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Graphics GTX 460 Appreciation Society - Plus VGA Cooling Thread!

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Blogins, 13 Nov 2011.

  1. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    As per the title I'm interested to hear if anyone has updated the Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB (GV-N460OC-1GI) to the latest F3 BIOS? I'm purely interested in pushing this card to the limit since I'll probably go for the new 600 series come 2012. Giving both my cards a good clean and also establish some basic heatsinks on the Video RAM. As at the moment there are none and Battlefield 3 is pushing all the hot buttons on my GPUs! Also curious if this BIOS update allows 100% fan profile, as right now the limit is 70%.
     
    Last edited: 11 Dec 2011
  2. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB F3 BIOS for GV-N460OC-1GI

    Fat lot of good you people are! Gone ahead with the BIOS update regardless! :D

    I can confirm that the F3 BIOS currently posted on the Gigabyte website for the GTX 460 1GB (GV-N460OC-1GI) does unlock the fan speed from the maximum 70% under stock BIOS to 100%. Just testing at the moment I can tell you the tachometer readings...

    70% ~2800RPM
    80% ~3150RPM
    90% ~3450RPM
    100% ~3450RPM

    Curiously my second GTX 460 in the lower portion of my SLI build tracks around 150RPM less than the primary card. The difference in noise above 70% is noticeable, so it's pretty obvious why Gigabyte choose to limit this with the original release (and review) BIOS. Now time to see if it's magically unlocked some MHz on the core for me to overclock!
     
    Last edited: 2 Dec 2011
  3. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Quiet optimism! I pushed past my stable overclock of 810MHz on the core in SLI to 820MHz on the core and it's 10 minutes stable using Furmark (Multi-GPU) with a temperature of 70 degrees on the top card and 56 degrees on the bottom. This is with stock voltage and 100% on the fans.
     
  4. bulldogjeff

    bulldogjeff The modding head is firmly back on.

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    I've got the MSI N460 GTX in SLI. I can get some really high over clocks on mine. Let me know if you ant some of the settings I use, it'll take a lot of the guess work out of it for you.
     
  5. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Where's the fun in that? :D

    Be interesting to see what numbers you got though, fire them on here! The 820MHz overclock was stable for 20 minutes using Furmark (before I quit!), now I'm trying 830MHz. I'm impressed with the small bump so far with a simple BIOS update, curious just how far I can push these cards now.

    Also modifying some Zalman heatsinks for my GTX 460 before pushing the video RAM...

    http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=220396
     
  6. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    I like this F3 BIOS! I'm 20 minutes stable using Furmark with 830MHz on the core. Going really well at the moment and the 100% fans are not going to be audible whilst playing Battlefield 3. Not the way I play it anyway! :D
     
  7. bulldogjeff

    bulldogjeff The modding head is firmly back on.

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    What you'll have to take in to account is my GPUs are water cooled and in SLI...

    O/C 1) mild standard voltage , 825 core / shader 1651/ mem 1920

    O/C 2) voltage 1.025 850 core/ 1700 shader/ mem1995

    O/C 3) voltage 1.050 core 915/ shader 1830/ mem 2000....Max temps on this setting are 45-47

    I probably can push it further but that means more voltage. I think 1.087 is the max safe voltage on these cards. 2000 MHz seems to be as far as the mem wants to go.
     
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  8. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Thanks for the info!

    I got 840MHz stable on the core at stock 0.987V, top card 70 degrees and the bottom 55 degrees. Didn't like 850MHz though so I bumped the voltage to 1.025v and it's doing good 10 minutes into Furmark. Although temperatures have jumped to 76 degrees on the top and 60 on the bottom. Not too bad though, I'd like to try this overclock out in Battlefield 3 next.
     
  9. bulldogjeff

    bulldogjeff The modding head is firmly back on.

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    If you can get a fan blowing across the GPUs you'll probably be able to get the temps on the top card down a bit.
     
  10. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    I recently put a couple of 120mm Silverstone Air Penetrator fans in the front of my Fractal R3 and that already reduced temperatures by 10 degrees! Not sure that additional fans would have that much more of an effect as I really want to keep the Fractals so called Modu-Vents intact, they really dampen the noise. All fans on 100% to maintain this overclock including GPU, CPU and case fans!

    Battlefield 3 killed my overclock with 1.025v so I gave it a boost to 1.050v and played a session of BF3 Firestorm with no problems whatsoever with 850MHz on the core. I can really tell the difference as well, at 2560 by 1440 the action was smooth as butter! Temperature wise the top card hit 75 degrees and the bottom 61 which I'm quite happy with. Considering this game was pushing my top card over 80 degrees with stock voltage and overclocked to 810MHz on the core before I upgraded my cases cooling profile (previously on Akasa Apache fans).

    Might hold off on pushing these settings further until I get some heatsinks on the GTX 460 video RAM. Rather labour intensive sanding all these Zalman ZM-RHS1 VGA RAM HEATSINKS down to size. They require two thirds off the top leaving a nice little 2mm heatsink that'll fit under the Gigabyte GTX 460 cooling apparatus that makes contact with the GPU heatspreader!
     
  11. bulldogjeff

    bulldogjeff The modding head is firmly back on.

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    You're still with in the safety zone on your cards. My old XFX GTX 9800 GX2 OC used to idle at 70 degrees.. You could cook your breakfast on it after a good gaming session. The only other option you have is to get them under water if you want to get the temps down any more. i find with my cards when I crank up the over clock, there's nothing about that they can't handle with ease.
     
  12. Tangster

    Tangster Butt-kicking for goodness!

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    Can I play? I'm using a MSI Cyclone GTX 460 1GB, sadly it's a non ref so air only and it's only a single card.
    I've got Vcore at 1.87V for a core clock of 910MHz, shaders of 1820MHz and a memory of 2200MHz. Using the standard cooling profile it tops out in Furmark at 67 C. I do need to wind-tunnel my front fans to keep it there though.
     
  13. bulldogjeff

    bulldogjeff The modding head is firmly back on.

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    Your maxed out on the voltage to get it to 2200 MHz I might have to try that one day. At 1.050 it won't go past 2000 MHz. I've been looking around to see if some one had pushed that hard to see what sort of performance could be squeezed out of the cards.

    Is your card missing the "N" prefix, because mine are the m MSI cyclones and the EK full cover blocks go straight on.
     
    Last edited: 15 Nov 2011
  14. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Of course you can play! :D

    I know the maximum GPU temperature for the GTX 460 is above boiling point so as long as I'm around the 80 mark I'll be happy. Too much bother putting them under water, also I'm tipping the case this way and that all the time so I don't think it would survive!

    Anyway, it really has surprised me how the F3 BIOS has effectively unlocked on GTX 460 overclock. So glad I decided to update both cards now. Can go to sleep happy with my days exploits! :thumb:
     
  15. Tangster

    Tangster Butt-kicking for goodness!

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    Yep. One of the original batches. It can do 950 core, but it flakes out in 3Dmark vantage despite being fine in furmark.:sigh:

    I can't really say that OCing the memory that much counts for a lot in games.
     
  16. LennyRhys

    LennyRhys Fan Fan

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    +1 I rarely OC graphics memory as it makes very little difference to performance; core and shader are all you need, and if you don't OC the memory you usually have more headroom for the former.

    @ Blogins, have you ever tried BF3 with just one GTX460? I've heard that it's actually playable at 1080p. And what fps you getting with SLI?

    Now that I'm going to be at 2560x1600 I considered a GPU upgrade (even though I hardly ever game, and a single 460 is no slouch), but the prices really put me off - I'd have to get at least a 570 to notice a substantial improvement, having downgraded from a 470. You'll need to convince me that 460 SLI is the way to go... is it generally better than a single 580?
     
  17. xaser04

    xaser04 Ba Ba Ba BANANA!

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    Keep pushing, over 900Mhz core should hopefully be possible with the excellent Gigabytye coolers.

    I remember when I had GTX460's in SLI (they rocked but got a bit noisy for my liking).

    Single card I could top out at 925/1850/4300 on my "better" card and 875/1750/4200 on the other card. In SLI though 850/1700/4200 was about the max they could take before the heat really started to build up (the second card took alot more voltage to get it stable).

    At ~ 900/1800/4000 you should be matching stock GTX560TI performance so in SLI these cards would rock.
     
  18. mkb

    mkb Minimodder

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    I need to look into this asap. I'll update the bios of mine later on this evening. I've got some extra spacing between my two cards due to my new motherboard so I don;t have to worry about the temps anymore. Theyre currently OC'd to 870 core and 2200 mem although I used to have them at 900+ core but temps got in the way.

    I'll let you know my findings.
     
  19. bulldogjeff

    bulldogjeff The modding head is firmly back on.

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    I've just been for a glory run on my cards, max voltage, 1.087 core 950/ shader 1900/ mem 2200... rock solid. If I drop the mem to 2100 I can get the core up to 955 stable. Temps are fine. Unlocking the bios to get more voltage is where I need to be right now, but I'm just not going to push that hard. I have a 3rd 460 identical to the other 2 it would be interesting to put that in as a Phys X card to see if I get any performance gains.
     
  20. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    It's well worth it from my limited experience with the new BIOS. I'll post some basic details about how I flashed my two cards here in a minute. Otherwise my testing is on hold as in a completely unrelated incident my PSU has died...

    http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=220575

    In truth it had been making odd noises over the past few months when switched to the on position but was rock solid when operating so processing an RMA was going to be a tough one to call. Thankfully now it appears to have died, so easy decision on the RMA front! :thumb:
     

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