AN UNCONFIRMED RUMOUR about Nvidia’s third GF100 based card has appeared on a German website, stating that the new card should launch on the first day of Computex. It’s said to be called the GeForce GTX460, but it looks set to be quite different from the two models that Nvidia has launched so far.
It seems like Nvidia is having some problems when it comes to creating cut-down versions of its GF100, since it has to cut off fairly large chunks at a time. The GTX460 is said to end up with 384 Shaders, that’s 64 less than the GTX470 and 96 less than the GTX480. It is also said to feature 48 TMU’s and 32 ROPs which in both cases is a reduction of eight compared to the GTX470. The GTX470 only got four TMU’s and eight ROP’s cut compared to the GTX480, so the GTX460 looks set to be a significantly slower part in relation to the GTX470.
Hardware-Infos are also suggesting that the card will have a 256-bit memory interface. It should come with 1GB worth of GDDR5 memory, although the speed of the memory isn’t known at this point in time. It seems like Nvidia doesn’t have enough granularity in the GF100 to allow for any smaller cuts than this. It might be possible for Nvidia to clock the GTX460 higher due to 20 percent of the GF100 being fused off. However, we’re not going to hold our breath and considering the fact that this will be another huge card requiring some fairly intricate cooling, it’s not going to be all that price competitive either.
The only way this chip makes any sense at all would be that Nvidia is making use of GF100 chips that are unable to function well enough to become GTX470’s and it’s a way for Nvidia to get some money back. The question is how many people are going to be willing to buy such a severely crippled card, but then again, if it’s priced right, it might prove to be popular with those who are unwilling to trade camps to AMD. Nvidia will have to beat the Radeon HD5830 in terms of both price and performance with this card if it’s going to be of much interest to anyone. Considering the cost of the GTX470, Nvidia will have to price the GTX460 at sub $300, but to compete with the Radeon HD5830 it really needs to end up closer to $250.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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