GTX 460 SLI OC Wins Battle Against Radeon HD 5970 4GB
Radeon HD 5970 is undoubtedly the fastest dual-GPU graphics card available on the market. Some AIBs have released their non-reference HD 5970, in which Asus ROG series ARES stands out, and Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 4GB OC edition also delivers outstanding performance.
We’ve witnessed that the GTX 460 SLI was strong enough to beat Radeon HD 5970 with stock clocks, so how much performance improvements that GTX 460 SLI would bring? Let’s check out how Radeon HD 5970 4GB (850/4800MHz) performs compared with GTX 460 1GB OC edition SLI.
Test bed:
CPU: Intel Core i7-920 OC 3.8GHz
Mobo: EVGA X58 Classified 4-way SLI
Memory: G.Skill DDR3-1066 OC 1200MHz 2GB*3
VGA Card: Zotac GTX 460 1GB/Sapphire HD 5970 4GB
Drivers: Forceware 258 96 Beta/Catalyst 10.6 WHQL
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
GTX 460 SLI OC vs. Stock clocks
With clocks improved from 675/1350/3600MHz to 850/1700/4100MHz, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB went through all the benchmarks and showed significant performance improvements of up to 19.78% in average.
Under the 3DMark Vantage Extreme mode, GeForce GTX 460 1GB SLI achieved up to 31.13% of performance improvements after overclocking. It showed at least 8.64% of performance improvements with Left 4 Dead 2.
GTX 460 SLI OC vs. HD 5970 4GB
Out of all the 28 benchmarks, GeForce GTX 460 1GB SLI OC outperformed the opponent in 18 items by 8.01% in average.
It’s not hard to tell that the GeForce GTX 460 1GB SLI delivers much better cost performance than the Radeon HD 5970 4GB.
With excellent 2-way SLI efficiency and overwhelming overclocking potential, GeForce GTX 460 brings performance improvements of almost 20% after being overclocked to 850/1700/4100MHz (Core/Shader/Memory). It even beat the dual-GPU king – HD 5970 4GB OC edition by a margin of 8%, which means the performance of dual GF104 card could be very promising.
August 1st, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Who cares? We want new architecture. This is broken…
Southern Islands around the corner. I’m sorry but again – who cares about GeForces today?
Bring us news about Southern Islands or Fermi 2.
August 1st, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Dude,what is GF104 if is not “Fermi2″
Southern Islands it will be tuned rv870 nothing else!
August 1st, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Interresting test, but the HD5970 4Gb can be clocked up to 1Ghz with ease. So why not make it a fair comparison instead of this rubish OC vs non-OC.
Those people who are going to get a GF104 card probably waited for it while other people already have a HD5xxx card running so why not wait for the SI card a little longer
August 1st, 2010 at 10:35 pm
The segment of people who would spend around 500 dollars for graphics usually have a 700/800 watt psu (around 200$), and while that could easily run an overclocked 5970 and a quad core, the same cannot be said about a pair of OCgtx460. This means that you also have to take into account the price of a new power supply and for me that is a dealbreaker.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:13 am
That’s great, but some users don’t have motherboards with 2 or more vga slots on their boards. Nothing special, and the 460 is very very late for the party…
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:07 pm
How about you overclock that 5970 first !!
August 5th, 2010 at 1:47 am
How much did nvidia pay for this PR-Review? Seems that they are really in panic mode.
Some three monitor setup?
August 5th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Two 460 GTX SLI are more powerfull, than 480 GTX, the last one is better than 5970.
August 6th, 2010 at 11:20 am
It is always fun watching the lil ATI cry-babies whine about how things are not fair. So you spend $700 on a HD 5970, why not $500 on 2 GTX 460′s.. and who the heck these days doesn’t have an 800 watt+ power supply? Maybe only people who haven’t upgraded in 4 years. Heck even my old PC had a 1000w psu…
The proof is in 2 gtx 460′s beat ati in a number of different tests and for a lot less. also if nvidia ever put 2 sli slots on them you could run them in quad and then sit back and just smile!
August 6th, 2010 at 11:21 am
not to mention you get physicsX
August 6th, 2010 at 11:25 am
p.s the last lines of the test tell you it beat out the oc hd 5970 by 8%
August 24th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
ahha 5970 4gb 1000$ card lose to 2 gtx 460
2 gtx 460 = 400$ 5970 4gb = 1200$ go nvidia
August 24th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
But alone, the 460 is best a mediocre mid range card. Sorry, still late and still nothing special. It is initially crippled until it gets its other half lol.
August 25th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Try two 5870 2gb (900$)
smashes 460SLI has double the vram and powers 12 monitors
450Watts