Power Consumption and Temperatures
Testing of power consumption is pretty important when looking at higher end graphics cards like these. In fact, EVGA recommends on their website that users of the GTX 460 2WIN card have a minimum of a 700 watt power supply with at least 46 amps of power on the +12v rail. Those are pretty steep requirements so let’s see how our real-world power consumption turned out.
Idle power results show that the GTX 460 2WIN does use about 10 watts more than the GTX 580 and under a full gaming load it uses as much as 63 watts more power as well. That is significant difference considering how much more power hungry the GTX 580 is compared to the HD 6970 and even NVIDIA’s own GTX 570. Obviously the power consumption of the 2WIN card is going to be a slight hit on its overall reputation and the performance of the card seems a bit less impressive in this light as well.
Temperatures on the EVGA GTX 460 2WIN were also higher than any of the other cards in our testing today getting as hot as 85c during Metro 2033. While this is high, it isn’t a huge concern as it is well within the limits of the GPU and board design. Noise levels weren’t considerably higher than any other GPU tested either, which is good news.
nVidia stated on their forum
nVidia stated on their forum you can’t run this in SLI with any other card, and the SLI prong on the card was a design error which wasn’t fixable before the card went to mass production.
Yup, I just got this
Yup, I just got this information from EVGA as well. Updating the article now, thanks for the heads up!
out of brain picking
out of brain picking curiosity, how does 2 460s in sli compare to 2 460 on a card? From what I can gleam from previous reviews of 460s in sli, 2win does better than vanilla sli.
Also, does this card require sli on the board that uses it? Like an AMD board?
It should perform identically
It should perform identically to a system running regular old SLI. Hardware-wise there is very little that is different.
As for the chipset requirement – that is another good point! You can use this card on an AMD-based platform without issues!
If you’re asking if this
If you’re asking if this particular GPU will work on a AMD board, I say, yes. Because it’s two GPUs in one PCB. However, you can’t run SLI on a AMD board that is not SLI certified. You can only use one Nvidia card on a non-SLI certified AMD board. Is that what you were asking for? I plan on getting this card, instead of two 6870s.
In my opinion I think the
In my opinion I think the 2win does better and runs a bit smoother. Ive seen the setup both ways and the 2win wins!!! You do not need a sli motherboard for this card to work. You may need a patch though for the sli on the card directly to work for the second gpu like I did. sli patch 1.42 beta to activate the sli configurations settings in the nvidia control panel.
Sweat I think me like one.
is
Sweat I think me like one.
is it just me or does any one else not real care about power consumption? I look at what the cards going to do for me I never wrong about power consumption.
Temperatures I do keep a bit of a eye on but if it meant have a little more heat to have a great card that a trade off I can make if need. EVGA done a great job on this one. I just hope when I have some money to look getting a new card this is still going to be easy to find.
Great review Ryan thanks.
Thanks!
Yes, for this class
Thanks!
Yes, for this class of card I think power consumption is less important than PR folks at NVIDIA and AMD want to admit.
Everyone keeps referring to
Everyone keeps referring to this card as “to win”, but I keep calling it “twin” as in twin GPUs. Am I the only one?
Interesting…hadn’t thought
Interesting…hadn’t thought about that pronunciation.
I had the same thoughts
I had the same thoughts Heavy, seems odd that they would 2Win and not try to link it to twin (GPUS).
Same here guys. Clever idea.
Same here guys. Clever idea.
Very good article and
Very good article and interesting card, I do have to say that in EVGA’s B-stock listings http://www.evga.com/products/prodlist.asp?switch=20 You can buy a gtx 470 for 209 shipped. With increased frame buffer size and a coming in at about only 10 dollars more. Something tells me that GTX 470s in SLI would would this dual 460 card to shame. I myself have GTX 480s in SLI and am obv in GPU heaven 🙂 -good article guys- extra points for hardest captcha online
Thanks for the comments!
Thanks for the comments!
Captcha and commenting SHOULD be better now to. Email me r-s-h-r-o-u-t@p-c-p-e-r.c-o-m if not!
People seem to forget the
People seem to forget the benefits of this card. It is understandable that 2 470GTX in sli or 2 480GTX in sli would out perform this. However, cards in SLI are only 2 monitor Dual link. Also, you can only utilize 2 monitors at a time in any of the SLIs.
With the 2WIN you get to use 4 monitors, and you get tri-link capabilities. An evga administrator had already noted that the 2WIN was faster than 2 460GTX in SLI due to increased clock speeds.
Another big plus, is for many of the AMD users that do not have SLI capable motherboards, they are able to utilize SLI capability and unlock the 3D Vision aspect. Most of the AMD motherboards are only compatible with Crossfire. And for people that only have 1 PCI-E slot on their mobo.
I should note the clock
I should note the clock speeds on the GTX 460 2WIN are NOT faster than reference – higher clocked single GPU cards in SLI would likely be faster.
The gtx 460 2win can
The gtx 460 2win can overclock pretty nicely too. but A standard gtx 460 comes at 675 mhz while a gtx 2win at 700 mhz. unless you get a overclocked addition from msi or another company then I see your point. I had my gtx 460 2win at 850 mhz stable . I pretty much keep it at 800 oc to keep the heat down but I heard them getting over 900 mhz with voltage tweak. I dont recommend over clocking any of them that high if you want your card to last a longer life. Didnt really see much point to oc to much more than 800 because i most likely already suffering from a slight bottleneck sometimes with my amd phenom II x4 965 3.4 ghz.
I am hoping you are correct
I am hoping you are correct on the aspect of using this card in SLI mode even though I have a crosfire motherboard. I just ordered one and I am just waiting to receive it. Just wondering where you found the information saying that an AMD Crossfire board could Utilize the SLI on this card. I figured it could be done because it is only in one PCI-e slot. I tried looking on NVidia for more information about it… If you do know where there is more information, please post a link. 🙂 Ty and happy Gamming!
It is a nice solution for 1
It is a nice solution for 1 slot pci-e 16x mb owners and amd guys who wish to try sli and have some modern features on their mb but, it is way over priced ,not even talking about rebate i can get a 1gb 460 GTX for 140.If the price gets near the cost of 2 460’s I might consider it.I still pin my hopes on a amd chipset with sli support ,as lucid for the time being has let me down
ps currently i am pronouncing it twin if the price comes in line i shall refer to it as To Win
The card is a custom card
The card is a custom card from evga directly. Everything about the card is custom pretty much. The gtx 460 2win out of the box is faster than 2 gtx 460 in sli due to the increased clock speeds. The sli chip on the the pcb also raises the price a little. You have to remember that this card really was targeted for people that don’t have sli certified board or just one pci express slot. It a wonderful solution if you dont want to buy a new mobo and have to reload windows. Well with the price in my opinion. you can get a gtx 460 2win for 369 after rebate and I heard of someone getting a 2win as low as 330. A gtx 460 1gig for 140? Must be the worst brand out there because i haven’t seen a decent one for under 189.00
No limited Lifetime warranty
No limited Lifetime warranty on this one. It is a three year one reserved for SKUs ending in ‘KR’.
If you order it directly off
If you order it directly off the EVGA site ($429), they provide a lifetime limited warranty. Authorized retailers are only getting the 3 year limited.
If you register one before a
If you register one before a certain date with evga they are offering a 10 year warranty on it for free right now. Who needs more than 10 years of warranty. It like a lifetime in the gaming industry. Even three is enough really.
I don’t like how this card
I don’t like how this card has only 1 GB effective memory.
So you can use this SLI
So you can use this SLI internal card on a crossfire MB?
Neat. That is a good selling point. if so I will have to get one. Will the Sli be active or will only one be active?
The 600+ cores alone will keep me ahead for a while. Maxed settings on crysis 2? love to see it in action, lifetime warranty? for sure!
You know for us non-AMD guys- would this card work to bridge the gap for Intel quads?
How does the internal SLi work?
answers:
Crossfire board
answers:
Crossfire board support= YES, kinda you can use one of them
Maxed Setting on crysis 2 = YES
Bridge gap for single slot Intel Boards that want to use SLI NVIDIA POWER = YES
On-board Internal SLI = YES
Cooks Fries and serves popcorn = No but I can do that.
Thanks.
Holy Macaroni I just got this
Holy Macaroni I just got this video card on ebay brand new for $330. Yessssssssssssss!
nice well worth it.. make
nice well worth it.. make sure to register the card with evga before the end of June I believe to get your free 10 year warranty
Unless they’ve changed their
Unless they’ve changed their policy EVGA does NOT honor lifetime warranty on any of their products purchased on eBay. I should know because it happened to me. Can check out my review here–> http://reviews.ebay.com/Lifetime-Warranty-NOT-if-it-apos-s-EVGA_W0QQugidZ10000000010714653
I obtained a 10 year warranty
I obtained a 10 year warranty with my evga 2win card…
this will be the unicorn of
this will be the unicorn of video cards capable of running most applications for the next 5 years, while single cored gpu’s will fail within 2-3.
With this GTX 460 2 WIN-
With this GTX 460 2 WIN- Crysis 2 extreme settings- so smooth it is hard to believe. Much better than other game software written for single core GPU, like fable 3, 460gtx 2 win can run it good, but there’s frame dragging on the highest settings, which would likely dissapear if you got the GTX 590, but I don’t have an extra 300 to toss at that, better to just kick it down a setting and wait for other game developers to catch up with crytek and go full multi-core CPU and GPU support. Thanks EVGA!
I never had any slow downs
I never had any slow downs with the gtx 460 2win on crysis 2. Had it maxed on extreme with vsynch on which removes any tearing. Never went below 50 – 60 fps. Which is more than enough to look buttery smooth. I dont get why people bash crysis 2 . I think it looks better than crysis 1 personally. If they used the made crysis 2 nin the forest two im sure it would seem to have more detail. I could also guarantee that with cryengine 3 it would look significally better than crysis 1.
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The gtx 460 2win performs
The gtx 460 2win performs better than two gtx 460 due to the increased clock speeds on the gtx 460 2win. I would like to also mention that for some reason when I installed the gtx 460 2win I had to install a sli patch 1.42 bet for it to recognize the card for enabling sli in the nvidia control panel. Enable sli for the dual gpu on the card not sli for two seperate cards. Not sure if this was because my board was not sli certified and I only have one pci express slot on my board. Just make sure to enable it in the nvidia control panel even though it sees both gpus when you install the latest nvidia drivers 270.61. You should have an option for sli an physics configuration and yo would set it to maximize 3d performance.
What a waste.
If the core
What a waste.
If the core can’t process information fast enough, doubling a card’s memory allotment won’t improve performance. Meanwhile, if bandwidth isn’t sufficient for the GPU’s output, a faster graphics engine will have no effect.
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