What strikes us about our gameplay experiences today is the fact that with GTX 460 1GB SLI the 1GB of RAM on the GTX 460 may be holding it back at higher resolutions with AA. In all of our gameplay testing, we were surprised how well GTX 460 1GB SLI keeps up with the more expensive GeForce GTX 580. While it comes close, and at times exceeds it in framerate, it doesn’t deliver the same gameplay experience. The GeForce GTX 580 has more RAM on board, 1.5GB to be exact, and this seems to be giving it an advantage in some DX11 games when AA is enabled at high levels.

The game that showed the most fluctuation in performance with the GeForce GTX 460 1GB SLI was Civilization V. in this game, the GTX 580 maintained much smoother performance with 8X MSAA enabled. While GTX 460 1GB SLI had higher framerates, its framerates were all over the place. The change in framerate is noticed by gamers, and it can be quite annoying as you are playing the game and the framerate suddenly drops. The fact is, the GTX 580 not only maintained smoother performance in that game, but also allowed a higher playable setting by further turning on higher AA transparency options.

We experienced this fluctuation in framerate in many games, where the GTX 460 1GB was also pulling in lower minimum framerates. It seems if you want to crank up the AA settings very high, a single GeForce GTX 580 is going to give you more room to do that, and makes those settings useable. If you are running at lower settings however, with lesser amounts of AA, then the GTX 460 1GB SLI may produce higher framerates depending on the game. In F1 2010 we were running at a lower AA setting, 4X AA, but the GTX 580 was still faster, so it isn’t always the case that lower settings means the GTX 460 1GB will be faster.

We have found it to be very game dependent, with no clear pattern on which type of game will allow one video card to provide better performance than the other. The overall feeling we got is that with DX11 games that use more graphics card RAM, the GTX 460 1GB SLI will run into limitations at higher resolutions with AA. The GeForce GTX 580, overall, offers smooth and consistent gameplay at high resolutions with AA in DX11 games. And worth mentioning, with the GeForce GTX 580 you can install a second card to boost framerates well beyond GTX 460 1GB SLI.