In this entire ordeal we nearly broke our relations with Palit to be honest, as we can not accept to review 'vanilla' picked samples while the final-product differs in the stores. Last week, as you guys have been able to follow here in the news,  we have had contact with Palit on several occasions to get some important questions answered. In the end, the review sample according to Palit, differed from the end product as it was an engineering sample, rushed out to us and other reviewers to make the launch in time.

Based on our comments a lot of things happened, a new BIOS series has been released to compensate the noise levels on the retail samples of the Palit GTX 460 series, if you have a GTX 460 from Palit, please download the new BIOS here:

http://www.palit.biz/main/faq_show.php?pc_cate=vga&id=161

This file (includes BIOS) is for all of our GTX 460 models to update a new BIOS. It will automatically update the BIOS if it needs to.

First reports have shown that the noise levels indeed went down as the RPM level was brought back from 80 to 60 RPM, with the GPU running at 75 degrees C. So that is looking much better.

Secondly, we'll be receiving the final sample from Palit hopefully this week, and are going to clean out all results of the engineering sample from our original review and replace them with the results of the final SKU. I'll keep you guys posted on that.

Last but not least, in a phone conversation with Palit on Friday I have requested some sort of statement for the end-users, this arrived this morning:

To who it may concern,

That review sample is the very first model we made, after finalizing the BIOS, there was no need to add a VRM heatsink.

GTX 460 1GB "Sonic Platinum" without a MOSFET heatsink (the samples for review had the heat sink)

1. It is no need to add a heat sink for those components (MOSFET power circuit).
   We had passed the thermal qualification testing for the the specification. The NV reference board does also not add it too.
2. 100% burning tests for the GTX460 1GB "Sonic Platinum" (We have tested and done burning test for each "Sonic Platinum" board before shipped out to our customers. The "Burning test" - with at least 2 hours under 45 Degree C inside the chamber
3. The temperature on the GPU, memory chips and VRM components of the GTX460 1GB "Sonic Platinum" is not over NV specification under 45 Degree chamber. (We run 3Dmark2006 "GT2" that was suggested by NV for the Thermal testing.

Please be confident with our serious testing process, which you do not need to be worries about an damage possibilities.

Quality is always out priority. Thank you.

If there are any further questions regarding this issue, you are welcome to email Palit support line; support@palit.biz We will be more than welcome to assist you.

Best regards

Norman Lian - Palit Microystems Ltd

It is with this last news-item that we'll leave this matter to rest now. Once we have the final board in, as stated, we are going to update and replace the results in our GTX 460 shootout article. We recommend all Palit GTX 460 Sonic and Sonic Platinum owners to update their BIOS, as the updated firmware seems to make a good difference preventing extreme noise levels.