Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 SOC review - Introduction

Introduction

When we look at NVIDIA anno 2010, the GeForce GTX 460 has to be the most interesting in terms of value for money with very acceptable decent thermals and power consumption. This is why we see a lot of SKUs released for this product, with a variety of cooling and factory overclocks.

The GeForce GTX 460 comes in many forms, shapes and sizes, but pretty much all of the cards out there are based on the NVIDIA reference design. That by itself is a rock solid design with no compromises at all. However, we are gurus and we like to see things within their own little niche and with that x-factor. As such it's always with the greatest pleasure that we review the more customized products.

Gigabyte also released a handful of GeForce GTX 460 cards, based on the reference design with a slight overclock, yet also an SOC series graphics card which is a factory overclocked model with the new WindForce 2X based cooler sitting on top of that GPU. Now, we've already seen a couple of models based on this cooling solution, but the Gigabyte card really is something special.

We spot cool temperatures of the GPU versus a downright high factory overclock. And for the freaks, if you like to overclock a little yourself and utilize overclock software this product can be overclocked even further, really high actually, yet you still have a product that remains 100% silent. Of course we are here to find out all about it and that.

Have a peek at the product tested today, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 SOC (Super OverClock) series graphics card, armed with 1024MB of video memory and the desire to perform really as this 1024MB model is clocked at 815 MHz on the core and 4000 MHz on its graphics memory. Next page please.