Anyone know where to order an ECS GTX 460 Black Series?

Jimmydean

I am trying to purchase a new video card, and of the GTX 460s the ECS Elitegroup GTX 460 Black Series seems to be top notch.

Unfortunately, I cannot find this video card online at the moment. Perhaps it's not released to U.S. retailers yet? The regular version is on Newegg, but I want the Black Series card for the Arctic Cooler that comes on it.

Any help would be appreciated. It's very possible that the card just isn't released to U.S. markets yet, I just want to know for sure.

Grunty

That information is available on the ECS website.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/W2B/WhereToBuy.aspx?MenuID=5&LanID=0

Jimmydean

Hmm, yea I tried that. It shows where to buy ECS items, not necessarily where to buy this card. Thanks though.

Quizzical

Why are you looking for ECS Elitegroup in particular?  That's a cheap junk brand.  I could understand buying from them if it's cheaper, especially if it's a reference card so it's exactly the same card with a different sticker on it, but why go out of your way to look for them?

The key difference between various GTX 460s is whether they come with 768 MB of video memory or 1 GB.  They're really two different cards, and for Nvidia to call them both a GeForce GTX 460 was intentionally deceptive.  But they're all the same GPU chip, and that's just two different bins of the same GPU chip.

Grunty

Originally posted by Quizzical

Why are you looking for ECS Elitegroup in particular?  That's a cheap junk brand.  I could understand buying from them if it's cheaper, especially if it's a reference card so it's exactly the same card with a different sticker on it, but why go out of your way to look for them?

The key difference between various GTX 460s is whether they come with 768 MB of video memory or 1 GB.  They're really two different cards, and for Nvidia to call them both a GeForce GTX 460 was intentionally deceptive.  But they're all the same GPU chip, and that's just two different bins of the same GPU chip.

Yup. The motherboard for my system is ECS. It has decent performance for the price I paid but it was never intended to set speed records.

skeaser

Originally posted by grunty

Originally posted by Quizzical

Why are you looking for ECS Elitegroup in particular?  That's a cheap junk brand.  I could understand buying from them if it's cheaper, especially if it's a reference card so it's exactly the same card with a different sticker on it, but why go out of your way to look for them?

The key difference between various GTX 460s is whether they come with 768 MB of video memory or 1 GB.  They're really two different cards, and for Nvidia to call them both a GeForce GTX 460 was intentionally deceptive.  But they're all the same GPU chip, and that's just two different bins of the same GPU chip.

Yup. The motherboard for my system is ECS. It has decent performance for the price I paid but it was never intended to set speed records.

Is your name a .hack reference?

Grunty

Originally posted by skeaser

Originally posted by grunty

Originally posted by Quizzical

Why are you looking for ECS Elitegroup in particular?  That's a cheap junk brand.  I could understand buying from them if it's cheaper, especially if it's a reference card so it's exactly the same card with a different sticker on it, but why go out of your way to look for them?

The key difference between various GTX 460s is whether they come with 768 MB of video memory or 1 GB.  They're really two different cards, and for Nvidia to call them both a GeForce GTX 460 was intentionally deceptive.  But they're all the same GPU chip, and that's just two different bins of the same GPU chip.

Yup. The motherboard for my system is ECS. It has decent performance for the price I paid but it was never intended to set speed records.

Is your name a .hack reference?

Jagged Alliance. Never looked at anime.

skeaser

Originally posted by grunty

Originally posted by skeaser

Originally posted by grunty

Originally posted by Quizzical

Why are you looking for ECS Elitegroup in particular?  That's a cheap junk brand.  I could understand buying from them if it's cheaper, especially if it's a reference card so it's exactly the same card with a different sticker on it, but why go out of your way to look for them?

The key difference between various GTX 460s is whether they come with 768 MB of video memory or 1 GB.  They're really two different cards, and for Nvidia to call them both a GeForce GTX 460 was intentionally deceptive.  But they're all the same GPU chip, and that's just two different bins of the same GPU chip.

Yup. The motherboard for my system is ECS. It has decent performance for the price I paid but it was never intended to set speed records.

Is your name a .hack reference?

Jagged Alliance. Never looked at anime.

Ah. Just wondering, grunty was an awesome pig creature from the .hack RPGs on PS2.

Quizzical

Originally posted by grunty

Yup. The motherboard for my system is ECS. It has decent performance for the price I paid but it was never intended to set speed records.

Motherboards don't meaningfully differ in performance, other than how far you can overclock them.  The main differences are in features, reliability, BIOS glitches, and, of course, the price tag.

Jimmydean

Originally posted by Quizzical

Why are you looking for ECS Elitegroup in particular?  That's a cheap junk brand.  I could understand buying from them if it's cheaper, especially if it's a reference card so it's exactly the same card with a different sticker on it, but why go out of your way to look for them?

The key difference between various GTX 460s is whether they come with 768 MB of video memory or 1 GB.  They're really two different cards, and for Nvidia to call them both a GeForce GTX 460 was intentionally deceptive.  But they're all the same GPU chip, and that's just two different bins of the same GPU chip.

 

I guess I don't really know that much about Video Cards. I liked the ECS Elitegroup GTX 460 because of the Cooler on it (Dual-Fan Arctic Cool), and the Overclocking capabilities. The basic version of their GTX 460 1GB card is pretty plain, but the Black Series 1GB looks really slick.

The other two options I am considering are the Gigabyte 1gb GTX 460, or the MSI Cyclone GTX 460 1GB.

Kyntor

Originally posted by Jimmydean

I guess I don't really know that much about Video Cards. I liked the ECS Elitegroup GTX 460 because of the Cooler on it (Dual-Fan Arctic Cool), and the Overclocking capabilities. The basic version of their GTX 460 1GB card is pretty plain, but the Black Series 1GB looks really slick.

The other two options I am considering are the Gigabyte 1gb GTX 460, or the MSI Cyclone GTX 460 1GB.

 

The MSI Cyclone is a good card.  Also, Newegg is currently running a sale on a eVGA 465 that is suppose to be a good card for about $182.

Quizzical

Originally posted by Jimmydean

 

I guess I don't really know that much about Video Cards. I liked the ECS Elitegroup GTX 460 because of the Cooler on it (Dual-Fan Arctic Cool), and the Overclocking capabilities. The basic version of their GTX 460 1GB card is pretty plain, but the Black Series 1GB looks really slick.

The other two options I am considering are the Gigabyte 1gb GTX 460, or the MSI Cyclone GTX 460 1GB.

 

It's hard to tell how good a fan is unless you find a review from a good site that explicitly tests it for noise, temperatures, and power draw.  Some companies do have their standard heatsink fan setup that they'll put on several different cards, and you can extrapolate somewhat from that, I guess.  For example, compare the fans on these four cards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127513

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127504

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127500

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127491

The underlying GPUs are rather different, of course, so if it can handle a GeForce GTX 470 at all, then it's probably way overkill for a Radeon HD 5850.  Though that isn't always the case, as different chips can release heat in different spots.

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Don't buy an Nvidia card and assume that you're going to be able to meaningfully overclock it yourself unless you're willing to up the voltage and accept a considerable risk that you'll eventually fry the card.  If most of the cards of a given SKU could have safely run a lot faster, then the board manufacturer probably would have clocked them faster.

It's a little different on the AMD side, where AMD tells board vendors that they can only factory overclock their cards so far, which is probably a disservice to the end user.  But it does mean that most Radeon HD 5850s and 5750s have quite a bit of overclocking headroom if you can get them to the 1.15 V that is the stock voltage for 5870s, and the only reason that more of them aren't clocked like that is that AMD said no.  Regardless, if you're looking to overclock one of those cards, you'd better get a good cooler on it.

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Either Gigabyte or MSI are more reputable than ECS Elitegroup.  If you've decided that a GeForce GTX 460 1 GB is the card for you (which is the natural choice if you're an Nvidia fan who wants a moderately high end card and doesn't like cards to run dangerously hot, or have a budget around $230-$250 and want the best card in that price range that you can get regardless of vendor), then you'll probably be happy with a GTX 460 1 GB from pretty much any vendor.

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The GeForce GTX 465 is a complete disaster of a card, and probably the worst card as compared to its competitors at launch in many years.  Regardless of Nvidia's stupid numbering scheme, the GeForce GTX 460 1 GB is a better card.  The GTX 460 1 GB will tend to perform a little better than the GTX 465 while using vastly less power.

Jimmydean

Thanks for the replies. I'm actually an ATI fanboy, but the more I read about the GTX460s the better they keep sounding.

I also like the idea of the Radeon HD 5850 card, but will I see a very big improvement over a GTX460? The MSI Cyclone 1gb 460 is on Newegg for 229.99, while the cheapest 5850 cards on there are at least 280 (and I haven't even researched the best make on those yet).

Basically I want a mid range card $200-$300 that will give me a good price vs. performance ratio. Being at least $50 cheaper than the 5850 option, the GTX 460 seemed to make sense.

I guess I got sucked into the fan site reviews for the ECS GTX 460, they made it seem like god's gift to man lol. Any other suggestions / deals you guys know of would still be appreciated!  Btw, I still can't find anywhere selling that ECS GTX 460 Black Series card hah.

 

Jimmydean

Just noticed Newegg has a really good deal on the GTX 470 atm, a Gigabyte version will come to $249.99 after $20.00 MIR  (Though I don't think I've ever had a MIR actually come back lol).

That seems like a pretty good price for a GTX 470 considering the 460s are near that price.

Quizzical

ATI is now AMD's graphics division, in case that affects which side you prefer at all.

If you prefer AMD to Nvidia, then there's no real reason to look at Nvidia cards in this generation, as AMD won the generation pretty decisively.  Nvidia fanboys got a little carried away with their excitement about the GTX 460, as it was the first card Nvidia had launched that was a decent value for the money at launch in well over a year.  To be fair, the GDDR5 version of the GeForce GT 240 wasn't a bad card either; Nvidia just priced it too high at launch, which they've since fixed.  Both types of GeForce GTX 460 come between the Radeon HD 5770 and the Radeon HD 5850 in both performance and price, so if you'd prefer AMD, it's your choice of whether to go up or down in performance and price tag.

As for a GeForce GTX 470, I wouldn't even look at the cards with the reference cooler unless either you're going to take off the cooler and replace it (e.g., for a liquid cooling setup) or else you have a case with a ton of airflow (including a good fan pointed right at the card), don't value reliability that highly, and don't mind a card that gets pretty noisy at load.  The reference cooler is simply inadequate for the card, so you'll have to help it out with a lot of case fans sending cool air its way to prevent it from getting dangerously hot.  If you find a list of a bunch of them, e.g., on New Egg, most of the coolers will look the same, except with different stickers on them (one fan near the end of a plastic case).  That's the reference cooler.  There are some with better coolers that can handle the card just fine, but those tend to cost around $350.

There's also the question of whether you need a new card right now.  AMD has said that they're going to refresh their entire lineup of video cards from top to bottom by the end of this year, and the first such "Southern Islands" cards are expected to launch in about two months.  AMD will likely slash prices on old cards soon as well; they haven't yet because they can't get enough 40 nm capacity from TSMC to build as many GPU chips as they want, and if they sell everything they can make as soon as they can make it, then why cut prices?

Jimmydean

Ok thanks for the reply. I really do like ATI more, but I guess I was looking too much into this. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

This has the Nvidia Fermi cards beating out the Radeon cards by a large margin in price vs performance. Especially the GTX 470 if I can grab one at $249.99. I agree I'd probably need an aftermarket cooler. Any suggestions?

Here is my PC atm, it has a really hard time with FFXIV currently.

CPU: AMD Athlon x2 64 6400+ 3.2ghz

GPU: 2 ATI Radeon HD 3870 512mb Sapphire Crossfired

Ram: 8 GB Gskill DDR2 PC 800 RAM

Mobo: DFI Lanparty 790FXB Socket AM2+

 

I built it quite a few years ago, so it may be time for a new system altogether. I was hoping I could OC my CPU though, and grab a decent video card to last me through police academy ( Then I can rebuild once the paychecks start rolling in lol ).

Quizzical

That benchmark favor's Nvidia's new "Fermi" architecture much more so than real games tend to.  The GeForce GTX 470 tends offer performance close to a Radeon HD 5850 than a 5870, but that benchmark has it beating the 5870 soundly.

I don't think that the GeForce GTX 460 would be as much of an improvement as you're hoping.  That's partially because you'd be processor bound in quite a few games.  It's also partially because it's not really that much faster than a pair of Radeon HD 3870s in CrossFire.  The GTX 460 will be faster, all right, but probably rarely twice as fast, except in games where CrossFire simply doesn't work.

Is there some reason why you really have to upgrade right now?  If not, then I'd wait until around next summer, and then replace the whole machine.  Wait until AMD's "Bulldozer" architecture is out, and either AMD or Nvidia have video cards out on a 28 nm HKMG process node.  Then have a look at the various parts and get what makes sense then.  I'm not saying to necessarily get a "Bulldozer" CPU, but its release may well drive down prices on other CPUs.  Intel will have the high end all to itself until then, which doesn't exactly fuel price wars.

Jimmydean

The main reason I want to upgrade atm is for FFXIV. It is a very demanding game on the system, and it is somehow pushing my 3870s up into the 80-90 degree C range, and showing very poor performance. Could possibly be my CPU bottlenecking the cards, but my CPU never goes to 100 percent usage on both cores during game. Not too sure what to do at this point.

Quizzical

Are you in the beta for FF14, or just running the official benchmark?  If the latter, then you might want to wait until you can try the real game and see how it performs.

If you're in the beta, then I'd try taking the cards out of CrossFire and just using one, and seeing if that cuts your frame rate in half.  If it makes little or no difference, then most likely either you're CPU bound (so a new video card wouldn't help) or else CrossFire isn't working yet, in which case you could have a huge performance boost coming on your existing hardware once Square-Enix fixes that.

If your system can't run FF14, then the game is going to have a hard time finding customers in the near future.  If you're insisting on maxing settings and that's why it doesn't perform well, then try turning down settings and see how you like it.

One option may be to go with what you have until "Southern Islands" comes out, and buy something then.  Another would be to wait a month or so for the release launch of the game, as there's a decent chance that Radeon HD 5850 and 5870 prices will come down by then.  (It probably costs less to build a Radeon HD 5870 than it costs to make a GeForce GTX 460 1 GB.)

If you do want to buy now, then the 5850 and 5870 are decent values for the money at their current prices.  See, for example, this 5850:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150477

this 5870 if you're willing to mess with rebates:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125326

or this 5870 if you're not willing to mess with rebates:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161329

That last one includes a free game, too.

Note that the 5850 tends to outperform the GTX 460 1 GB while using less power.  The 5870 tends to use more power, but offers much higher performance.

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You may be able to upgrade your processor, depending on whether DFI offers BIOS updates to handle a Phenom II and whether your motherboard is designed to deliver enough power.  A Phenom II gets about 20% better performance per core per clock cycle than an Athlon 64, and comes with up to four cores, too.

Jimmydean

I'm in the beta at the moment. The configuration for video settings is kind of weird atm, but if I turn everything off I can run it pretty OK, it just looks like junk lol. I'm leaning more and more towards waiting until Southern Islands, because I don't like the heat of the 470s (not to mention my cpu would just bottleneck it anyways). If I could get a good priced 5850 or 5870 that would be preferable for sure.

I'm not sure about bios updates for my board, I'll have to look into that. I know the board is rated as an AM2+, and can't take DDR3 memory so the newer processors are out of the question. I really do hate computers, seems ilke the day after you upgrade something bigger and better always comes out haha.