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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 $200 offering, the HD 5830."
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Can we have ONE video card news posting discussion without a flood of people preaching how it's supposedly stupid to spend anything more than 100$ on a videocard? Please? People have different needs and expectations.
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 $200 is a bargain priced video card. I would probably call it mid-range?
Did you consult the dictionary before typing that? Bargain isn't related to how much something costs, but how much it is worth compared to how much it costs. This is a bargain.
Well for a hard core gamer that is pretty cheap. I do not spend that much on video cards but if it is your hobby.
Ever see how much golf clubs costs? Or motorcycle gear? How about the cost of gas for a boat?
This isn't that bad in comparison.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If 200$ 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In much the way $600 is cheap for a SLR camera, but $50 is cheap for an average home camera.
The $200 mid range for a card for a gaming rig, not mid range for an e-machine or other generic computer 'decent enough to use for most stuff' computer you get from a big box store.
If you aren't into high end gaming with the latest graphics crunching game, at really high resolution and fps, that's fine. Other folks are and have a different definition of what's 'mid' range for a gaming machine than you have for a generic machine.
In other words, this article isn't aimed at you. That's ok. Not every one has to be.