| PNY GeForce GTX 460 OC XLR8 Video Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Olin Coles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 01 September 2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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DX11: Unigine Heaven 2.1The Unigine "Heaven 2.1" benchmark is a free publicly available tool that grants the power to unleash the graphics capabilities in DirectX-11 for Windows 7 or updated Vista Operating Systems. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. With the interactive mode, emerging experience of exploring the intricate world is within reach. Through its advanced renderer, Unigine is one of the first to set precedence in showcasing the art assets with tessellation, bringing compelling visual finesse, utilizing the technology to the full extend and exhibiting the possibilities of enriching 3D gaming. The distinguishing feature in the Unigine Heaven benchmark is a hardware tessellation that is a scalable technology aimed for automatic subdivision of polygons into smaller and finer pieces, so that developers can gain a more detailed look of their games almost free of charge in terms of performance. Thanks to this procedure, the elaboration of the rendered image finally approaches the boundary of veridical visual perception: the virtual reality transcends conjured by your hand. The "Heaven" benchmark excels at providing the following key features:
Although Heaven-2.1 was recently released and used for our DirectX-11 tests, the benchmark results were extremely close to those obtained with Heaven-1.0 testing. Since only DX11-compliant video cards will properly test on the Heaven benchmark, only those products that meet the requirements have been included. Cost Analysis: Unigine Heaven (1680x1050)Test Summary: Our test results with the Unigine Heaven benchmark tool appear to deliver fair comparisons of DirectX-11 graphics cards. Reviewers like to say "Nobody plays a benchmark", but it seems evident that we can expect to see great things come from a graphics tool this detailed. For now though, those details only come by way of DirectX-11 video cards. While the reference 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 clears past the Radeon HD 5830 by nearly 8-FPS, as well as the GeForce GTX 465, it's the PNY GTX 460 XLR8 that steals the thunder away from all of the graphics solutions tested. In this test, the GTX460-OC even surpassed the GeForce GTX 470 by a solid margin. If there was a cost involved with Unigine's Heaven benchmark, the GeForce GTX 460 would cost $1.81 less per frame than the Radeon HD 5830, and the PNY GTX 460 XLR8 would cost $4.45 less per frame than the Radeon HD 5850 while still offering a better value than all other DirectX-11 video cards.
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Comments
How do they compare in performance and noise?
In terms of noise, there's almost none... as in no audible sound. Even with the fan turned to 100% power, the PNY cooler is extremely quiet.
Also, PNY has a RMA graphics card promotion specifically for BFG customers. Send in your BFG card, whether it works or not, and you'll receive a 25 percent discount on select PNY video cards. They'll also throw-in "Just Cause 2" from Square Enix by way of an online download redemption code. So those of you left holding the bag with BFG cards that malfunctioned, can get a better deal than the rest of us with PNY, and a free game. Visit PNY.com or call PNY directly at 1-888-316-1193. The promotion runs until October 31, 2010.
The GTX 460 Hawk review will be posted soon.
You're right though, I haven't been making mention of the sound levels. I'll update my articles to make note of this. Thanks.
In Metro 2033, the two results are 1920x1200 and 1680x1050. I've since replaced the chart with an updated image.
People mention noise a lot with cards, I don't mind noise, i want the fan speed. Any help would be appreciated.
Yeah. EVGA and Gigabyte have released BIOS for their respective cards. Their BIOS allow the cards to go to "maximum" speed (theirs is stuck at 70% before the update)while PNY hasn't. Initially my card would stay about 68C before. Even while the card was overclocked. But for a couple of days now, even with my same overclock settings, the card will get to 80C and crash the game out. I purchased the card the Friday after Thanksgiving. So I got them recently.
Note, when not overclocked the temps get about 70C under a full load.
So the moral of the story is don't purchase these cards to replace your 9800GTs in SLI unless you are sure you have enough connectors from your existing PS, or unless you are replacining your PS as well.