Um, I just fired up my Palit GTX 460 Sonic (No plat), adjusted the clocks in Afterburner to the same frequencies as the platinum and the fan control on the bottom jumped from the initial 40% to 50% automatically and is now set to auto. I find it is still by far not as as loud as my old GTX 275 on a stock cooler. And I benched FarCry 2 on ultra settings @ 1920x1200 with 8x anti-aliasing, got a nice min fps of 49 and my temps never went over 65C. So I kind of don't know what you guys are talking about? *Edit: Checked the news, I checked my card, I dont seem to have a VRM heatsink. Will do some more testing and report back. *Edit: Played Far Cry 2 for a bit now at the previously mentioned settings and my card was set to 800/1600/2000 and fan set between 50%-80% with the temperatures never reaching above 70C. The card idles cooler than my BFG 8800 GT OC with a thermaltake duorb at 42C. All this data was gathered at 29C room temperature. Noise levels were adequate I found compared to stock coolers I have encountered on previous Nvidia cards. *Another edit: Card works like a charm, not hot at all. I played Bioshock 2 on maxed settings @ 1920x1200 with 4x antialiasing and 16x AF enabled in CP for an extended period of time. It did not even pass 66C with fan set in Afterburner to a max. 75%. My room temp was about 26C. Doesn't sound too noisy either. I can definitely recommend the card, people are overreacting. But it does suck that they sent in a non-final card for review, it puts gurus reputation on the line because people rely on the indicated data, so it needs to be accurate.
Response from Palit USA to a Newegg review about the missing heatsink. From this response seems like only the UK press received engineering samples. Since I first read Hilberts review of the geforce 6800 series in 2004, I always come here for product reviews. Now if iam reading the Palit USA response correctly I can not rely on reviews done outside the USA because the US press and foreign press may receive different sample kits.
hmmmm newegg review??? whos this guy giving hex props? yawn Pros: its cheaper and faster then most in its price range Cons: some guy hex on the some of the tech forum boards pointed out that the card does not have a heatsink on the vrm area,as shown in all reviews of the card. this can lead to much hotter temps and short life span of the card. thats sad for a company like palet(maybe others?) the void if removed sticher on the heatsink fan is also not inline with a modders card. Other Thoughts: higher cost over other brands,missing parts,limited warrenty....whats this world coming too for these reasons 3eggs only hexadude is the next Erin Brockovich
I've always gone to Guru3d for my video card reviews. Hilbert has always done a first class and polished job. I don't care if guru3d is based in the US or not. Palit is really shooting themselves in the foot. Why won't they just admit they messed up? They are only digging their hole deeper.
How can they admit they messed up when there is an "EDITOR'S CHOICE" review to prove the heatsink is not needed. MFG Response USA div. Seems like Someone is being very diffensive.
Its great to see a good review of their final product, and that it performs wonderfully. It nice seeing the product get it's due accolades. Palit looks like they have a very good performer on their hands. And your right; I'm being defensive. I don't like companies deceiving customers in any way. Be it price, performance, or components. When reviews are done on a version that is not of the final product, yet it is shown in the review to be that way; that is the final product. I do take issue with that. Why did some review sites get the final examples, yet others not? Maybe I expect too much for my hard earned money, but I like things when they are, "what you see is what you get".
I got the non-platinum version last Tuesday, and I was very disappointed with the fan noise, especially since the reviews give the impression that the platinum version is very quiet. Without using any extra utilities to control the fan speed the card ramps up to 80% very quickly, and at that speed the fan makes a loud whining noise that's all too noticable, even with headphones on. It's very distracting while gaming to hear the fan speed up, as it's not just an increase in volume, it's a constantly changing whining pitch which is more noticable. This is my main issue with the noise, as it's more annoying than the simple increase in airflow whooshing noise that my previous card made. However I used the MSI utilities to control the fan speed so it doesn't go above 60% and it's reasonably quiet, though the whine is still noticable. At idle (50%) it's very quiet, not really noticable above my cases other fans. I overclocked it to the platinum levels and at idle it runs at around 35 degrees. Under load while gaming it can get to around 72 degrees with games like Crysis, though during an extended Borderlands session last night it was lower - around 64 degrees. The Kombustor stress test gets it to around 78 degrees, which seems to be approximately in the right ball-park for an overclocked card. One thing I do think is a bit misleading is that the only reviews out there are for the platinum edition, but the only cards available in the UK are the standard 'overclocking' edition. At first glance they look identical, as they have an identical shroud and fan, but what isn't made clear on Palit's site is that the heat-sink for the standard version is inferior to the platinum edition and has no heat-pipes. I imagine a lot of buyers like me bought the 'overclocking' edition assuming it had the same cooling solution as the Platinum version. You have to look very closely at the renders (not screenshots) on the Palit website to see the difference. I have an RMA authorisation to return the card for refund, which I'm now not 100% sure to do now that I've got the noise down to a reasonable level. I'm perfectly happy with the card's performance, and it overclocks well, but it irks me to spend so much money on a card to find that it's much noiser than the reviews of its bigger brother would lead me to believe and that the differences in heat-sink weren't made clear, plus I have to use third-party utilities to get it to an acceptable noise level. This would all have been prevented if a review of the non-platinum retail card had been available. I see now that Palit have released a new bios to stop the fan ramping up to max for the platinum version. I wonder if this is going to become available for the standard card?
hey welcome ravenger since you have an rma# already,why dont you try the new platinum bios? i think the only differance between the 2 cards is the bios. BTW the new bios did not do anything for performance or cold bug issuEs
Yeah...people doing reviews on Newegg tend to quote forums from every review site. Seen quotes from here, Tomshardware, NGO, [H]...in most cases, the review was written by someone who has never used the product they're writing a review for. I did the first review on Newegg for the MSI GTX460 Cyclone 1GD5 though...no quotes from you guys though =D
Which bios did you use?, I updated with the one I got via email and the vid is still @ 0.9870 but with a better fan profile.
This: http://files.guru3d.info/guru3d/tweak/VGA_BIOS_Upgrade_0716.zip BIOS-P/N@N6729 <= __________________________________________ http://files.guru3d.info/guru3d/tweak/gtx460_SonicPT_bios.rar is BIOS-P/N@N6727 Not the same. BIOS-P/N@N6729 - Gainward BIOS ? BIOS-P/N@N6727 - Palit BIOS ? Oficial VGA BIOS for GTX460 Palit/Gainward: http://www.gainward.com/main/product/vga/pro/p00395/p00395_bios_19744c4045931187e.zip http://www.palit.biz/download/gtx460_bios_update0716.zip
Ahhh right I didn't release you was using a Gainward card/bios, that's why it's diffrent then, I'm using BIOS-P/N@N6727 on my Sonic Plat which is 0.9870v which seems quite good.
My intention was to say that "Palit USA" was being defensive, I feel the same as you on this and thought that the Palit USA response was a cop out. An "EDITOR'S CHOICE" review is a poor excuse for not informing the affected press they had received engineering samples. Palit USA has to realize reviews done here will effect their USA sales and act accordingly. I also noticed that the "EDITOR'S CHOICE" review of their final product did not test for noise level which Hilbert always test in his reviews.
I've been gaming with my Palit 460 over this weekend and it seems much better with my new fan profile, so much so that I'm thinking of keeping it rather than having the hassle of returning it. I think Palit dropped the ball by sending it out with such an agressive fan speed profile, because first impressions count, and the first impression is it's very noisy. Palit need to get a new bios out for the non-platinum cards ASAP, as you shouldn't have to fiddle with fan profiles out of the box to get a decent compromise between cooling and noise.
I still think it is a great card, but they did indeed screw up by sending out press samples with a different build and setup than the retail samples. I'm kind of used to making minor adjustments and tweaks in MSI Afterburner or Rivatuner, ever since owning my first Nvidia card on a stock cooler, a BFG 8800GT OC. By default, temps and fan speeds/noise were always issues on stock coolers, even on my GTX 275. So in comparison, I find the Palit card performing very well. I mean you can overclock this baby to the platinum edition levels and it still does not run very hot, at least in my case. So far never above 71C in a 29C room temperature during extended periods of Far Cry 2. (look at my previous comment for more details on that.):3eyes: Just my 2 cents, but I would keep the card :infinity:
