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(More customer reviews)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.
My experiences with Gigabyte products have been relatively pleasant. And this card is no exception. The package has basically all that you need including a physical user's manual, driver CD, SLI bridge and the standard items that come with graphics cards. Looking at the card, you can see the quality parts used in the construction and it felt solid in my hand. This card requires two slots (not the physical connectors, but the space it occupies) in your case so you need to plan ahead. The length is pretty standard for a graphics card of this level, but I had a bit of an inconvenience placing it within my Dell Studio 540. I had to remove both SATA hard drives so that the card could slip beneath it and where I could comfortably (and safely) push it into the PCIe slot. Once in place, however, I was able to put the hard drives back in without them touching the card.
I had recently purchased a Corsair 550W (VX series 80+) power supply and the cabling fit without problems. I recommend at least a 500W power supply (650W if you are going to install a pair of these for SLI) especially if you have more than one hard drive and plan to add additional components and are also attaching many devices via USB. When installing the cables, make sure they don't touch the card and try to snake them in a way that they don't interfere with ventilation on the card.
The whole installation was pretty much a non-issue and it did take me about 10 minutes total since I made sure to tie any loose cables and allow for proper ventilation. A lot of people overlook this little fact. I recommend you to take a few minutes (no need to rush!) and make sure everything is in place and well situated. Obviously, at the time of this writing, the included drivers were already updated by Nvidia, so I would advise everyone to not install from the CD. Instead, head over to Nvidia's website ([...]) and download the latest drivers there (260.89 - 10/22/10)
Some random bits (1600 x 900 resolution, Vista 64, Q9400 + 6GB ram):
-While this product is an "overclock", you can actually push the envelope even higher. Gigabyte has actually left their settings too low and could've pushed it higher without any worries. My current settings: GPU 750/Shader 1500/Memory 2000 (GPU and Shader are tied together, can't set this separately) If you wish to perform an overclock, you can go to MSI's website and use their software, Afterburner. WARNING: I'm not liable, nor is Gigabyte, if you decide to do this!
-Normal GPU temperature hovers around 42-45°C, depending on time of day.
-For StarCraft 2, GPU utilization usually fluctuates but on average around 30% with temperatures around 62-66°C.
-For Final Fantasy XIV, GPU utilization on average is around 40% or so and temperatures can go as high as 75°C but tends to settle around 65°C.
-I can also run both SC2 and FF XIV simultaneously with no problems. Utilization will go up to around 85% but the temperature usually idles at around 68-70°C (again, depending on time of day) I've also run World of Warcraft (Cataclysm Beta) and FFXIV simultaneously with some performance degradation but no major issues.
-FFXIV runs in 8x FSAA and all settings on high (with Occlusion turned off) without much problems (24-60 fps depending on server congestion).
-WoW (Cataclysm Beta) runs great, around 60-80 fps with virtually everything on max.
-SC2 presents no challenge even with screen full of Protoss Pylons which are arguably the most graphical intensive art asset in the game.
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