Tech Reaction

Palit Microsystems, one of the more popular Graphics Cards manufacturer, launched their latest GTX460 in the Philippines last July 27 with the help of PCtrends, the official local distributor, Nvidia Singapore and Tipid PC, an established PC website in the Philippines. It was held at the Oasis Pavilion, New Manila Quezon City, to which around 250 PC enthusiasts got an exclusive invitation from the owner of TipidPC.

Early birds were greeted by a photo opportunity with girls from Nvidia. Some enjoyed playing COD while waiting for the actual event.

The Nvidia Regional Manager representative gave the audience an overview of what the GTX460 is all about and what the consumer can expect from the latest card from the “Fermi” family.

Then the Palit representative gave the audience the latest video card lineup. The consumer can select from the three available types of card. The Palit GTX460 768MB, clocked at 675Mhz; the Palit GTX460 Sonic 1024MB, clocked at 700 Mhz;  and the Palit GTX460 Sonic Platinum, clocked at 900 Mhz.

Part of the event was a benchmark demo from Philippine OC enthusiasts.  I was invited to carry out 3DMark Vantage benchmarks on two of the 3 card types: Palit GTX 460 and GTX 460 Sonic. I chose to do the benchmarks with the help of my TPC buddies Gil Gerald Navarro (gzhil) and Michelle Patelo (djsub).  Here’s the result of the Palit GTX460 Sonic in stock setting- 700Mhz core clock, 1400 shaider clock and 1800 Memory clock.

The first 3dM Vantage will be on stock settings while later in the event, 3dM vantage will  be used for overclocked GTX460.

A raffle was held to give away 3 pieces of GTX460 to 3 lucky guests! It was done on the 250 guest list using a random number generator. Several minor prizes were also given away includes solar chargers and Palit bags.

While everyone was enjoying dinner buffet, benchmarks were done. I brought the following to setup with the Patil cards: Intel Core  17-980X processor extreme edition, MSI Xpower motherboard, G-skill Perfect Storm 2133 Mhz Cl9 3 x 2GB. The processor will be cooled by Promilatechs Megashadow.  This setup will be on the GTX460 sonic edition.

Another MSI XPower motherboard was brought by gzhil and will be running on extreme cooling. My Koolance V2 will be used for dry ice cooling of the processor. This is to show the audience how extreme cooling is done and at the same time carrying out benchmarks on the Palit’s plain GTX 460 card.

During the benchmarking and overclocking session, the latest graphics card driver from Nvidia was used (258.56) since the WHQL certified drivers from Futuremark cannot detect the GTX460. MSI’s afterburner which was a pretty cool utility was also used to adjust the frequency and voltage of the board.
The result
The GTX 460 sonic which comes with the factory clock of 700Mhz was able to do 900Mhz  which is a 28.5% gain.  The first score was a full 3dM Vantage test which includes the CPU and GPU test. Because of limited time, the 2nd test was just the GPU test. It was able to finished all the GPU focused test at 900Mhz without any problem.

The Plain vanilla GTX460 was able to do 800Mhz vs the 675Mhz core clock. This is approximately equal to 18.5% gain on its stock clock.

These results are impressive! As of writing, this is the first documented OC to achieve  900 Mhz (from the net) on the Sonic card on air and on a limited time!

To close the huge successful event, the audience was treated to a dance number from Girlz Ink which I and the crowd really enjoyed!