement accounts but man does not live by bread alone.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You shouldn't even need to spend anything on a video card, everything now-adays has something integrated, from laptops to desktops there is always some form of output. That would fit most people's needs.
VESA isn't good enough, and neither is integrated graphics if you want to run games or CAD apps from past the Voodoo3 era. (Like Voodoo3, Intel GMA 950 lacks hardware vertex processing.)
Compared to the cost of hookers and blow, it's a downright bargain!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Fine fine. We'll get off your lawn already. Can we have our ball back please? :-)
But yeah, 500-600 is kinda insane, that'll get you a complete PS3 Slim and a stack of games to keep you entertained for quite a while. I prefer the 150-200 range myself. Gives me a lot of bang for my buck and will keep long enough.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
My nVidia requires identical resolutions on both monitors when set to Horizontal Span or Vertical Span. I assume that's what we're talking about, since other settings can't be used for multi-monitor gaming.
A $200 card that gives you 120FPS is not twice as good as a $100 card that gives you 60FPS.
It is when the next generation of games comes around. And even for current games you can just set for maximum anti-aliasing and that will get you back down to 60 :)
Also, its not all about average framerates - gotta keep the minimum framerates in mind. I'd rather have a card with a rock steady 45fps than one that averages 60 but often drops into the 30s and below.
It certainly isn't cheap, but if the performance / dollar ratio is comparatively high (it may well be) then one might call it a bargain. Independent of what you want to spend or if you think it is important.
How about a car analogy? A $2 million Ferrari for $250,000 is a bargain, even if you can't afford it.
-- "Oh. This guy again."
You mean White?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
You're stronger at playing video games if you're better at playing video games.
You know that stronger can be applied to more than just physical strength.
One might say that Video games are one my strengths.
You know English is flexible like that, which sure is a bitch to people learning it.
What is your current video card? Because for me, with my GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 7600 GT, GeForce 6600 GT, GeForce FX 5600, and even my GeForce 256 from way back in 2000, I never had a problem setting different resolutions on multiple monitors.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
http://clusty.com/search?query=nvidia+batman+arkham+asylum&tb=opensearch&
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33960034
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=nvidia+amd+physx
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=nvidia+cheat
And the list goes on and on.
Nvidia = Intel = Microsoft. Anti-competitive and anti-consumer to the end.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
how about the need for a fermi card that only needs 1 PCI-E power connector. even if it was $250 and had less performance, than the gtx460, i'd still be interested, Hard to find SFX PSUs that will provide 45amp on the 12 volt rail.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
As well as being a relative bargain, this is the quietest GPU in its power range, especially considering it uses the Fermi architecture.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/16
It's going to be a great boon for those who would like great GP-GPU performance too. Custom raytracing, and scientific research is going to get a kick from this.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Oh, really? Show me where's your motorcycle in these images ;)
This is a fair comment and it is how I base my spending decisions. I guessimate I spend less on my high powered gaming rig than :-
- A golfer(club costs, Green Fees)
- Weekend car enthusiasts($1200 to upgarde their brakes, petrol for the Saturday hoon, then theres next weeks mod cost)
- Boating (Docking fees, an engine service is thousands)
- Woman at work comment they spend half their weekly pay on clothes (eg $300 - $600) *every week*.
The common factor in all the above would be the influence of dependant children on spending decisions. Factor that, and $100 for a video card may not make it past the purchase committee(the wife).
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
True but you will also not be playing video games. And probably not for days afterwords as well since you will have no AC and only a generator for power.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
nVidia actually just came out with their eyefinity rival called nVidia Surround. It isn't as good as eyefinity though, since it only drives up to six monitors, and you'll need 2x cards in SLI. I'm also not sure if it can do different resolutions on different displays.
The one advantage it has is that it can do 3d on the displays if somehow have the cash to spend $200 on the glasses setup, and whatever it costs to get 3 identical versions of one of the supported 120hz monitors.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
You can sure tell the difference on this thread between the bargain-rack brigade and those familiar with economic thinking (recommended for the former category: "The Naked Economist").
Objectively, on historical price/performance trends, what you're getting from this card for $200 is eye popping. So eye popping it's almost hard to find a game that benefits without slathering on the bling. Oh dear, it's so good it has practically eclipsed the utility envelope.
I'm not sure I prefer the world where "bargain" has become wholly subordinate to the phrase "attention bargain shoppers". It's really quite a stupid stance to blame the economy, because immersive gaming is pretty much purely a luxury item to begin with.
ATI has an easy answer to this video card: a 5840 with a 1120:56:32 configuration. The 5830 is hammered in most benchmarks by only having half the ROPs enable. Aside from that, it kicks ass.
This is purely a manufacturing yield consideration. ATI has been in production for longer than Nvidia on this generation, so I wouldn't be surprised to see some additions to the product line based on yield refinements, now that they have a viable competitor in this niche. When yields were lower, it was insane for ATI to direct their massive 334mm^2 Cyprus chips into discount configurations. Talk about not getting economic thinking. It only made sense to discount the chips they couldn't sell otherwise, and mostly those were the ones with a failed ROP unit.
On paper, people who want high frame rates on a single mid-sized monitor (1680x1050 or less) are fairly well served by a 5830 (at some price point). But the benchies have trouble drawing distinctions at this screen size (the cards are too freaking fast), so all the attention is drawn to frame rate on 30" monster displays.
Relative to the economic situation of someone gaming for hours a day on a 30" display (and only the latest and greatest titles), I'd say $200 is bargain basement.
I spent $150 on my last video card, but I won't rent a movie less than a year old, because I'm only willing to pay the back-catalog price. Anyone who pulls a movie off the "new releases" rack is an economic bracket where a $200 video card is fungible entertainment.
I agree with many of the bargain-rack shoppers here. I'm appalled to pay $10 to watch a movie in the theatre on opening weekend, when I can rent the same movie six months later for $2 and share it with my snuggle bunny while gorging on home-popped popcorn dressed with reggiano parmigiano.
Generally going integrated is a bad bad idea because most are made by intel. But there are "decent" integrated graphics chipsets out there.
The Radeon HD 3300 integrated card is the best integrated chipset available (at least it was last year, have not paid attention this year) and will match or exceed the performance of the low end (~$50) graphics cards out there right now.
Ask apple
99 $
99 €
99 £
no difference
ATI 1950Pro.
I believe you might be able to on old XP drivers, but not on Vista or 7. (I am running Vista)
If you google around, it is a big problem with no solution apparently.
Ya before I posted I checked nVidia to check to see if they had a technology like that. I didn't see it. I did see the 3D stuff, but nothing uses or supports that yet to my knowlege.
As for Eyefinity, it only allows for 3 rather than 2 monitors to be set up, except for one model of card that does allow for 6 (All display port).
BS.
I just put together a machine for basic DVR. Core duo (not 2) with a basic MB, Case+PS, passive cooled video card, HDD and 2GB ram/640GB HDD. That's what I would consider last gen gaming - if not even one more generation behind, and at that the video card is probably the weakest link. $350 for all parts from Newegg.com, not including shipping and my cost to throw the system together.
Karnal
Offtopic - but I don't understand how someone on a motorcycle thinks it is a good idea to go drink and then ride. Just got my temps and don't ever plan on riding after drinking.
Karnal
after a long happy stint with an x1640 pro. I tried a 4760 and loved the performance and low heat, but it just wasn't stable (it was a Saphire too). Swapped to a GT240 and it was rock solid. I'd love to go back to ATI. They have better image quality and performance. Colors just look nicer on their hardware. But when I can't get 5 year old games to run stable that's that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Offtopic?!?
Khaaaaaaaaaaaannn!1!!!
Will 2 9800gt's in sli outperform a 460? Cause I can get 2 9800's for under $100.