Palit announces overclocked GTX 460 with 2GB of memory

[Matthew DeCarlo]

It's been nearly a month since the GTX 460 stormed into the mainstream graphics market, convincing hardware buffs that Nvidia is still very much alive and kicking, despite a rough start with Fermi. The card originally launched with 768MB or 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM, but vendors are now starting to announce iterations with two gigs of memory. Last week, Gainward revealed a slightly overclocked GTX 460 with 2GB of RAM, and Palit (Gainward's owner) has followed suit with a seemingly identical product.

Besides the extra memory, Palit's GTX 460 Sonic uses the same GF104 GPU and features 336 CUDA cores, a 700MHz core clock, a 1400MHz shader, a memory frequency of 3,600MHz, and a 256-bit memory interface. The card also has a custom cooler and PCB, two-way SLI support, VGA, dual-DVI and HDMI outputs, as well as support for 3D Vision, 3D Vision Surround, DirectCompute, OpenCL, OpenGL 4.0, 32x AA, and of course, DirectX 11. Pricing is rumored to be around €240/$270, which is a reasonable premium on the 1GB models.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/39870-palit-announces-overclocked-gtx-460-with-2gb-of-memory.html

 

[PanicX]

I keep coming across these video card manufacturers that I have never heard of before recently, Palit, Galaxy, Sparkle, Zotac.
They all seem to be based in Taipei or mainland China, offer short warranty periods, they're "About Us" info claims being in business since the 1980's, but Palit here has a .biz domain registered in 2006.
I have a real hard time seriously considering their products when companies like eVGA, BFG tech and XFX have offered lifetime warranties for years and have established names in the industry.

 

[TomSEA]

I hear ya PanicX, but both Palit & Galaxy have been getting some very good reviews lately. Also, the lifetime warranty is kinda meaningless to me, considering I upgrade video cards once every 3-5 years. I've found that if computer hardware works fine for the first 30 days, they tend to keep working until you replace them. In other words, I wouldn't discount a new product out-of-hand.

In fact, I'm going to be doing an SLI setup next month using the new GTX 460's and both the Palit and Galaxy cards are close to the top of my list of potential candidates.

 

[LinkedKube]

I'm looking at one now from galaxy, but I'd prefer palit, with their history of great ati products.

 

[Guest]

There's a minimum, required by the law, warrenty of 2 years where I live, so it doesn't matter to me. If my Gainward (Palit) GTX 460 fries in a year and a half, it's their problem. Of course, I rarely keep a graphics card for more than 2 years, so it's effectively lifetime warrenty for me.

 

[dividebyzero]

I keep coming across these video card manufacturers that I have never heard of before recently, Palit, Galaxy, Sparkle, Zotac.

Palit have been around for a quite a while. They are one of the largest graphics cards makers on the planet. They also sell product under the "Gainward" and "Xpertvision" marques. Likewise Galaxy.
The reason they probably aren't well known in some countries is that up until recently some graphics card vendors were limited to specific geographic selling territories. Palit, Galaxy and PC Partner (Sapphire's parent company) and Foxconn (nvidia's OEM manufacturer) are the four largest card producers.
If you're in the U.S. I also doubt you would have had much contact with European based AIB's such as Point of View, Club 3D and Axle and Pacific/Asia AIB's such as Manli, Amaze and Elsa (along with Zotac, Palit, Galaxy)

 

[EXCellR8]

I don't really understand Palit's obsession with frogs but from what I hear they manufacture decent units. Has anyone used a Zotac card? They are one of the few US/EU-based companies but only manufacture NVIDIA graphics cards at the moment.

 

[dividebyzero]

The stock Zotac's I think are pretty much reference spec (VRM, PCB, features etc.), no better or worse than any other from my experience. The Amp! SKU's (own design/oc) are top notch cards that seem pretty reliable for the high OC's they have, which say a lot for their binning process.

 

[Wendig0]

I'd love to see how a pair of these crunch on wcg! Great pricing too

 

[St1ckM4n]

Zotac is in Australia, along with Palit. Cheaper by about 10% or more. I have GTX 295 from Zotac, reference design.

 

[KG363]

Zotac is huge and reliable. How aren't you guys familiar with them? They are one of the most trusted brands.

 

[dcrosenthal]

Hi guys and gals! I just stumbled onto this website today and think its AWSOME! They seem to cover a lot of things other people dont! Anyway to talk about this I think it is great other company's are upping cards. I built my computer 4 years ago and have a geforce 8800 ultra! was disappointed when it didn't play crysis on very high. I'm looking for a new card to put into my computer to play crysis 2 I know crysis takes up a lot of memory due to long draw distances and I think the 2GB in this card should handle it nicely. What do you guys and gals think? also some cards are PCIE 2.0 I only have PCIE I know the cards are backwards compatible but with it hurt performance any? Thanks for your input.

 

[mattfrompa]

I have a Zotac motherboard that sports the Ion chipset. No complaints and I've used it for over a year, except maybe that the atom processor performs slightly worse than my old P4 haha

 

[PanicX]

Zotac is huge and reliable. How aren't you guys familiar with them? They are one of the most trusted brands.

According to Zotac's website, they've been in business since 2006. I don't know that I could call a company doing business for 4 years reliable when there's others in the industry for near 5 times as long..

 

[PanicX]

The reason they probably aren't well known in some countries is that up until recently some graphics card vendors were limited to specific geographic selling territories.

Whats changed here? This sounds like its the likely cause as to why these new brands seem to be popping up out of no where. It makes sense that it's a lot of rebranding. And I must admit that I'm really quite disappointed that Galaxy would drop BFG tech with their lifetime warranty and market directly with a 2 year warranty product.

I get that not everyone keeps their cards for 2 years, but I know for a fact that many people do. I myself am still using an 8800GT thats near 4 years old now and its nice to know that if it dies, I can get a replacement from XFX no sweat, in fact its likely they wont have any stock of my card and will auto upgrade me to what they do have available.

 

[mailpup]

Zotac is a sister company of Sapphire I believe. They are both subsidiaries of PC Partner. Sapphire builds ATI cards as you know and Zotac builds Nvidia cards.

 

[dividebyzero]

Whats changed here? This sounds like its the likely cause as to why these new brands seem to be popping up out of no where. It makes sense that it's a lot of rebranding. And I must admit that I'm really quite disappointed that Galaxy would drop BFG tech with their lifetime warranty and market directly with a 2 year warranty product.

Probably some re-alignment. EVGA pulling out of Europe is one sign, PNY and Leadtek cutting back on consumer boards to concentrate on compute boards is another. Add in that the Chinese market is responsible for huge sales -hence Palit and Galaxy being able to wield some considerable corporate clout (both were among the first AIB's to have Fermi cards in the retail channel) and not content with the market share they have, and you can see a changing landscape of board partners.
The lifetime warranty is probably what helped BFG move a lot closer to the breakers yard. BFG were setup to match EVGA, SKU for SKU (OC, OC2, OCX and H2OC against SC, SSC, FTW, HC16). Unfortunately, whereas EVGA enjoys excellent quality control and support base, some variants of BFG's card -notably the H2OC waterblocked cards -had very high failure/return rates, possibly (but not entirely) down to failure to bin the aggressively clocked cards well enough.

I get that not everyone keeps their cards for 2 years, but I know for a fact that many people do. I myself am still using an 8800GT thats near 4 years old now and its nice to know that if it dies, I can get a replacement from XFX no sweat, in fact its likely they wont have any stock of my card and will auto upgrade me to what they do have available.

You probably have an ATI card in your future then

 

[Omnislip]

So, fellas, How much difference will the extra 1GB make? Does it make it more worthwhile than a sonic platinum?

Thanks from a computer noob.
Jonny.

 

[Guest]

Im no graphics engineer, but Im pretty sure that extra gigabyte of memory will only help out on larger monitors or at larger resolutions. It will only be used when the first gigabyte of frame buffer is full.

 

[grvalderrama]

Palit, Zotac, or whatever, its fine by me BUT.... who is responsible for choosing that cooler color?? Its repulsive!

 

[Eddie_42]

grvalderrama said:
Palit, Zotac, or whatever, its fine by me BUT.... who is responsible for choosing that cooler color?? Its repulsive!

black and orange isnt all that uncommon, the cooler will also end up on the bottom side of your card, even with a side window, all you will see is the black frame.

 

[dividebyzero]

grvalderrama seems into colour co-ordination- whose to say (s)he hasn't lined their case with mirrors! ....maybe even some tasteful spotlighting CCFL's and a mini-disco ball.

 

[Alster37]

its not the colour that annoys me its the ugly pcb design, the shape and bulkyness of it I dont like. I prefer a sleek design like ati 5000 series card (5850?)

 

[LinkedKube]

Its actually not that bulky at all, you should look at some of the other cards in the price range. Not to mention that 90% of people building/buying these parts dont even use windowed side panels. So who cares what it looks like, as long as it performs.

 

[Zilpha]

Its actually not that bulky at all, you should look at some of the other cards in the price range. Not to mention that 90% of people building/buying these parts dont even use windowed side panels. So who cares what it looks like, as long as it performs.

Really? I thought that we were moving more towards practically clear cases. At least, all my gamer friends (and myself for that matter) build systems with lots of windows so we can enjoy pretty blue LEDs emanating from our fans.

So, I expect that a lot of gaming system builders (at least, more than 10%) are interested in a product that is visually appealing. I mean, if we weren't, why not just leave it a plain old black, white, or even old school manila?