The latest member of the NVIDIA lineup is the GeForce GTX 460 graphics card. It is fully based on the all new 40nm GF104 chipset which is based on the Fermi architecture introduced earlier this year. These GeForce GTX 460 is positioned at the lower end of the mid-range performance segment around the $200 price tag. And NVIDIA offers two variants of these GeForce GTX 460, one with 768MB of GDDR5 memory and one with 1GB. Due to the GPU architecture this change in memory size not only affects the memory but also other performance relevant figures. Such reduction of memory is achieved by installing less memory chips which reduces the bus width to 192-bit on the 768MB version. - techPowerUp

Point of View GeForce GTX 460 Beast Edition Review

The Point of View GeForce GTX 460 1GB Beast version is simply the highest performing GeForce GTX 460 in their lineup. All graphics cards are tested at TGT Germany, who are a new company specializing in graphics card overclocking. This additional binning process enables Point of View to release cards that are able to run these high speeds of 855MHz core and 4020MHz memory reliably. It comes as no surprise that all this additional work has an effect on pricing. The TGT Beast edition that we look at today retails for about $280 which is almost the price of a GeForce GTX 465, but it truly is the fastest around.

The package is full of stickers on the front that identify the product features. We wonder if that girl on the front is the Beast which gives the card its name. It is immediately visible that Point of View has just chosen to stick with the NVIDIA reference design for their card. If the card can deliver, this is certainly not a bad thing. It keeps cost in check and uses a well tested thermal solution. This also means the Point of View GTX 460 TGT Beast edition uses two slots, just like the reference design. As mentioned before, the cooler is the default one which uses a copper baseplate and two heatipes to keep the card running cool.

The best point of it all is that the overclocks of our sampl are 905MHz core and 4260MHz memory. To be honest, We didn't expect to see much of an additional overclock from a video card that is already running heavily overclocked beyond the reference design specifications. It seems the TGT binning process is working really good and picking great cards. Point of View clearly impressed us with their TGT Beast version. The card comes at amazing clock speeds and what makes it even more impressive is that they can do this on a reference design card where other board partners need expensive coolers and redesigned PCB's versions.

So we are quite certain that Point of View is shipping boatloads of GeForce GTX 460 cards to TGT who then test every single card for the maximum clocks it can run. The cards are then sorted into bins corresponding to products. Based on our sample we can also confirm that Point of View did not simply increase the GPU operating voltage to reach their target clock speeds, which would have resulted in higher power consumption and potentially reduced lifetime of the chip. Another surprise for me was that additional overclocking was possible. This is clear evidence that the core chipset on the TGT Beast overclocks significantly better.

All this comes at a price, with a retail price of around $280 this card is expensive when compared to other GeForce GTX 460 cards. Another comparison one could make though is against the GeForce GTX 470 which is only a little faster than the card tested today, but costs $70 more. With some manual extra overclocking you could even reach Radeon HD 5870 levels, and that's a $400 card. If you have the cash and simply want the fastest out of the box GeForce GTX 460 that money can buy, go for the Point of View GTX 460 TGT Beast edition.