14 DAY TRIAL // Although not so much time is left until Nvidia's GTX 560 Ti GPU makes its official debut, Lantic just announced a new custom designed GeForce GTX 460 2GB that uses an improved cooling system and should replace the 768MB version of the card as far as pricing goes.
The new cooler installed by Lantic uses a GPU heatsink, decked by a plastic shroud and is ventilated by an 80mm fan placed right in the middle of the card.
Compared to the standard cooling assembly Lantic's card should offer improved thermal and acoustic performance, although it still has the same downside as Nvidia's reference design, since the hot air is expelled right back into the computer chassis.
Lantic didn't bring any other changes to the reference GTX 460, its PCB as well as the operating frequencies, remaining unchanged as the card is clocked at 675MHz core, 1350MHz CUDA processors, and 900MHz memory.
While this should definitely seem like a drawback when compared to other custom designed GTX 460's, seasoned overclockers will most certainly know how to put to good use the improved cooling system.
The GeForce GTX 460 is built on top of the GF104 core that packs 336 stream processors, 56 texturing units and 32 ROPs, the 2GB of GDDR5 video buffer being linked to the core via a 256-bit wide memory bus.
GF104 is fabricated using TSMC's 40nm manufacturing process and features redesigned streaming multiprocessors compared to the regular GF100 core.
No details regarding pricing and availability were disclosed at this time, but the GF104 is slated to get an offspring in just a few hours, dubbed the GTX 560 Ti.
However, the new card won't actually replace the GTX 460, as it retails for about $80 more, but will rather push it down in Nvidia's lineup, probably replacing the GTX 460 768MB. (via TechPowerUp)