Recently while going through a few video cards I still had, I found one that was a gem back in the day and all the reviews and blog posts about it were phenominal! I read all these reviews all hyped about this video card and after the debacle of the ones before it it all seemed to be too good to be true.
Boy was I wrong.
The GeForce GTX 460 has by all intents and purposes held up the test of hardware time. Now while it can't play every game, it sure can still play a majority of them even on medium settings and some low. But otherwise, it's all still really playable. Not to mention this thing overclocks REALLY well.
I installed this thing wondering wether or not it would play any of my more recent pickups. And while these games are older, and slightly not as new as some you might think of - it does its job.
Crysis 1 & 2:
I have to say I am very impressed. And now while this video card was released shortly before these two games, I have to say that it plays them very well. And if you have one of them for example from EVGA or PNY it's probably been overclocked and given a few more tweaks here and there allowing you to play these games at Ultra or Very High settings.
Deus Ex Series:
I was VERY surprised at playing this game on the GTX 460 because I figured that it was a pretty graphics intense program and a few of the higher end video cards of today can have issues with these games. Frame rates were surprisingly playable.
Call of Duty: Black Ops:
This game can tax some video cards if set up right, and is a beautiful game none the less. I remember getting this game and being astounded at how crystal clear and almost HD camera like the people were. The GTX 460 will still handle this game as well, but I do have to say that it does have to be overclocked to over 700Mhz in order to get smooth and relatively good gameplay.
Modern Warfare 1,2 & 3
Again, I was very suprised to see the GTX 460 play these games fairly well once the graphics are tweaked a little bit and you mess with resolutions. Now I'm not going to say that the card will play every aspect of these games in full 1080p glory and be all nice and shiny. But I will say that you CAN play these and still have a decent experience.
Skyrim
Boy was I surprised. I had read a bunch of stuff in blogs, and reviews and seen videos where they pretty much said that you need to have the top of the line video card for this game cause you'd miss all the awesomeness. I was moderately unimpressed with how easy it was to get this game to play on the GTX 460 and have to sacrifice just a little bit. All I had to do is play with the card's clock settings, and adjust some things in-game and I was playing it and it actually didn't look half bad.
Battlefield Series:
These games proved in some cases to be a challenge. And while I'm seriously going to say not to expect alot of playability with all of the games in this series there are a few ways you can achieve playable results. Obviously BF3 you're going to have to sacrifice quite a bit, but you can get it so it is playable. But I'll tell you it is a bit of a try and see situation.
Note:
Now, I only have the reference card, but a friend of mine does have the PNY 1Gb version and my reference card is also a 1Gb. So in saying all this it does determine which version you have, and what manufacturer you're getting it from.
Temperatures:
In all of these games the video card never passed 70C. And I believe that has to do with two factors. The stock cooler for the reference card is the best design I've seen on most versions with the exception of the EVGA variants, MSI variants and the PNY variants.
The average idle temps hung around 28C-37C. In my humble opinion they're not all that bad.
Power Consumption:
At idle my rig draws 160W. Playing all of these games my rig never drew more than 460W at peak graphics display.
I used a Kil-a-wat meter from Wal-Mart and Radio Shack
Conclusion:
All in all, I am impressed at how well this video card performed under these situations and I'm sure there a quite a few more out there that this video card can play that are more recent.
So why don't most people buy these older and fairly priced video cards and get a decent gaming rig for near recent games?
Because the newer cards are whored out in front of everyone and they're basically told you have to have this, or "That video card is old, and this game won't play on that cause it's old" (actual quote from a "Geek Squad Professional")
If you actually look at the requirements for alot of these games, it's a good chance that a video card that is a few years old will fit in the minimum requirements. And to top it all off, it will probably play well when you turn off a few of those high resource stealing features, that you won't really notice unless you have a 1080P monitor anyway.
So before you clear out that old video card and buy a new one to rip a hole in your wallet, check it out and see if it at least will play some of the newer games with some settings turned down.
I gaurantee you'll be pleasantly suprised!