Lucid Hydra Performance Review on the AMD Platform

Asus ENGTX460 DirectCU Top/2DI/768MD5

The second card provided by Asus is a GTX 460 768MB based product.  It also features nearly the same 2 heatpipe Direct CU design as the GTS 450, but slightly larger.  The GTX 460 768 MB card features the same number of Cuda Cores as the full GTX 460 1GB version, but it has one fewer ROP partition along with a 192 bit memory bus rather than the full 256 bit bus.


The Asus version here is one of the “Top” models, in that it is overclocked out of the box.  The board runs at 700 Mhz core (1400 MHz shader) as compared to the standard 675 MHz.  The memory is also overclocked from the standard 900 MHz (3600 effective) to 920 MHz (3680 effective).  This gives a grand total of 88.3 GB/sec of bandwidth.  It is of course held back somewhat by the disabled ROP and that missing extra 64 bits of memory connection.  The cooling was something of a surprise here.  I was expecting a bigger upgrade considering it is a “Top” product.  But once we consider the target range of this card, and the rather conservative overclock, the need for a higher end cooler is not exactly justified.  That being said, the DirectCU unit does the job quite nicely.


Asus allows voltage modification on their cards, so overclocking may be a bit easier on their boards as compared to others.  The GTX 460 is fairly conservatively clocked anyway, so the headroom for some decent overclocking is certainly there.  This board was able to hit 850 MHz without a problem.  The board did start to get a bit warm at this point, so I left off.  The GTX 460 has been shown to reliably overclock to 900 MHz and above, depending on airflow and overall cooling.  The memory does not overclock nearly as well, as I was able to push it up another 20 MHz or so from base.


Performance of the board was good, though the 768 MB of memory could be a sticking point for achieving better performance on some of the latest titles which will actually utilize that much memory.  This particular model sells for around $140 US, and is a pretty good buy considering other products in its price range.  The slight overclock allows it to essentially match the overall performance of the more expensive GTX 460 1GB in most applications.  The extra leg room for overclocking paired with good cooling should keep enthusiasts entertained for hours on end learning the upper limits of the card.


The card features a single SLI connector, so it can only be used in pairs and not tripled up.  I do prefer the output connections on this card much more as compared to the GTS 450.  Dual DVI and a HDMI connector provide good options for those wanting multi-monitors.  To get the NVIDIA 3D surround to work though, a SLI compliant motherboard must be used.  Otherwise Hydra does not support outputs from more than one card to be used.  On the other hand, if this card was used with an AMD card which could support 3 monitors on its own, then the NVIDIA cards will be utilized to speed up performance in those scenarios.


Overall the GTX 460 768 MB Top performed just as expected.  It did not overheat in regular and overclocked use, no parts fell off of it during the course of the review, and I had no complaints about the fan noise of the unit.  It is another nice budget/midrange card which fits snugly in with dozens of other offerings at this price point.  The DirectCU coolers might not look nearly as fancy overall as say the MSI Twin Frozr series, but they tend to work nearly as well.