eVGA GTX460 FTW Review (versus Reference HD5870)

The GTX460 has always impressed KitGuru, it has walked away with several of our ‘Must Have' awards in recent months. The eVGA GTX460 FTW is pretty much the pinnacle of GTX460 engineering, not only can it keep up with the HD5870, but it runs cooler, requires less power and doesn't make a racket in the process.

Let us look at the results from our testing today:

When we look at the results the eVGA GTX460 FTW has the edge with the Tessellation heavy Unigine Heaven and Stone Giant Benchmarks. It was almost neck and neck in 3dMark Vantage, but the HD5870 took the lead by a few hundred points thanks to a stonking result in Feature Test 6.

The games were a pretty mixed bag, nVidia favourites such as Far Cry 2 ran significantly faster on the GTX460 FTW while AMD friendly titles such as Resident Evil 5 switched the lead. Tom Clancy HAWX was pretty much neck and neck, with the HD5870 delivering higher minimum frame rates for a slightly smoother experience in the intensive sections. We were however quite surprised to see such a huge lead for nVidia with the DX11 based Lost Planet 2, it was not only noticeable in the results tables, but it felt far superior when actually playing it. Clearly AMD have some work ahead of them on a driver level with this game.

So the outcome is pretty much split down the line, however we need to look at the current pricing of both cards. The eVGA GTX460 FTW (which means ‘for the win' by the way in case you are still wondering) is around £200 inc vat in the UK (if you can find it in stock anywhere) whereas a basic HD5870 is still around £300. After a bit of searching we did find an XFX reference card for £280.99 inc vat which is a very good price – that is a £60 price drop from earlier in the year.

Right now, if you want a powerful gaming card, the GTX460 is a fantastic product which always hits the top of our shortlist. There are certainly cheaper versions than the eVGA  ‘FTW' version we tested today, but just remember that while most GTX460's overclock really well, you might not hit these heights. Every card will overclock to different thresholds – eVGA do handpick these cards so they are guaranteed to hit the best speeds. If you can't find the ‘FTW' model in your area, then be sure to check out the ‘Superclocked' version which we are sure can be pushed quite close – its only £180 inc vat.

KitGuru says: The GTX460 in a highly overclocked state is not only a challenger for the mighty HD5870 but the eVGA is one of the finest cards available on the market today. The only downside for nVidia is that there is absolutely no need to aim higher in the Fermi range … unless breaking benchmarks or running the most demanding engines at 1600p is top of your list.

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