A poor mans upgrade

Today I received my long awaited Gigabyte GTX 460 OC. I've wanted to buy a new graphics-card for quite some time now, but due to some "money-problems" (unemployed and on welfare) I couldn't afford it until now. I saved for months to be able to do this and it feels great to finally have it.

My old card was a 9800 gtx+ which I could still play most games on great graphics, but I wanted to start enjoying the dx11 unique features and my old card was a dx10 card. It also only had 512 Mb of memory which is kinda low with todays gaming-standards. Most cards are probably 1-2 GB. Hey there are even cards with 4GB, but I'm not a rich man :P

Why did I want to tell you about all this? Well for starters, I believe that there are many gamers out there who might not be able to afford expensive cards and all tests I've seen is almost only focused on new cards, and no comparison to older cards such as mine. So I just wanted to share the results. These numbers are only for the GPU, no CPU-score is included.

Comp spec:

Windows Ultimate 32-bit
4GB RAM 1333 Mhz
Gigabyte Geforce GTX460 OC.
AMD Phenom II X4 965 3,4 Ghz

I used 3Dmark Vantage (on 2 settings) and the benchmark option in Batman Arkham Asylum and Battleforge. In the two games I set everything to maximum, except for vertical sync which I had no reason to enable.

My 9800gtx+ fought well.

3Dmark Vantage with the only change to the setting being the resolution (Changed to 1680x1050) my old card gave me 5138 points. When I did the same thing on my new card I got 10810 which is about 110% increase in performance over my old card.

On performance setting I got 6778 on my old card and 13713 on my new which is about an 102% increase in performance.

Ín Batman Arkham Asylum my old card gave me the following results: (in fps)

Min: 24 Max: 70 Avg: 47 Which is really nice for a card of that age.

New card:

min: 58 Max: 138 Avg: 95 A major increase.

In Battleforge my old card gave me the following results:

Min: 0,7. (Yes it said that, but that was the very first frame, so that is not a "true" minimum. It just happened when it started and it recorded that ofc.)
Max: 75.9 Avg: 7.5 (That was fun to watch)

New Card:

Min: 4. (And again only in the first frame/s).
Max: 138,8. Avg: 40. I didn't see any stuttering at all.

The price of the Gigabyte GTX 460 OC was roughly $200 or 1649 SEK (Swedish kroner).

I think that the results are AMAZING for a card at this pricepoint. Nvidia has a great deal here. But this is not all.

My old 9800gtx+ had an idle temp of about 60 degrees. Which is horrible by todays standards. My new one on the other hand is amazing in idle. I am using Speedfan right now when writing this and it says 27 degrees. 27! It cut my idle temp in more than half. That makes me horny. The only bad thing about this is that my computer can no longer heat up my apartment. I'm freezing.

And the noise levels are great :) It was a great buy so if you don't have much money and desperately seeking a new card, this is one very nice buy.!

Let me know of your experiences! Tnx for reading!

[wat634]

Glad it worked out for you! I'm sorry to hear of your unemployment.

I'm not really rich either, as i as well was hit by the economy. Looking to build a computer for less than 600, but it may seem impossible, and im looking to play games like bc2 and you know, a lot of other games. Well, looks like ill keep searching for the better buy.

[iamgoatman]

Congrats on the new card, It's pretty amazing the performance you can get these days without having to spend hundreds and hundreds.

Those temps sound good as well, I used to have a 8800GT and it would idle around 55 degrees, and that was in a pretty cold room, didn't leave much room for overclocking. Have an Asus 5850 at the moment and it idles at 28 degrees and that's at 8-10% fan speed, so it's pretty quiet as well. Not having an OC limited by temps is rather handy, free to push the card as far as it will go, well as long as you aren't worried about electricity bills that is.

[tplarkin7]

I thought you had to have 64-bit Windows to utilize 4GB of RAM? I heard 32-bit uses only 3 or 3.5GB?

[toaster]

Yeah he should really get a 64 bit OS to take advantage of 4GB of RAM.

Nice build, although the real worth of the system is in the brands and manufacturers of components. Gigabyte makes really good cards, I've never had a Gigabyte card but my friends have and their customer service is really good. If two products are exactly the same, the company with a higher pedigree for customer satisfaction will get my money. I hate having to deal with customer service reps that don't really give a crap about your problem.

[s45gr32]

man I am sorry to here of you getting unemployed. But I am glad of your new card and I could not stop laughing when I heard about that your PC no longer heats up the apt...

[DarkBlood]

just a quick question if any of you guys dont mind answering

I know nothing about computers so i didnt want to risk trying to upgrade it and figured i buy the most powerfull laptop instead that could handle the star wars mmo at full max or i could buya computer for it instead

Now i have options I could
A: buy laptop that handles the knights of the republic mmo at full max
B:build my own computer
C:upgrade my computer with new parts that is assuming i know what im doing without losing programs and stuff etc
D: buy a gaming pc preferably one that doesnt suck electricity like theres no tommorow

any knowledge would be great because certain sites arent really helping me understand

[toaster]

Come into the forums and we'll help you out there. Discussing about new PCs is more than a 5 bubble conversation. 3 in my case :S.