MSI N460GTX 1GD5 Cyclone 1GB Review

1. Introduction2. MSI N460GTX 1GD5 Cyclone3. Testing Methodology4. Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.15. 3DMark Vantage6. Alien V Predator7. Far Cry 28. Resident Evil 59. Metro 203310. Tom Clancy HAWX11. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City12. Left4Dead 213. Crysis Warhead14. HQV Benchmark V2.015. Overclocking16. Thermal Dynamics17. Acoustics Performance18. Power Consumption19. Closing Thoughts20. View All Pages

The nVidia GTX460 has been well received both by the enthusiast community and hard to please critics. It is the first card in the Fermi range that everyone seems to agree is a fantastic buy, even when against competition from ATI.

We have already looked at the excellent GTX460 Superclocked Edition from eVGA and today we are going to analyse the newest offering from MSI, the N460GTX Cyclone which features 1GB of ram on a 256 bit memory interface (768mb version is 192 bit).

This Cyclone edition comes with a 51mhz overclock on the core (726mhz) with memory running at 900mhz (3600mhz effective).

The card features a rather eye catching circular ‘Cyclone' cooler, very reminiscent of a Zalman design. On a positive note you will be pleased to hear that all this modded goodness still hits a sweet spot of £200 including VAT. Actually just as we were going to press with this review the price dropped even further and you can pick it up now in the UK for just over £190 inc vat. Wozzers.

First, let us have a quick recap as to how this particular product compares with other cards in the nVidia line up.

Model	Geforce GTX 460 768MB	MSI N460 GTX Cyclone 1GD5	Geforce GTX 465	Geforce GTX 470	Geforce GTX 480
Graphics Processing Clusters	2	2	3	4	4
Streaming Multiprocessors	7	7	11	14	15
CUDA Cores	336	336	352	448	480
Texture Units	56	56	44	56	50
ROP Units	24	32	32	40	48
Graphics Clock (Fixed Function Units)	675mhz	726mhz	607mhz	607mhz	700mhz
Processor Clock (CUDA Cores)	1350mhz	1451mhz	1215mhz	1215mhz	1401mhz
Memory Clock (Clock Rate/Data Rate)	900mhz/3600mhz	900mhz/3600mhz	802mhz/3206mhz	837mhz/3348 mhz	924 mhz/3696mhz
Total Video Memory	768MB	1024MB	1024MB	1280MB	1536MB
Memory Interface	192-bit	256-bit	256-bit	320-bit	384-bit
Total Memory Bandwidth	86.4GB/s	115.2GB/s	102.6 GB/s	133.9 GB/s	177.4 GB/s
Texture Filtering Rate (Bilinear)	37.8 Gigatexels/sec	37.8 Gigatexels/sec	26.7 Gigatexels/sec	34.0 GigaTexels/sec	42.0 GigaTexels/sec
Fabrication process	40nm	40nm	40nm	40nm	40nm
Connectors	2x Dual Link DVI-I1x Mini HDMI	2x Dual Link DVI-I1x Mini HDMI	2x Dual Link DVI-I1x Mini HDMI	2x Dual Link DVI-I1x Mini HDMI	2x Dual Link DVI-I1x Mini HDMI
Form Factor	Dual Slot	Dual Slot	Dual Slot	Dual Slot	Dual Slot
Power Connectors	2x6pin	2x6pin	2x6pin	2x6pin	1x6pin, 1x8pin
Recommended Power Supply	450 watts	450 watts	550 watts	550 watts	650 watts
Thermal Design Power	150 watts	150 watts	200 watts	215 watts	250 watts
Thermal Threshold	104c	104c	105c	105c	105c

The product arrives in a black box with green lighting – highlighting the cooler design on the front. As we said on the previous page this is the full fat 1GB GDDR5 version of the card with a 256 bit memory interface.

The rear of the box features the information on the cooler and once the outer shell is removed the card itself is well protected under a rigid plastic cover with thick stryofoam side panels.

The bundle contains a driver CD, reference guides and a few power and DVI converter cables. There is a trial of StarCraft 2 included and a copy of the excellent MSI Afterburner application on the CD which is extremely useful if you wish to manually overclock the card further. We will look into this later.

The card is a very impressive looking beast with the circular shaped cooler on top demanding your immediate attention. The fins on the heatsink are very Zalman like by design  – the flower structure looks very similar to their very popular CPU coolers.

The other side of the card has a fat dual heatpipe design protruding slightly outside the PCB area. There is a single crossfire connector so you can't daisy chain more than two together.

As with most MSI hardware we have reviewed recently the card features ‘military class components' which are Solid State Choke with no buzz noise and higher current for better overclocking ability. The Copper base is Nickel plated and it combines the aluminum extrusion, heatpipes, and fins to form a hybrid heatsink design. This apparently provides better heat transfer compared to a traditional design.

There is a Hi-C Capacitor for the GPU which provides more precise voltage and the design is all Solid Capacitor for longer lifespan. The fan is a 90mm unit which offers up to 40 percent more airflow when compared with the reference design. The rounded design is also better at preventing dust build up and it is apparently 15.7 percent quieter against the reference card. All of this will be tested later in the KitGuru labs.

As with the reference design the MSI board requires two 6 pin PCIe power connectors. The Cyclone has output to two dual link DVI connectors and a mini HDMI port. It is unusual to see DVI ports coloured blue as this is the traditional colour for a VGA connector.

The more observant among you will notice that MSI have cut their company letters into the metal plate, which is a nice touch.

Here you can see the MSI Cyclone 1GB next to the 768MB eVGA Superclocked board, they are the same size (PCB length) however the MSI board looks smaller due to the lack of plastic shroud.

For testing today we decided to take a slightly different approach. KitGuru believes that one of the best value for money processors right now is the 6 core AMD 1055T.

We have spent some time showing you how to get 3.7ghz out of it (without extra voltage) so our mid range system will be based around it.

We will be focusing on 1920×1200 and 1920×1080 (1080p) resolutions today, which is ideal for the target audience.

Test System:

MSI N460GTX 1GD5 Cyclone 1GB
Reference GTX460 768MB

Zotac GTX465 Graphics Card
AMD Reference 5850 Graphics Card
AMD Reference 5830 Graphics Card
AMD 1055T @ 3.7ghz
Kingston HyperX 8GB Kit
MSI 890 GXM-G65
Noctua NH CP12 Cooler
Antec Dark Fleet DF 85
Antec 750W TruPower PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Catalyst 10.7 Driver
ForceWare 258.96 WHQL Driver
Fraps Professional
Dell U2410 Panel
Panasonic Viera NeoPDP 600HZ 42 inch Plasma TV
Buffalo 128GB SSD Drive

Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2

3DMark Vantage Professional
Alien V Predator
Far Cry 2
Resident Evil 5
Metro 2033
Tom Clancy HAWX
Grand Theft Auto 4: Episodes From Liberty City
Left 4 Dead 2
Crysis Warhead
HQV Benchmark 2.0
Unigine Heaven Benchmark

All the latest bios updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru test all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Our minimum frame rate game graphs have three main zones. These are sampled over a specific 30 interval period of time and then mapped into a chart. These are handy reference guides to detail worst case performance of the product being reviewed. When we test video cards we try to find the best combination of resolution and image quality settings while still maintaining playable frame rates.

Over 30fps is the zone most people want at all times, this means perfectly smooth frame rates with no hitching.

Between 30fps and 25fps is the KitGuru ‘Playable’ zone, although some people might notice occasional stuttering in specific scenes.

Under 25fps is classed as the KitGuru ‘Danger Zone’ which means that the game experience will be less than impressive. Settings and/or resolution would need lowered to help smooth out the frame rate.

Unigine is a top-notch technology, that can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand. It is already used in the development of different projects (mostly games).

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We gave the Unigine Heaven V2.1 benchmark a run on the GTX 460 cards at 1080p resolution with other settings left to default. Shaders high, Tessellation normal, anistrophy 4 and anti aliasing off.

The Cyclone 1GB 460GTX manages to outperform the GTX465 with an average frame rate around 33.5 per second. This is a great set of results and nVidia Fermi cards all score well with the Heaven Benchmark.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7.  This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

These are good results for the MSI card, clearly outperforming the reference solution we tested earlier.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

The HD5850 is leading the pack by a few frames per second, but the Cyclone 1GB MSI board is surprisingly close behind, this is the first 460 card we have tested which has been able to maintain a solid 25fps+ frame rate with this engine at these settings.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today. We set the game to 8xAA and 16 texture filtering and maxed all the other settings in game (Ultra High).

Far Cry 2 has always had an engine which favours nVidia hardware/drivers and we can see that the MSI Cyclone comes out on top – although minimum frames per second is held by the GTX 465. When you consider that the reference GTX460 is edging out the HD5850 in minimum frames per second its easy to work out that the nVidia boards are still the first choice if you love playing Far Cry 2.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

We tested via DX 10 with 8AA, Motion blur ON, Shadow, Texture on and at the native resolution of our 1920×1200 panel.

The MSI overclocked 460GTX falls slightly behind the reference GTX465 but it is minimal. The HD5850 leads the way in this particular game with the HD5830 limping home in last place.

The makers of Metro 2033 – 4A Games was founded by people who split off from GSC Game World a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, in particular Oles’ Shiskovtsov and Aleksandr Maksimchuk, the programmers who worked on the development of X-Ray engine used in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. There is some contention regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine (as claimed by Sergiy Grygorovych, the founder of GSC Game World, as well as users who have seen the 4A Engine SDK screenshots, citing visual similarities, shared resources, and technical evaluation of the pre-release 4A Engine demo conducted at the request of GSC Game World), or whether the engine is an original development (as claimed by 4A Games and Oles’ Shiskovtsov in particular, who claims it would have been impractical to retrofit the X-ray engine with console support). 4A Engine features Nvidia PhysX support, enhanced AI, and a console SDK for Xbox 360. The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as “a love letter to PC gamers” because of the developers’ choice to “make the PC version [especially] phenomenal”.

We tested Metro 2033 at the native 1080p resolution of our Panasonic 600hz Plasma Television. DX11, 16af with AAA. We benchmarked with in-game ‘very high’ settings as well as ‘medium’.

Very high settings prove to be too much for this hardware today although it shows how much better the HD5850 is when tasked at these settings with this particular engine.

Moving to NORMAL settings we see a massive increase in frame rates with the HD5850, GTX 465 and MSI 460GTX Cyclone all delivering a very similar performance. This engine is incredibly demanding and many people will probably need to drop this to 1680×1050 to get perfectly smooth rates throughout.

Tom Clancy HAWX is set in the same universe as Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter; as Captain Scott Mitchell, the Ghost leader, is featured in a few missions of the missions. Plot elements are carried over from other Tom Clancy games such as the missile defense system found in Tom Clancy’s EndWar. G4′s interview with H.A.W.X’s lead designer Thomas Simon reveals that the game takes place in between Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and Tom Clancy’s EndWar.

The player begins the game in 2014 as the player assumes the role of former U.S. Air Force pilot, David Crenshaw, who is part of an elite unit called H.A.W.X (“High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squadron”), provides fire-support missions for the Ghost team carrying out covert operations in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. However, shortly after the mission, the Air Force decides to deactivate the H.A.W.X squadron and its pilots, including Crenshaw, are recruited into the PMC Artemis Global Security.

We tested DX 10 with shadows high, sun shafts high, ambient occlusion (SSAO) very high. view distance high, forest high, environment high, texture quality high, HDR on, Engine heat on and DOF on.

The overclocked 1GB MSI board almost manages to reach HD5850 levels with HAWX just falling a single FPS short of the mark at these settings. The nVidia boards give a great experience with this particular engine and clearly driver optimisations are also playing a part with overall performance smoothness.

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City is a standalone compilation of the DLC episodes for Grand Theft Auto IV, containing both The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony on one disc. It was released alongside the DLC release of The Ballad of Gay Tony on 29 October 2009 for the Xbox 360 and released on 13 April 2010 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 3. It does not require a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV to play, nor is an Xbox Live or PSN account necessary (except for multiplayer).

The engine is still extremely demanding for this game – even months later for the newest hardware. The latest version changes some of the rendering calls and is used partially within the latest Max Payne engine.

We tested the game on our 1080p TV and set everything to very high with maximum draw distances.

The overclocked 460GTX was much smoother with our environmental testing and while the figures above only paint half the picture, the 256 bit memory interface is clearly also helping performance with this game.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead. The game launched on November 17, 2009, for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in the United States; it launched November 20 in Europe. It builds upon the cooperatively-focused gameplay of the original and uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine, the same game engine used in Left 4 Dead. The game made its world premiere at E3 2009 with a trailer during the Microsoft press event.

In a similar fashion to the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale.

The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

We tested on our 24 inch monitor at native resolution (1920×1200) with 8x MSAA, 16x AF, shader set to very high and all others set to high.

Valve’s source engine doesn’t prove a challenge on our 24 inch panel at native resolution even with 8AA and all settings maxed. We will now try one of the higher AA modes the nVidia boards support.

The overclocked GTX460 is very close when compared with the GTX 465, only a couple of frames per second seperate the minimum rate performance.

Crysis Warhead, like the original Crysis, is based in a future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered beneath the Earth on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of (Former SAS) Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns.

In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield. Like Crysis, Warhead uses Microsoft’s Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering.

Testing was taken from a custom run of Cargo Level at 1080p in DX10, gamer settings.

The HD5850 is still leading the pack in Crysis even against the hardcore overclocked 460GTX Cyclone. The interesting observation we noticed last time continues however, it seems nVidia have fine tuned their drivers better for this game as the minimum frame rates seem to always be slightly higher than the ATI solutions.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

	AMD HD5830	NV GTX460
Dial	4	4
Dial with static pattern	5	5
Gray Bars	5	5
Violin	5	5
Stadium 2:2	5	5
Stadium 3:2	5	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5	3
Vertical Text Scroll	5	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0	5
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5	5
Random Noise: Flower	5	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5	5
Scrolling Text	5	3
Roller Coaster	5	3
Ferris Wheel	5	3
Bridge Traffic	5	3
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5	3
Roller Coaster	5	3
Ferris Wheel	5	3
Bridge Traffic	5	3
Luminance Frequency Bands	5	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5	5
Vanishing Text	5	5
Resolution Enhancement	15	15
Theme Park	5	5
Driftwood	2	5
Ferris Wheel	5	3
Skin Tones	7	3
Total	193	177

When we released our original HQV 2.0 Analysis weeks ago we mentioned that nVidia would be starting to enhance their drivers for media settings and we are pleased to report that we documented improvements with the Vertical text scrolling aspect of the HQV analysis. The GTX 460 is equal to the GTX 480 in regards to IQ, and due to the much lower power drain and size the GTX 460 is going to be a fantastic media board. nVidia still have a way to go to catch ATI but they are already making progress with the new drivers.

To overclock the cards today we are using MSI's Afterburner software and testing for stability in Crysis. We will overclock the reference GTX460 and the MSI 460GTX Cyclone 1GB.

Our previous overclocking experiences with the GTX460 cards have been impressive, but the MSI card we received has such a massive amount of headroom we are shocked that MSI haven't supplied this at higher overclocks ‘out of the box'. 905mhz on the core and 1050mhz on the memory are astounding results.

With such a huge overclock we were expecting great things, but we have actually seen this card now outperform the HD5850 in Crysis. Not much we can add to this.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. These results are taken with the system built inside the Antec Dark Fleet 85.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test.

The GTX460 is a cool running card with the reference cooling solution and even in an overclocked state, the enhanced Cyclone cooler has managed to reduce temperatures by a further 3-4 degrees.

With our ridiculous overclocked speeds the card temperatures increase by about 7 c under gaming and Furmark load. Still in reality the card will never exceed 70c as Furmark heats up graphics cards beyond normal limits. A great set of results especially as the fan was still quiet under load.

Before the release of any product we attend briefings with the company, and it is common for us to feel a mixture of scepticism and disbelief when we listen to executives rant on about performance benefits and why we should be telling the public to buy their solution. nVidia this time around were really pushing the ‘cooler running nature’ of this Fermi product as well as extremely low levels of noise from the redesigned cooler. We can understand why it would be a focus mind you as the GTX480 was the complete opposite.

From today we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The Cyclone cooler has already proved its capabilities in keeping temperatures at minimal levels but what is even more impressive is that the fan remains silent at all times, giving a good indication that the circular heatsink/heatpipe design is extremely efficient. Only under extended load does it because audible and this will be masked within most gaming PC chassis designs.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. The best way to get maximum load results is by using Furmark, and even though it is not indicative of a real world situation it shows the limits the card can theoretically demand. The ‘gaming’ results are measured when playing Crysis Warhead and is a more valuable result to take from this.

The reference design GTX460 is not a power hungry card and the MSI overclocked card only consumes around 8-10 watts more when under load. These are very good power consumption results considering the excellent gaming performance. Please be aware that Furmark is only included out of potential interest, this card never exceeded 130watts when gaming.

We said in our previous reviews that GTX 460 is ‘Fermi done right‘ and this overclocked MSI card today further verifies our findings that these are the best Fermi cards on the market today. MSI have taken this core design and turned it on its head, offering not only a card which has a better cooler, faster clocks and lower noise levels, but one which manually overclocks to levels we previously thought impossible.

MSI are proving to Kitguru in 2010 that their product range keeps getting better and with every item of hardware that we review, the stronger this belief becomes. The ‘military class components' hype they mention on these boxes sounds like PR fluff but in reality we have noticed huge overclocking potential on all products utilising this technology.

This isn't the first graphics card from them which has achieved similar overclocking feats – check out our review of the R5870 Lighting for instance and then follow up with a look at the Big Bang X Power for a tutorial on just how to create the ultimate motherboard.

The kicker really comes when you look at the current pricing, this card would be a good deal for £220, but we have seen them in the UK at prices just over £190 inc vat. This is extremely competitive, especially when the nearest ATI card is the HD5830 – originally the same price, but which has recently dropped to around £170 inc vat. Its still not good value compared to the GTX460, because we firmly believe it is the only duff card in the HD5000 series … you either buy the HD5770 or the HD5850, simple as that. Right now the GTX460 would be our first choice just under £200 as the price to performance ratio is simply outstanding.

KitGuru says: MSI release another A list product which is leading the way – they are currently releasing some of the finest products available in the enthusiast sector.

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