14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA is already selling the GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics cards, as well as GTX 465 models, but the Santa Clara, California-based GPU maker is still way off from actually matching AMD's complete offer. Advanced Micro Devices has been selling DirectX 11-capable graphics adapters for months and for all market segments, including the entry-level and mainstream. This means that NVIDIA is still at a disadvantage.
There is no word on how soon the company will actually bring out a mainstream or entry-level video board. According to previous reports, it can be speculated that a rival for the ATI Radeon HD 5830 will debut sometime during the third quarter of 2010, in July or August. The latest leak published by Expreview doesn't do anything to confirm or disprove this assumption, but it does, at the very least, offer what appear to be the actual specifications.
According to the report, the fourth NVIDIA GTX 400 Series video controller, the GTX 460, boasts 336 CUDA cores clocked at 1350MHz, a 192-bit memory interface, a total of 768MB GDDR5 VRAM (clocked at 3600MHz) and, of course, the 40nm GF104 GPU, set at 675MHz. All in all, the product should consume 150W at most, significantly less than its siblings. The operating temperatures are not mentioned, though it can be assumed that they won't exactly be the lowest in history.
This spec sheet appears to be different from what a previous leak suggested, at the start of the month. That time, the number of cores was hinted to be 240, whereas the TDP was said to be 180W. It was also suggested that, through overclocking, this product would actually match the GTX 480, though this has yet to be confirmed.
Expreview suggests that the recommended retail price of the GTX 460 will be $230. This is a significant decrease compared to the GTX 465 ($279 without shipping) and confirms that the Radeon HD 5830 will be the main contender.