My experience with the GTX460, Gainwards GLH card

[Madcatatlas]

Hey guys.

I recently assembled a new gaming/working rig. Here are my experiances with it so far, and since im a gameminded person, the GTX460 at 800mhz factory oc, is in the focus.
Rig is in signature btw.

The card is currently at these specs:

850mhz on the core
1704mhz on the shaders
2000mhz on the memory (untouched)
voltage: 1.0250

Games played/demoed:

Dirt2
Mount & Blade
STALKER, shadows of chernobyl

plus some other graphically not challenging games.


First of all: The card has been doing great.
> Temperatures have been low, at most ive seen 64 degrees celsius after 2 hours of playing Stalker at max resolution 1920x1080 and eyecandy.
The card sits at 30degrees celsius at idle/browsing/dalaran
> Noise is low, im sitting with the case a meter away and im hearing the buzz, but no irritating noise, just the ordinary computer fan buzz.
> I have no idea about power draw, but since its a Oced card, i guess its abit higher than the stock which you see in tests.




Ive not recorded frames, maybe i should do that aswell, gameplay has been, in the spirit of Hardocp, good. Ive not noticed slowdowns


Dirt2 at max resolution plays smooth with everything on high.
Stalker is a few years old, but looks great imo. Plays smoothly

Mount and Blade isnt that grahically instense, but its ok for having alot of individual units on the field at the same time. Again, a smooth play.

Have added:

Heaven Benchmark v2.1

FPS:31.7
Scores:799
Min FPS:4.0
Max FPS:61.5

Hardware

Binary:Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1500 Release May 21 2010
Operating system:Windows 7 (build 7600) 64bit
CPU model:Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz
CPU flags:2942MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model:NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 8.17.12.5896 1024Mb

Settings

Render:direct3d11
Mode:1920x1080 2xAA fullscreen
Shaders:high
Textures:high
Filter:trilinear
Anisotropy:4x
Occlusion:enabled
Refraction:enabled
Volumetric:enabled
Replication:disabled
Tessellation:normal

Crashes/driver problems:

So far, ZERO

The card came with the latest WHQL (right order?) drivers from Nvidias website, so no need to update for me.



Ill try at some point to OC the card i guess. Not done it yet. Will post some scores etc.
+ Highly recommend this card.

- The only downside atm for new buyers i guess, is that with the price drops of HD5850, they are almost in the same league pricevise. I havent bothered to check the performance difference with a stock HD5850.

 

[Will Robinson]

That's a pretty decent score for the Heaven benchmark.
I doubt an HD5850 would be quite as high.
Guess that's why the Green team love it so much

 

[JimmiG]

I have the same model, but mine is the regular "GS" which runs at 700 MHz. But since I only have a Phenom II and play at 1680x1050, it's fine. I upgraded from a 4850, so the difference is huge.

I think it's a great design. The card is shorter than the reference GTX 460 which is quite important for me since I have a small cheap case. My old 4850 barely fit.
It gets a little loud running stuff like Furmark or Design Garage, but otherwise it's quiet. It also doesn't exhaust much hot air, but that's why you have case fans Temps are great, 65C with Furmark running vs 96C with the 4850...

 

[dug777]

Give the LostPlanet2 demo benchmark a whirl too, and MafiaII if you must

My 5850 was a very sweet step up from my 4850 also

 

[Madcatatlas]

I think ill give Mafia2 a pass dug777, ill try LostPlanet for sure. the card is now oced to 850 without any indication of trouble.

its good to have a grahics card that just works, isnt it?

 

[dug777]

I think ill give Mafia2 a pass dug777, ill try LostPlanet for sure. the card is now oced to 850 without any indication of trouble.

its good to have a grahics card that just works, isnt it?

Oh I am with you there, I thought Mafia2 was about as much fun as stabbing myself in the eye with a spork

Indeed it is

 

[Campy]

I've got the Gainward GTX 460 GS. I overclocked it today and it does 875 core at stock voltage. That's a 25% overclock!
Temp was about 76 with 80% fan speed. I also like the fact that the card is shorter than the reference design.
Clocks and temps with furmark running btw.

Edit: I have a question, does anybody know the highest safe voltage for a 460?

 

[bryanW1995]

my 768mb card maxed out at 850 core without overvoltage, that's a pretty nice oc in my book (675-850) on stock voltage! the highest temp I've seen on my card is 63c, and that was after running furmark for 10 minutes at 905/4400. Can't comment on fan noise b/c all my case fans are on high, but I can't detect the gpu fan at all over that.

@campy: I could get it to run at 875 on stock, but it hard locked on crysis demo and pcmark vantage. went down in 5 mhz increments until it was finally stable at 850. I'm running now at 1.087v @905 core, runs everything fine there.

 

[tviceman]

I've got the Gainward GTX 460 GS. I overclocked it today and it does 875 core at stock voltage. That's a 25% overclock!
Temp was about 76 with 80% fan speed. I also like the fact that the card is shorter than the reference design.
Clocks and temps with furmark running btw.

Edit: I have a question, does anybody know the highest safe voltage for a 460?

The chips will drop down into a safe mode if you set the voltage too high, so IMO as long as it's not getting too hot and you aren't getting artifacts on screen then you can probably set the voltage to as high as the card will let you set it without damaging it.

 

[Campy]

my 768mb card maxed out at 850 core without overvoltage, that's a pretty nice oc in my book (675-850) on stock voltage! the highest temp I've seen on my card is 63c, and that was after running furmark for 10 minutes at 905/4400. Can't comment on fan noise b/c all my case fans are on high, but I can't detect the gpu fan at all over that.

@campy: I could get it to run at 875 on stock, but it hard locked on crysis demo and pcmark vantage. went down in 5 mhz increments until it was finally stable at 850. I'm running now at 1.087v @905 core, runs everything fine there.

I'm actually downloading crysis demo now to give it a nice test. 63c at 905? are you running your fan at 100% or is it a different cooler?

 

[superccs]

Anyone check their GPU utilization % when playing the games listed above?

I have the MSI 460 and rarely does the GPU utilization go above 40% when playing things like TF2 and Modern Warfare maxed at 1080p with a 2nd monitor showing GPU-Z info.

Any comments?

oh and whats the stock reported voltage of your cards, mine is 1.012V (GPU-Z)

 

[Campy]

1.012 here too

 

[bryanW1995]

I'm actually downloading crysis demo now to give it a nice test. 63c at 905? are you running your fan at 100% or is it a different cooler?

no, but I did alter the fan profile slightly in afterburner. it ramps up sooner for example, and it will max out at 95% at really high temps (90-95c iirc). I'll check it when I get home later and rerun furmark to verify info.

edit: my stock vcore is .987 I think, I'll check that too.

 

[MangoX]

Anyone check their GPU utilization % when playing the games listed above?

I have the MSI 460 and rarely does the GPU utilization go above 40% when playing things like TF2 and Modern Warfare maxed at 1080p with a 2nd monitor showing GPU-Z info.

Any comments?

oh and whats the stock reported voltage of your cards, mine is 1.012V (GPU-Z)

I'd have to say that it's because neither of those games are very demanding at all.

 

[Madcatatlas]

Edited the topic post (and title, thx for the correction!) with info on voltage etc and the slight oc i run atm.


I noticed the auto fan profile wont set in until the temperature reaches 65+ degrees. This was running MSI Kombustor stress test and the card didnt go higher than 73 degrees celcius for the short time period i tested it. The auto fan tuned up to 49% at the highest temperature and stayed there, going one down, one up.

The fan is also not noticable over my case fans unless it goes above 65%. And i only turned them up that high to hear it , it wasnt that bad. I definetly bought the right Fermi card!

 

[Campy]

no, but I did alter the fan profile slightly in afterburner. it ramps up sooner for example, and it will max out at 95% at really high temps (90-95c iirc). I'll check it when I get home later and rerun furmark to verify info.

edit: my stock vcore is .987 I think, I'll check that too.

I think you may be right about your vcore, i think that's one of the differences between the 768 and the 1GB or something
here's my fan thingy:

http://bildr.no/view/716326

basically my fan is running 80% under full load.

I noticed the same problem as you in crysis, it would just lock up immediately with that 875 oc i had on it, even though it was rock solid in furmark. bit weird that, any clue why it would behave that way?
Oh well i just pumped vcore up to 1050mV and it worked like a charm. I couldn't be bothered to see how low i could go on the voltage because i'm just going to try for a 900+ OC tomorrow on 1050mV. Maybe i could do something like 925core at the maxed voltage 1087mV.

Have you tried overclocking your memory btw? If so, how high did u get?



edit: also have a look at this http://global.msi.eu/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=738&cat3_no=&prod_no=2152 costs about the same as the gainward GLH edition and has the twin frozr cooler and lets u adjust voltage for core, memory and PLL(i don't really know what that is, anybody wanna clarify?)

 

[SolMiester]

Hey guys.

snip

Ive always liked Gainward cards.....had GS-Ti4600 and 6600GT...dont see many here in NZ!

 

[bryanW1995]

I think you may be right about your vcore, i think that's one of the differences between the 768 and the 1GB or something
here's my fan thingy:

http://bildr.no/view/716326

basically my fan is running 80% under full load.

I noticed the same problem as you in crysis, it would just lock up immediately with that 875 oc i had on it, even though it was rock solid in furmark. bit weird that, any clue why it would behave that way?
Oh well i just pumped vcore up to 1050mV and it worked like a charm. I couldn't be bothered to see how low i could go on the voltage because i'm just going to try for a 900+ OC tomorrow on 1050mV. Maybe i could do something like 925core at the maxed voltage 1087mV.

Have you tried overclocking your memory btw? If so, how high did u get?



edit: also have a look at this http://global.msi.eu/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=738&cat3_no=&prod_no=2152 costs about the same as the gainward GLH edition and has the twin frozr cooler and lets u adjust voltage for core, memory and PLL(i don't really know what that is, anybody wanna clarify?)

wow, you should edit your fan profile. I'm at 30% up to 40c, goes up to 50% as you get to 50c, goes up to 80% as you get to 80c, then up to 95% as you get to 90c+. of course, it makes sense that the 1gb card would run hotter so maybe your fan profile is ok. was that the default fan profile setting?

furmark is great for finding max temps, but crysis is better for overall stability testing. pcmark vantage actually failed at 855 on stock voltage for me after crysis had already done just fine, so that will definitely stay in my stability testing regime going forward as well.

I didn't try over 905, in fact I have dropped it back to 900 for 24/7 use.

Max memory that I have tested was 4400.

edit: yes, default vcore .987

 

[Campy]

Yeah i should alter the fan profile, but for me that's just a minor detail as I don't really mind the fan. I have a good deal of noise coming from my case fans and the graphics card fan isn't a problem at 80%, but at 100% it starts making a proper whining sound.
--
I'll remember that about using crysis for stability testing, and give vantage a go aswell.
Why did you drop back to 900, was it for the sake of longevity and did you drop vcore aswell? Btw I think it's a good idea to have seperate 2d and 3d profiles set up in afterburner to limit clocks speeds while at desktop.

 

[superccs]

any fan speed lower than 40% probably doesn't alter fan noise.