Legit Video Card Reviews
ASUS GeForce ENGTX460 TOP 768MB Video Card Review
| Manufacturer: | ASUS |
| Product: | TOP/2DI/768MD5 |
| Date: | Fri, Jul 23, 2010 - 12:00 AM |
| Written By: | Nathan Kirsch - |
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The ENGTX460 Top GPU Cooler
The ASUS ENGTX460 DirectCU TOP/SDI/768MD5 uses a custom designed PCB and
has their own special GPU cooler that they use to cool this factory
overclocked card. Pictured above is the NVIDIA reference design. Notice that the video card has three voltage regulator power phases. The ASUS design below uses five voltage regulator power phases! Both cards also have one power phase for the memory. This means the reference design has a 3+1 power design and the ASUS ENGTX460 TOP has a 5+1 power design.
The ENGTX460 TOP 768MB features two 8mm heatpipes and the custom DirectCU technology provides what ASUS claims is 20
percent better cooling than typical reference GTX460 designs. This means that you should be able to get significantly higher overclocking headroom and increased performance from the video card since it runs cooler. ASUS also says that this DirectCU TOP card offers exclusive GPU Guard. This means that the circuit board has additional reinforcement that is said to prevent cracking along with better reliability and longevity. Since we can't do any internal PCB checks we are forced to take their word on that exclusive feature.
ASUS included a little metal plate that was on the back of the ENGTX460 Top to help cool the ASUS EPU chip that is located below this plate. This chip is a power saving engine that has auto phase switching for components. The EPU automatically
provides the most appropriate power usage via intelligent acceleration
and overclocking - helping to save power and money. The plate was rather crooked and resting on other components, which was rather odd and worth pointing out. A simple rubber pad on the other side of the plate would have kept it flat.
The ASUS GeForce GTX 460 doesn't use the GF100 'Fermi' core like
on the GTX 480/470/465, but rather the new GF104 'Fermi' based
derivative. The core is covered with a heat spreader that is rather large
as you can see from the image above. The markings on the GF104 core
read 'GF104-300-KA-A1' on our ASUS GeForce GTX 460 TOP 768MB video card. This is different than the reference card that we reviewed on launch day that read 'GF104-300-KB-A1' on the core. ASUS says that they sort their GF104 GPUs and that the ones that are able to run at 700MHz core clock go on to become ENGTX460 TOP video cards.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB reference card used six Samsung GDDR5 memory ICs that were part number K4G10325FE-HC05. Each one of the ICs is 128MB in size and that is how the card reaches its 768MB frame buffer. As you can see in the image above, ASUS uses the same exact GDDR5 memory IC's on their factory overclocked card. Also seen above are the solid-state capacitors and the high-quality Yageo R68 ferrite chokes that are being used on this custom PCB.
Next Page - Retail Box and Bundle
| Review Index |
|
Page 1 - The ASUS ENGTX460 Top VoltageTweak
Page 2 - The ENGTX460 Top GPU Cooler Page 3 - Retail Box and Bundle Page 4 - ASUS Smart Doctor & Gamer OSD Utilities Page 5 - GeForce GTX 460 Test Settings Page 6 - Batman: Arkham Asylum Page 7 - Resident Evil 5 Page 8 - Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. Page 9 - 3DMark Vantage Page 10 - Unigine 'Heaven' DX11 Page 11 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Page 12 - Aliens vs. Predator Page 13 - FurMark 1.8.2 Page 14 - Power Consumption Page 15 - Temperature Testing Page 16 - ASUS GeForce GTX 460 768MB Overclocking Page 17 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions |
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