KFA2 GTX460 1GB vs. HD5830 1GB: The Showdown!

[Ket]

Contents

Introduction
Packaging & Accessories
The Card
The Heatsink
Test setup & Benchmarks
Overclocking
Overclocked Benchmarks
Noise
Conclusion


Introduction

So it begins.. Fermi is released and the interwebz is bursting with reviews of nVidias new baby, GTX460, like a pregnant woman carrying triplets. Just like a new mother the internet is buzzing with excitement over nVidias GTX460 in forums and reviews alike. Amongst all the excitement and buzz that accompanies a new arrival few spare thought to the middle child, much less make comparisons to when the middle child was newborn. So today we answer the age old question thats on many peoples lips: Is the GTX460 1GB unquestionably the best high-midrange card or can the Radeon HD5830 salvage some pride? Read on to find out viewers.

Packaging & Accessories









Now, I'll admit I'm a rocker / metal head so I actually really like the packaging. Has everything I look for. Cool dark art, shiny, and BLACK. Aside from that everything is very well protected and you can be confident in your card arriving in perfect condition.

The accessories are your standard affair with one exception, KFA have included a mini HDMI cable! Top marks on that one.

The Card

















Not a whole lot to say here really. With the exception of the idea to make the HSF so you can easily clean the fan everything else is pretty standard. It is nice to see KFA remembered to put the VRM heatsink on though. *Cough* Palit Sonic Platinum.

The Heatsink







Look at that for a stock heatsink. It looks like something you would plump a good £25 on if it were a 3rd party heatsink. The good news here is if you are looking for a good heatsink, you already have one really. Put your own fan on it and perhaps lap the base and your set.


Test setup & Benchmarks

CPU: Q8400 @ 3.6GHz 480FSB
Mainboard: Asus Maximus 2 Formula
RAM: 2x2GB OCZ PC9200 LV Platinum @ 1156MHz
Graphics: KFA2 GTX460 1GB
Sound: Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-E
HDD: WD Black 640GB SATA2, 32MB Cache
PSU: XFX 750w modular
Drivers: Catalyst 10.3, Forceware 258.96
OS: Win 7 64bit

The benchmarks today will be;

Unigine: Heaven, Sanctuary, Tropics
3DMark Vantage
Crysis Warhead
STALKER: COP
Stone Giant

Without further ado, here are the settings and results of each benchmark.





Nothing particular to note. Just the GTX460 showing its superior muscles.



Theres no surprises here. The GTX460 1GB even at stock shows its mighty tessellation muscle and leaves the HD5830 as a trembling wreck in its wake.



Results are close here with the HD5830 beating the GTX460. Another result thats unsurprising as Stalker favors ATi hardware.



Again the GTX460 gives the HD5830 a good kicking in this tessellation test.



Given all the extra muscle the GTX460 is supposed to have I was surprised by these Vantage results. I suppose it shows both nVidia and ATi equally take optimising drivers for benchmarks seriously. Hurrah?



The GTX460 hands it to the HD5830 good and proper in Crysis Warhead showing its not size that matters, but what you do with it that counts.

Overclocking


Overclocking the KFA2 GTX460 1GB proved as easy as it ever is to overclock a graphics card. Sadly Afterburner was unable to make any GPU voltage increases. Wether this is a indication of the KFA2 GTX460 not being able to have software controlled voltages is unclear, but as KFA2 also offer this exact same card, only with a reference GPU clock of 810MHz, it seems very likely this model is just vBIOS GPU voltage locked. Nothing which can't be overcome.



As can be seen from the screenshot, I ended up with 830MHz on the GPU and 1115MHz on the memory. A overclock of 19% and 21%, respectively. Thats not bad, but I had expected just a tad more.

Lets see how that overclock effects performance.

Overclocked Benchmarks



Here we see the GTX460 really can handle whatever you throw its way. Turning in respectable results even in Unigine Heaven with 8xAA, 16xAF, and tessellation set to extreme. Bravo little GTX460, bravo.


Noise

Many have complained about the HSF design KFA have chosen to use stating that it is loud. Noise is very subjective from person to person but personally I did not find the fan to be obnoxiously loud up to 50%. Beyond that it did get rather irritating. I should point out at this stage that 50% was probably only tolerable to me because whilst dismantling the HSF for pictures I took it upon myself to add some vibration dampening to the HSF which likely has helped quite a lot.

Conclusion

Well, what can I say about the KFA2 GTX460? It looks damn beautiful, has stellar tessellation performance (learn from this ATi) and generally could handle whatever it was asked to with great performance. Sure, there were a few areas it had hiccups and after 2 years of Crysis Warhead being around I do expect a midrange card to be able to do a consistent over 30FPS even with insane amounts of AA and Enthusiast settings in Crysis enabled. One thing which did baffle me is the Desktop image quality with the GTX460. So much notably poorer it was I immediately checked my screen resolution after the driver install to make sure it was native as icons and text were a little blurry, to my dismay it was indeed at the monitors native resolution. Next came the eye test - I donned my glasses to make absolutely sure it wasn't just me - Nope, image quality was indeed lower on the desktop. Hopefully this is something nVidia will fix in a new driver as it does really spoil general use of this card. That said it should not detract anyone from buying this card, for the most part its lightning fast and will serve all but those gaming at the most insane resolutions well.

So, up pops the ultimate question. You are a gamer on a budget looking for a new card. Which is the best choice for you? Radeon HD5830 1GB or GTX460 1GB? Thats actually quite tricky to answer. On one hand the GTX460 1GB is clearly a better card, we expected that. However its also £45 more expensive than the HD5830 best case scenario. If you are looking for a creap and cheerful card that overclocks like crazy and you just want something for the now, by all means save £45 and opt for the HD5830. If on the other hand you want a card thats going to go the distance over the next 18-24 months, go and pick up a GTX460 1GB, you won't be disappointed.

The Good:

- Overclocks well
- Runs cool
- Reasonably priced
- Performs pretty well at stock
- Inclusion of mini HDMI cable
- Good tessellation performance

The Bad:

- 2D Desktop quality isn't very nice
- Above 50% fanspeed the noise is intolerable
- No core voltage adjustment (with the stock vBIOS and Afterburner 1.6.1 at least...)

*--EDIT--* 29/7/10 After some investigating the KFA GTX460 does indeed support voltage control but you need to use a utility called nVidia Inspector. As a result of increasing GPU voltage from 1.01v to 1.087v I was able to get a stable OC of 870/1740/2155.

Final Score: 8.5 / 10. We have a smoking gun!