14 DAY TRIAL // Though the GeForce GTX 460 is mostly confined to the higher half of the mainstream market, it seems that this will no longer be the case when Zotac starts selling its most recent version of it.
For a while, there have been rumors saying that there would soon be a less powerful version of the GeForce GTX 460 graphics card on the market.
The original card, as well as all of the custom-made versions from NVIDIA's partners, has 336 CUDA cores.
The new model developed by Zotac, one GeForce GTX 460 SE (Special Edition) has only 288 CUDA cores.
The rest of the specifications are more or less in line with what a mid-end video board would be expected to have.
For one, the GF104 graphics processing unit (GPU) has a clock speed of 650 MHz, while the shaders themselves operate at 1,300 MHz.
Additionally, the video controller features 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM, whose own clock is of 3,400 MHz and whose memory interface is of 256 bits.
This VRAM ensures “lightning-fast performance, stunning visuals and phenomenal realism,” or so the announcement says.
“ZOTAC continues to expand the GeForce GTX 400 series for gamers. With the new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 SE we’re able to deliver a quality DirectX 11 experience at a very attractive price point,” said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International.
As far as cooling goes, Zotac stuck to the same dual-slot solution that end-users have gotten used to.
Needless to say, DirectX 11 (Tessellation, DirectCompute etc.) is fully supported, as are NVIDIA's own technologies.
The list includes not only CUDA, PhysX and Blu-ray 3D but also SLI, for multi-GPU setups, while video connectivity capabilities number dual-DVI and HDMI.
Unfortunately, the card's maker did not give out any sort of pricing details.