14 DAY TRIAL // By now, consumers may have already learned that NVIDIA has finally launched the GeForce GTX 460, its highly-anticipated graphics card for the upper level of the mainstream market. Needless to say, the company's manufacturing partners, such as EVGA and ASUS, have already unleashed their own models. Some of these newcomers do have better clocks, but Sparkle decided it would take things in another direction. What it did was stick to the stock frequencies but put two whole gigabytes of GDDR5 on its own creation.
Basically, 2GB is double the memory of the 1GB reference version, though other distinctive qualities can't really be detected. For one, the number of CUDA cores is the same 336 that NVIDIA implemented, and the memory interface is 256-bit wide. Even the GF104 graphics processing unit (GPU) was left at 675 MHz. Furthermore, the shaders and memory operate at 1350 MHz and 3600 MHz, respectively.
“As a deadly weapon of Fermi Family, SPARKLE GeForce GTX460 series graphics cards provide the best performance price ratio, being the world's best $200 graphics card, it brings a new level of DirectX 11 performance to mainstream PC enthusiasts and gamers around the world,” states the press release.
Considering the lack of factory overclocking, the actual usefulness of 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM may become a subject of debate, though it can't be denied that the press coverage will do Sparkle good. Granted, consumers will be able to perform overclocking operations on their own if they wish. Also, end-users need not despair, for the hardware maker definitely won't shrink from also selling cards with 768MB and 1GB VRAM.
In fact, according to the official announcement, there already is one of each, with memory interfaces of 192 bits and 256 bits, respectively. They will need to be powered via two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors, just like their 2GB sibling. Furthermore, the 1GB model is overclocked to 700, 1485 and 3600 MHz. Unfortunately, pricing details have not been revealed.