Palit GTX 460 Sonic Platinum (1GB)
Palit provided us with their most impressive GeForce GTX 460 offering, the Sonic Platinum edition. This product has been reworked from the ground up, and both the cooler and PCB are not part of the reference specification. In short, this is not going to be your standard GeForce GTX 460 1GB.
The GTX 460 Sonic Platinum measures just 19cm long making it a centimeter shorter than the Radeon HD 5770 and 2cm shorter than the Inno3D GeForce GTX 460. The card is so compact that it only measures a few centimeters longer than the PCI Express x16 slot, a remarkable achievement for such a powerful graphics card.
The biggest change made other than the physical dimensions can been seen when looking at the power circuitry. Palit has changed the layout and design when compared to the Inno3D design, likely to save money and space. The smaller PCB design also means that the Nvidia reference cooler would no longer fit.
The new cooler is based on a more simplified traditional design, using dual copper heatpipes that connect to a copper base, but the heatsink itself is more compact. Palit has stuck with a 75mm fan while the heatsink is also covered by a black fan shroud. The Palit design has the power circuitry being passively cooled by a rather large aluminum heatsink.
Despite going with a slightly smaller heatsink, Palit has not held back and is shipping the GTX 460 Sonic Platinum (1GB) overclocked from factory. The core frequency is boosted by an impressive 125MHz to 800MHz, while the memory frequency has been increased from 900MHz to 1000MHz. The shader clock speed is pushed from 1350MHz to 1600MHz, which is much higher than even the GeForce GTX 480. We have to wonder if the average GTX 460 board will achieve something similar using the reference design layout.
The last addition we can mention on the GTX 460 Sonic Platinum is the HDMI port and the legacy VGA port that it carries besides the providing the standard dual DVI ports. Overall the GTX 460 Sonic Platinum is an impressive take on the new Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 and we are keen to see how it will perform against the 768MB version and a standard clocked 1GB GTX 460.