Twelve flavors of GeForce GTX 460 now shipping from Newegg (update: official)

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460 hasn't even been officially announced, much less reviewed, but that won't keep you from buying the company's latest Fermi-based graphics card anyhow. Over at Newegg, usual suspects ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI and Palit have fielded twelve models in all, most with slightly different features, thought it seems the base configuration has 336 CUDA cores (down from 352) and a mere 768MB of GDDR5 memory. Interestingly enough, this silicon's actually rated faster than its older brother the $280 GTX 465 with 675MHz graphics and 1,350MHz processor speeds, and a 3.6GHz effective memory clock. All your frames are pushed through a decidedly narrower 192-bit memory interface, though, so we'd guess that for around $200, you won't be getting (much) more than you pay for. Let's just hope they run cool.

Update: The card's official, and it seems there's a 1GB, 256-bit version of the GTX 460, too. Hit the break for the full press release, filled with all the puffery a video game marketing team could want.

[Thanks, Polytonic]

Show full PR text

DX11 Done Right! NVIDIA Delivers Monster Tessellation Performance to the $199 Sweet Spot for Gamers

New GeForce GTX 460 Delivers up to 4x Performance Over Competing Processors, Real-Time PhysX, and Eye-Popping 3D

SANTA CLARA, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 07/11/2010 -- NVIDIA today announced the latest addition to its Fermi-class of graphics processing units (GPUs), the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460 -- which delivers a great DX11 gaming experience and is priced right at the market's $199 sweet spot.

Built from the ground up for DirectX 11 tessellation, GeForce GTX 460 GPUs deliver monster tessellation performance with up to 4x tessellation performance(i) over competing GPUs. The GTX 460 brings the ultimate next-generation DX11 gaming experience to a new price segment, enabling more gamers than ever to experience incredibly detailed characters, terrain and game environments with blazing fast performance and awesome visuals.

With full support for NVIDIA 3D Vision™ technology, the GeForce GTX 460 provides the graphics horsepower and video bandwidth needed to experience games and high definition Blu-ray movies in eye-popping stereoscopic 3D.

Here's what leading game developers have to say about the GeForce GTX 460:

"With the GeForce GTX 460, NVIDIA is really upping the ante with an amazingly fast DirectX 11 GPU available at a great, mainstream-friendly price. Its new hardware tessellation support will enable games to reach an entirely new caliber of graphics."
-- Epic Games / Tim Sweeney / Chairman, CEO and Technical Director

"NVIDIA platforms continue to be the Gold Standard at Id Software for quality, performance, and support."
-- Id Software / John Carmack / Technical Director

"We've got a great working relationship with the NVIDIA engineers. It has enabled us to add amazing new visual effects like native 3D, 3D Vision Surround, and PhysX/APEX support in Mafia II. With the new GeForce GTX 460, Empire Bay comes to life, immersing players like never before!"
--2K Games / Denby Grace / Senior Producer of Mafia II

"The Civilization V team is really excited about the high-end DirectX 11 performance at a mainstream price point that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 delivers. The 460's support for DX11 features such as tessellation and compute shaders allow Civilization V to run faster while looking better than ever."
-- Firaxis Games / Dan Baker / Graphics Lead on Civilization V

"Great performance at a great price -- what's not to love? With full support for PhysX and 3D Vision, the GeForce GTX 460 is a great GPU to use for UDK development and UE3-based games."
-- Epic Games / Mark Rein / Vice President

"Capcom has worked closely with NVIDIA on a number of PC titles and GeForce GPUs have always helped us to deliver the very best experience to users. The GeForce GTX 460 is a great card and its blazing performance helps our titles to shine."
-- Capcom / Jun Takeuchi / General Manager of R&D Strategic Planning Department

"Kings and Castles will look spectacular on the GeForce GTX 460. Imagine how full-scale battles with hundreds of soldiers, dragons, and flying zeppelin battleships will look in fantastic 3D!"
-- Gas Powered Games / Chris Taylor / Founder & CEO

With 336 NVIDIA CUDA™ cores and 56 texture units, the GeForce GTX 460 comes in two flavors:

GTX 460 768MB, with a 192-bit memory interface at an estimated U.S. price of $199
GTX 460 1GB, with a 256-bit memory interface at an estimated US price of $229

The GeForce GTX 460 768MB version is available starting today from the world's leading add-in card partners, including ASL, ASUS, Colorful, ECS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, Jetway, KFA2, Leadtek, MSI, Palit, Point of View, PNY, Sparkle, Zotac and others. Wider availability of the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is expected by July 26, 2010. Consumers are encouraged to check their favorite retailer or e-tailer for availability.

[d0mth0ma5 Posted Jul 11th 2010 6:17PM]

@archkron Or the word ironic.

[Cpsheehan Posted Jul 12th 2010 4:39PM]

@Cpsheehan
Okay, you're right, precise definitely isn't the right word. But no one else sees the irony in a tech site not having the most up-to-date app? I really wasn't trying bring iPhone into the conversation, I'm just hoping that an engadget employee sees this and makes a change about it. I really love this blog or w/e, but I'm also really tired of having a shotty icon on my screen, and not being able to take advantage of multitasking with the 3rd party app I use the most. Sorry if my indulgence in complainmanship degraded your comment-reading experience in any way.

[iHack13 Posted Jul 11th 2010 5:50PM]

hmmm... reading the article I was rather expecting a NVIDIA vs ATI flame war in the comments..
but as it seems I forgot about the PC and Mac fellas....

whatever .. VIVA ESPANA

[nickyP Posted Jul 11th 2010 6:06PM]

just a quick heads up to the writer of this article. Memory bus is important but expensive, often if the memory is fast enough (gddr 5) then it may not be bottlenecked by the bus. In any event, I feel like cards are overkill these days, what games even needs these? We need a new unreal or ID engine to emerge.

[airbag888 Posted Jul 11th 2010 7:08PM]

@nickyP

Pray for Rage to come to us mortals soon

[xNamelessNeko Posted Jul 11th 2010 6:36PM]

Gonna wait for the 1GB version, I know its there.

[Gandalf20000 Posted Jul 11th 2010 6:41PM]

Yes, but can it play Crysis?

[einhanderkiller Posted Jul 11th 2010 6:49PM]

The 1GB 256-bit version is the GTX 460 you want.

Palit seems to be the only one on Newegg right now with that version.

[chodaboy19 Posted Jul 11th 2010 7:10PM]

Is it true that the 1GB version is using the GF100 die and the 768MB version is using the new GF104 die?

[dMn Posted Jul 11th 2010 9:09PM]

@chodaboy19 I believe both are using the new GF104 die.

[michaspi Posted Jul 11th 2010 7:31PM]

Twelve different ways to burn up that dance floor.

[jiggpig Posted Jul 11th 2010 7:44PM]

So they bumped the clocks and chopped some cores. I wonder which one is faster.

[onecallednick Posted Jul 11th 2010 7:59PM]

Man, engadget. A little homework on your subject would be nice. There's a 768MB GDDR5 version with 192 bit bus, and a 1GB version with 256MB bus.
In response to the perpetual flame war of nvidia vs. ati. Don't be surprised if they hit this one out of the park. Fermi and the GT200 architecture have some solid points in their field. OpenCL performance is much higher on a gtx 280 than on a 5870, for instance.
My next GPU purchase will be something I can use for BOINC and thus will have double-precision capability coming out the yin-yang. I'm hoping the GTX 460 keeps Fermi's double-precision superiority intact. Otherwise, I'll be getting a GTX 260 Core 216.

[Shalabi Posted Jul 11th 2010 8:17PM]

There is no game that will benefit from this card over the previous generation.

[chaddledee Posted Jul 11th 2010 8:27PM]

@Shalabi BFBC2, AVP, DiRT2, Metro 2033 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. want a word with you. On average Battleforge gets 20% more frames in DX11 than in DX10, and looks better. In BFBC2 the antialiasing is better and so are shadows and there is no performance hit.

[RITarded09 Posted Jul 11th 2010 8:23PM]

I really want a Fermi-based successor to the GT-240. I want low wattage but still capable.

Oh well, the GT-240 is good enough for a while yet.

[bufbarnaby Posted Jul 11th 2010 9:33PM]

Cards like that make my loins tingle.

[Amusednow Posted Jul 12th 2010 1:14AM]

Oh noes no review of the lastest nvidia burner. It's madlibs with their boards anyways for sites. The _____from nVidia arrived in our____ lastnight/this morning and we proceeded to put it through it's paces in our _____ testbed. While we only ran nvidia approved and tuned programs it blazed past the previous champ ______ card. While it ran slightly hotter we feel it was _____ it. Thankfully nVidia supplied us with ______ to compensate for the offset. While it runs ______ % slower than _____ from AMD in their ______ it was nice to see this _____ finally shipping. Although we would like to see _____ once the final drivers are released in _____ it should be a good card for _____.

Some suggested fillin words. 15, money, payola, morons, toasters, more money, payola is great.....

Stay classy "reviewers"