Seems like a honorable succesor of the GTX 260... I believe it will sell really good, it has no big flaws.

"Another interesting thought is that two Palit GTX 460 Sonic Platinum cards running on SLI would cost a whisker less than $500. A single GeForce GTX 480 retails for around that price and we are willing to bet that a pair of these Palit graphics cards would offer even greater performance." - Conclusion

Not only that, but two of these puppies wouldn't also allow Nvidia's 3D Surround?? if so, it seems like the better deal...

Another excellent review. Wow...I was getting very close to pulling the trigger on an ATI 5870, but the Palit GTX 460 Sonic really peaked my interest due to this review.

Wasn't planning on purchasing anything until the middle of next month, so I have a little time to work with and see if any other reviews come out on it. But that card has certainly made my list for consideration based on this review!

You must have waited a whole microsecond after the NDA expired to publish! Well done on the timely and comprehensive review.
Expreview (Google needed) I think were the only site up with a review before TS...and I'm not totally sure if Expreview actually know what NDA stands for.
How long before an AIB puts two GTX 460's on the same board with 2Gb RAM/256Mb buffer ?
The solo cards now look like being the best choice in the mainstream given the overclocking headroom. If the OC is indicative of the GPU as a whole, then a stock clocked card at $US220 looks like very good value.

Like I said back on the other article. These are going to be very good used in an SLI setup. If I recall correctly SLI scaled better than Xfire did with the higher end fermi vs hd 5000.

I like neither side better than the other and have gone backwards and forwards between the companies depending on product. All I can say now is WOOP the competition is back on!

Yay! nvidia, I knew you could better yourself with a product like this! perfect upgrade for my aging GTX 260 plus I can finally get a full HD screen!

/offtopic. I just bought a 1080p monitor. My gtx 260 isn't gunna cut it for gaming is it?

Probably not, well, if you lower your a/a settings etc you could get it to run smoothly, but yeah, probably will struggle

Although as this review ilistrates that the new 460 seems to barely struggle at that resolution. Just can't go much higher.

I also have the GTX260 and play Lost Planet with it on a 24'' HD monitor and the framerate is averaging 45-60 fps. Very playable considering all the settings are at high and anti-aliasing at 8X.
The CPU is a Phenom quad9950.

Yeah, with that proccessor and game maybe, i have an old Athlon X2 3.0ghz and i definately don't get that good a framerates, Also I was thinking a taxing game such as crysis at full HD rather than Lost Planet.

I was also thinking of crysis in mind.

Great minds think alike

Also this proves my statement about the original MW2 benchmarks were very inaccurate. I got lower fps then the original and thought my system was having issues. Funny thing is that in cases of the hd 5770 the original benchmark at these settings had it at 74fps and here has it at 38fps. Even the hd 5770 sli setup was lower then the single card perviously. A driver error or something possibly.

Finally, some very welcome competition at this mid-high range price point. It's nice to see this card running cool and not as power hungry as its big brothers.

I think ATI will have to respond, the prices for the 5xxx cards have not changed since launch.

"the prices for the 5xxx cards have not changed since launch"

Errr...yes they have, mostly upward. The MSRP/RRP on the HD 5850 for instance was originally set at $US259. When GF100 cards were obviously not going to launch on time, AMD raised the price to $US279 citing higher costs for vRAM (although strangely enough the rest of the product line that uses the same chips wasn't affected), and shortly after the MSRP was revised upward to $US299 -where it presently sits for the most part.
So, as for the present it looks like AMD find themselves derailed from the gravy train with three options open...

1. Sit pat and hope that their brand can duke it out with nvidia while presenting an inferior price/performance/feature point until Southern Islands launches...

2. Drop prices to match nvidia and hope that the brand/Eyefinity/Crossfire retains them market share over brand/PhysX/3D Surround/SLI. Bearing in mind that an OC'ed GTX 460 1Gb isn't too far behind a HD 5850 means that this model also needs to drop substantially, which makes the HD 5870, and especially the the HD 5970 dead ducks at their price points...

3. Drop pricing to below price/performance parity levels to keep market share, eroding profit for the sake of turnover. Probably not likely since the probable negative public perceptions will be that if AMD can afford to sell at the new price then obviously the previous pricing points were akin to gouging, and from a marketing psychology problem of products proclaiming "ATI Radeon Premium graphics" having prices slashed in a radical manner- the problem with using superlatives in advertising.

Personally I'm impressed and am happy that I opted not to upgrade my GPU yet with my new build and see what the GTX 460 would bring to the table. The performance paired with lower heat/power is exactly what I was looking for and the GTX 460 is now on my short list of GPU upgrades. Of course I will hope like others that AMD drops the prices on the 58xx series back to MSRP like DBZ points out.

How about a review with these cards up-against the old 200's like the 285, 295 an so on.