Inno3D GeForce GTX 460 OC 1GB Graphics Card Review

A Closer Look
The card is nothing out of the ordinary with a medium-sized layout which should hinder no problems for users with mid-sized or larger cases. The design of the card follows on from the box with the purple reflective style on the heatsink cover which is made from plastic and as per usual takes up the height of the card.

The base of the card follows with Nvidia styling to the letter with a bright green PCB of which we can see four screw points as to indicate where the GPU is located. Now we are unsure as to if the green PCB is intentional to appeal to Nvidia users or is just a coincidence. The bus interface on this card as expected is PCI express 2.0 and as always is backwards compatible with earlier revisions of the successful graphics card connector.

In the middle of the card a large fan is included branding the Inno3D name, website address and OC logo to inform us that this is an overclocked version. We can also see that the heatsink cover is ventilated for appropriate heat dissipation, and looking behind the fan we can see the aluminium heatsink design and heat pipe coolers.

From time to time users have spates of wanting more performance from their system components whilst maintaining a very low outlay when it comes to cold hard cash. These types of users are generally people who search in the sales and for bargains or sometimes the user just wanting an upgrade.

With this scenario, they have two options. The first being to buy a heavy duty graphics card such as a 5970 which can retail anywhere up to £800 or the latest additions to Nvidia’s product line-up; the GTX 580 and GTX 570. To be able to get the best bang for buck a lot of users will buy two lower spec cards and utilise them in a multiple GPU configuration.

Both Nvidia and AMD have similar technologies when it comes to this practice. AMD’s system is called CrossFire whilst Nvidia called their technology SLI. Now depending on the card you have will depend entirely on how far you can take this, for example the GTX 580 gives you the ability to install more than one extra card in multiple graphics card configurations whereas this card simply lets you install a partner card and no more due to the GTX 460 OC from Inno3D falling under the latter with a single SLI bridge connection giving the ability to pair another card using the same core to get an increase in performance.

As technology moves on and performance increases, we expect the components to use more and more power but manufacturers are also working on lowering the power output at the same time and due to this the GTX 460 OC only requires two 6-pin PCI express power connectors to power it. Other cards with higher performance will require more power while lesser cards may require no extra power at all such as the Inno3D GeForce GT 430 that we looked at not too long ago.

As stated earlier on, this card does take up two expansion slots in the case of which the cooler takes full advantage of. The reason for this is so that the top slot can be used to exhaust heat that the fan pushes its way.

The bottom slot caters for the connections including two DVI ports and a mini HDMI port which gives you the ability for multiple display configurations.