Nvidia Releases GeForce GTX 460

Today Nvidia has released their GeForce GTX 460 card. Based on the new GF104 core as opposed to the cut-down Fermi core of the GTX 480, 470, and 465, this is an all-new die, much smaller and more efficient. This results in significantly lower power draw, so much so that the second PCIe power plug in the GTX 460 is more for insurance than out of necessity, with a TDP just over the single-plug spec of 150W, a bit lower than ATi's lackluster Radeon HD 5830 and about the same as their fantastic Radeon HD 5850. Obviously, this new core allows the power draw to be much lower than that of GF100 parts.

Better still, The GTX 460 costs a mere $200, the same as the Radeon HD 5830 is currently going for. It finally looks like Nvidia has a release that performs at its price and doesn't eat power for lunch.

The GTX 460 has two versions at launch. The cut-down 768MB version has a 192-bit interface connected to GDDR5 and 24ROPs. The 1GB version has a 256-bit GDDR5 bus and 32ROPs. Otherwise the two are identical (yay for naming confusion!).

Early reviews of the two products are very heartening, with the 768MB 460 acing the 5830 at the same price and with lower power consumption (something that, to be honest, needed to happen because the 5830 just sucks) and the 1GB 460 being right on par with the 465 (again, something that needed to happen, because the 465 sucks as well).