Gigabyte GeForce GTX460-1 GB GDDR5 PCIE2 256B 2DVI-I/HDMI/FAN RTL Video Card GV-N460OC-1GI

I've been a long time ATI supporter and have purchased their products for the most part over the past 10 years. When I purchased StarCraft II and then Final Fantasy XIV, I noticed that my HD4670 was not handling very well (especially the latter title) I decided to settle on a modest budget of around $225 for a new graphics card and looked at the ATI lineup.

The HD5770 was basically a more power efficient and cooler HD4850. The 5830 was just overpriced for a woefully inept performance. The 5850 was way out of my budget. I decided to look elsewhere.

I discovered the GTX460 in reading a few benchmark reviews on various sites, including Anandtech and Tom's Hardware. A lot of the articles seem to like what Nvidia did with this technology and there were some great features that came with the package, including PhysX, Direct X 11 and SLI. After doing some research and reading technical specifications on the various vendors, I decided on Gigabyte.

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This Gigabyte version of the GTX460 impressed me with its cooler. It's almost silent on idle and sounds like a decently built 120mm cooler when its on full, even though there are 2 coolers on the card. I have not seen it going to full fan load during normal use so far, though. This is a big deal for me because I'm a bit of a silent PC nerd. So am happy with the sound levels.

2 DVI ports. Very nice. However The mini-HDMI port is positioned in such a place that i cannot plug the supplied converter (Mini->regular HDMI) in any way. I am still trying to find a plug that will fit, as most I've seen get blocked by the computer case.

Believe it or not, but I downgraded, or rather upgraded from the Palit GTX 470. The Gigabyte GTX 460 and the Palit GTX 470 both have dual fan coolers, but the Gigabyte is just ninja silent. I had to double check to make sure the fans were on. I simply could not hear them at full blast. It was a different story for the Palit. It sounded like a wind tunnel. The heat coming from this card is so benign compared to the 470. I hardly top 60 C under full load with an aggressive overclock. The 470 was at 95 C with factory clock settings. You would have to set the wind tunnel fans manually at 100% to keep it at 71 C at full load. Frame rates are great. With a moderate overclock, it performs at the same level as a 470 while still being 30+ degrees cooler. Two of these in SLI will no doubt kill a single GTX 480. It's rumored that the new nvidia 495 will have two of these babies sandwiched together for a 2560 MB beast of a card.