GIGABYTE NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1024MB DDR5 SLI Review : Introduction & Specification (1/18)

1. Powered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 GPU 2. Integrated with 1024 MB / 256-bit GDDR5 video memory 3. GIGABYTE WINDFORCE™ cooling design 4. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA High Quality Components 5. Supports Microsoft DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.0 6. NVIDIA SLI Ready 7. NVIDIA Pure Video HD technology & 3D Vision Surround Ready 8. Supports NVIDIA PhysX / CUDA technology 9. Features Dual Link DVI-I*2/ mini-HDMI 1.3a connector 10. 5.5% better performance than standard HD 5850 11. 15% better performance than standard HD 5830 12. 4x the DX11 tessellation performance of HD 5830

Features & Benefits GPU Temperature 5%~10% down Ultra Durable VGA board provides dramatic cooling effect on lowering both GPU and memory temperature by doubling the copper inner layer of PCB. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA can lower GPU temperature by 5% to 10%. Overclocking Capability 10%~30% Up Ultra Durable VGA board reduces voltage ripples in normal and transient state, thus effectively lowers noises and ensures higher overclocking capability. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA graphic accelerators improve overclocking capability by 10% to 30%. Power Switching Loss 10%~30% Down Ultra Durable VGA board allows more bandwidth for electron passage and reduces circuit impedance. The less circuit impedance, the more stable flow of current and can effectively improve power efficiency. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA can lower power switching loss by 10% to 30%. More

The special inclined dual fan design effectively minimizes the flow of turbulence between two fans and enhances heat dissipation of hot area right underneath each fan. By unique design, WINDFORCETM 2X even enlarges air channel on the graphics card vents and creates a more effective air flow system in chassis. This special design helps heat dissipate quickly from GPU. In addition, WINDFORCETM 2X is equipped with 2 copper heat-pipes which strengthen the speed of heat dissipation.

As a citizen of the global village, GIGABYTE exert ourselves to be a pioneer in environment care. Give the whole of Earth a promise that our products do not contain any of the restricted substances in concentrations and applications banned by the RoHS Directive, and are capable of being worked on at the higher temperatures required for lead free solder. One Earth and GIGABYTE Cares!

World's first DirectX 11 GPU with full Shader Model 4.0 support delivers unparalleled levels of graphics realims and film-quality effects.

PCI Express^® 2.0 –Now you are ready for the most demanding graphics applications thanks to PCI Express^® 2.0 support, which allows up to twice the throughput of current PCI Express^® cards. Doubles the bus standard's bandwidth from 2.5 Gbit/s (PCIe 1.1) to 5 Gbit/sec.

High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a form of copy protection technology designed to prevent transmission of non-encrypted high-definition content as it travels across DVI or HDMI digital connections.

Microsoft Windows 7 is the next generation operating system that will mark a dramatic improvement in the way the OS takes advantage of the graphics processing unit (GPU) to provide a more compelling user experience. By taking advangate of the GPU for both graphics and computing, Windows 7 will not only make todays's PCs more visual and more interactive but also ensure that they have the speed and responsiveness customers want

High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a new interface standard for consumer electronics devices that combines HDCP-protected digital video and audio into a single, consumer-friendly connector.

Available on HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs, high-definition movies are bringing an exciting new video experience to PC users. NVIDIA^® PureVideo™ HD technology lets you enjoy cinematic-quality HD DVD and Blu-ray movies with low CPU utilization and power consumption, allowing higher quality movie playback and picture clarity.PureVideo HD technology provides a combination of powerful hardware acceleration, content security, and integration with movie players, plus all the features found in PureVideo.

NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology unlocks the power of the hundreds of cores in your NVIDIA® GeForce® graphics processor (GPU) to accelerate some of the most performance hungry computing applications. The CUDA™ technology already adopted by thousands of programers to speed up those performance hungry computing applications.

NVIDIA^® PhysX™ is the next big thing in gaming!Delivering physics in games is no easy task. It's an extremely compute-intensive environment based on a unique set of physics algorithms that require tremendous amounts of simultaneous mathematical and logical calculations. The best way to get real-time physics, such as explosions that cause dust and debris, characters with life-like motion or cloth that drapes and tears naturally is with an NVIDIA^®PhysX™-ready GeForce^® processor. PhysX software is widely adopted by over 150 games, is used by more than 10,000 registered users and is supported on Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC. PhysX™ technology will take gaming to a whole new level.

NVIDIA's fourth-gereration GPU architecture built for Windows Vista gives users the best possible experience with the Windows Aero 3D graphical user interface.

Shader Model 5.0 adds support for indexed temporaries which can be quite useful for certain tasks.Regular direct temporary access is preferable is most cases. One reason is that indexed temporaries are hard to optimize. The shader optimizer may not be able to identify optimizations across indexed accesses that could otherwise have been detected. Furthermore, indexed temporaries tend to increase register pressure a lot. An ordinary shader that contains for instance a few dozen variables will seldom consume a few dozen temporaries in the end but is likely to be optimized down to a handful depending on what the shader does. This is because the shader optimizer can easily track all variables and reuse registers. This is typically not possible for indexed temporaries, thus the register pressure of the shader may increase dramatically. This could be detrimental to performance as it reduces the hardware’s ability to hide latencies.

Ensure top-notch compatibility and performance for all OpenGL 4.0 application.

Delivers up to 2X the performance of a single GPU configuration for unparalleled gaming experiences by allowing two graphics cards to run in parallel. The must-have feature for performance PCI Express graphics, SLI dramatically scales performance on 60 top PC games.

Faster clocks, double the transistor density of earlier 40 nm technology. 40nm technology helped make GTX 460 series products the most advanced GPUs ever highest clocks speeds, incredible feature integration, full performance and precision all the time, and ability to take advantage of future, higher-speed memories.