Is the nVidia GTX460 a suitable GPU for modern gaming?

I'm working on a Gaming Build and I'm unsure whether the NVIDIA GTX460 is a good performer at modern games like Fallout, Call Of Duty, Crysis, etc and whether it will still be a decent GPU in, say, a year's time? I'm choosing a SLI-supported motherboard so if I need better performance, I can just use the second GPU to boost the performance.|||Absolutely yes it is a suitable card for modern games. I myself have an MSI Cyclone GTX 460 768MB version but if i was going to do it again i would have went with the 1GB version since it has a bus width of 256bit compared to the 192bit bus on the 768MB version, this increases the memory bandwidth to make use of that 1GB. The only reason i didn't get the 1GB version was because there was a £30 price difference at the time and i was already over budget so i went with the 768MB one.



The MSI Cyclone version runs at a really cool temperature, mine barely ever goes above 55°C with the fan left on Auto and it's very quiet. MSI cards comes with the MSI Afterburner software which supports GPU over-volt which won't void the warranty if you use it and it can allow you to get clock speeds in excess of 900Mhz on the core. Personally i have only played about the voltage very very sparingly and decided just to leave the voltage alone and overclock it on the default stock voltage which has allowed me to get a clock speed of 875Mhz on the core (shader clock linked to core) and 2100Mhz on the memory (that's 2100 x 2).



If you are going to have the option of adding a second GTX 460 later on then you will have a very decent system that should definitely handle the vast majority of games on High settings with AA no bother.



With the GTX 460 768MB version i can run DiRT 2 with High settings and 3 on Ultra at 1280 x 1024 (i could probably get 1600 x 1200 easily) with x8 AA and it runs beautifully, i didn't think it would handle it at those settings but it does with very playable framerates 60FPS easy.



I have F1 2010 and that runs everything on High with 1 on Ultra at 1600 x 1200 x4AA and it runs really nicely too, probably around 45FPS + i benchmarked it using the ingame benchmark and it had an average FPS of 49 with a low of 41. I



I played Crysis on my PC too and i was impressed with the results however since i was using the 64 bit version the MSI Afterburner On Screen Display (ala Rivatuner) didn't work and i can't really recall what the framerates where like and i have since reinstalled Windows and i haven't reinstalled Crysis but the settings where High and the framerates good.



I have Call of Duty Black Ops installed and it runs really nicely but i am slightly disappointed because in some of the most intensive parts of the game the framerate can drop to around 35 or 30 but generally it runs nicely, the Video options in Call of Duty is fairly limited. The thing about Call of Duty Black Ops is the GPU usage seems to be really poor, i have seen some people mention that in SLI it barely uses the second card at all and for me with 1 card i have seen the GPU usage in the 40 - 50% region, i haven't paid THAT much attention to it but i did notice it at the start because i had read about it before i played the game. I have to say i don't know how my system would handle Call of Duty Black Ops online since i have em, technical issues, yea that's it, technical issues with playing that game online :P



The main problem i have is i am running Windows 7 with only 2GB of RAM so that is going to impact on some of the games where 4GB is really best for Windows 7



The only thing that would bother me about getting a new video card today is the GTX 500 series is just coming out and i am wondering what the GTX 460 equivalent would be like, i can't really comment on that cause i don;t know when that will happen. Right now, if i was happy to go ahead and buy a GTX 460 i would go for the Gigabyte GTX 460 OC 1GB on ebuyer that comes with a voucher for the HAWX 2 game, other than that i would definitely get the MSI Cyclone 1GB version, it's a great overclocker and runs really cool and quiet.



If you need more advice i suggest you join the Guru3D forum, they will help you out and give you all the options you should consider.



My system specs are



Phenom X4 955 3.2Ghz

Asus M4A87TD USB3

2GB DDR3 1600

MSI Cyclone GTX 460 768MB



Will you be getting a suitable power supply that will be able to handle SLI if you eventually do get a second card?|||There are many cheap power supplies with high wattage rating but very low 12v amp ratings which is what is important for a video card. eVGA recommend 24 amps on the 12v rail(s) this means you need a power supply that has 24 amps across the 12v rails.



Get quality, not quantity.

Report Abuse

|||the 460 is actually one of the best cards for the money and will handle any new game with out a problem. and actually, if you get 2 460's it cheaper and faster then buying one 480. i wouldnt hesitate to choose that card