Inno3D GeForce GTX 460 OC review

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Overclocking the GTX 460 1024MB

 

Overclocking the GTX 460 1024MB

As most of you know, with most videocards you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. You can do this at two levels, namely tweaking by enabling registry or BIOS hacks, or very simply tamper with Image Quality. And then there is overclocking, which will give you the best possible results by far.

What do we need?One of the best tool for overclocking NVIDIA and ATI videocards is our own Rivatuner that you can download here. If you own an ATI or NVIDIA graphics card then the manufacturer actually has very nice built in options for you that can be found in the display driver properties. Based on Rivatuner you can alternatively use MSI AfterBurner which will work with 90% of the graphics cards out there. We can recommend it very much, download here.

Where should we go?
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard, but it really can be done in less than a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners, not to increase the frequency any higher than 5% on the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 600 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest that you don't increase the frequency any higher than 30 to 50 MHz.

More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 10-15 MHz and leave it at that. Usually when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 20 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you need to overclock today's tested card anyway, but we'll still show it.

All in all... do it at your own risk.

Original This sample Overclocked + GPU voltage
Core Clock: 675MHz Core Clock: 750MHz Core Clock: 851MHz
Shader Clock: 1350Hz Shader Clock:1500MHz Shader Clock: 1702Hz
Memory Clock: 3600MHz Memory Clock:3800MHz Memory Clock: 4296 MHz

Now we left fan RPM control at default in all circumstances. We apply extra 10% GPU voltage which was set at 1.1 volts (maximum in AfterBurner 1.6.1). We reached a very decent overclock guaranteeing better results.

Check it out, it out a nice overclock alright, and that shows in performance increases. But with added GPU voltage our core temperature now rises to 90+ degrees C under load. We are now confident that our sample has a non-finalized BIOS.

3DMark Vantage - setup in Performance mode

Anything higher then give or take 870 MHz would open up a can of issues. Still look at the performance increase thanks to the overclock. And please do have a peek at reference performance. Once overclocked the power consumption rose over 400 Watts, temps stabilized at 91 Degrees C (under full extreme load) and the noise level went up towards 46DBa which is a little too high for my taste alright.

For this card in this configuration we recommend you to stick at roughly 800 MHz and leave voltage tweaking for what it is.

SOC model with COD: Modern Warfare 2, maxed out image quality settings as before with 4xAA 16xAF

 

Inno3D GeForce GTX 460 1024MB OC

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