Digital Alliance GTX 460 768MB: New Chip, Custom Cooling

Packaging and Contents

This is the package box in which the Digital Alliance GTX 460 768 MB is contained. Aside from the usual, DA style, green-and-orange theme of the box, we can also see the scratch-and-win promotional sticker on the left side.

What we found inside the box was adequate at best. DA did not enclose too many additional accessories in the package, but at least all the essentials are included. A molex-to-PCI Express (6-pin) power cable converter could come in handy in case you don’t have enough free power cables to feed this card.

Graphics Card

This is the graphics card itself, Digital Alliance’s GTX 460 768 MB. Digital Alliance added a few touches to distinguish their products from the rest of the competitors, like a red-colored PCB and a custom, non-reference HSF. It’s not that special actually, since every other GTX 460 card in the market today seems to have brought its own custom HSF solution, but at least DA’s fan is relatively silent. We didn’t notice too much noise, even when the graphics card was working at full load. Thanks to the GTX 460’s revamped design, idle temperature remained at a cool 33 ^oC, while maximum temperature stayed at around 73 ^oC.

On the back plate, can see a complete array of display output connectors: D-Sub, DVI, and HDMI.

Test Platform

Processor: Intel Core i7 930 @4 GHz (200×20)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
Graphics card:
Digital Alliance GTX 460 768 MB
ATI HD 5830
Memory: 3×1GB Kingston KHX16000D3T1K3/3GX
Harddisk: Western Digital Caviar Black 500 GB (32 MB Cache)
Power Supply: Enermax Revolution 85+ 1050 Watt
Heatsink: Gelid Tranquilo
Monitor: Philips 221E
Input: Genius (Keyboard and Mouse)
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit
Driver:
NVIDIA Forceware 258.96
ATI Catalyst 10.5