Does a paltry 256MB of RAM matter? Apparently, it does, if you’re talking about Nvidia’s GF104-based GTX 460 cards.

In the October issue, we took a long look at Asus’s sweet GTX 460 768MB card. While that card impressed us for the most part, it did seem a little weak in a few areas, especially when you turned up antialiasing. This 1GB version isn’t just the same chip with another 256MB of GDDR5 memory slapped on.

The memory bus is actually wider than the 768MB card, at 256 bits wide instead of 192 bits wide. That extra bus width is managed by a fourth memory controller on board the chip (the 768MB card has only three memory controllers.) If you’re thinking that the 1GB version of the GeForce GTX 460 should have had its own model—perhaps GTX 463—you’re not alone. A lot of people have wondered why Nvidia would use the same nomenclature for these two different beasts. The chip itself is the same. The 1GB chip is based on TSMC’s 40nm process technology, and has the same 1.95-billion transistor count as the 768MB version.

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It’s been interesting watching the evolution of Nvidia’s Fermi graphics. We’ve seen a range of cards, all built using variations of the original chip—a 3 billion transistor monster that runs hot and consumes power like a vampire sucking blood from a hapless victim.

Now Nvidia is shipping a new Fermi, previously code-named GF104. Aimed at the hearts and minds of mainstream PC gamers, the GTX 460 is a new chip, ringing in at just under 2 billion transistors and substantially more power-efficient. Two versions of the chip are available, a low-end and a high-end version.

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Sharp-eyed Maximum PC readers who care about performance will no doubt notice that Gigabyte’s GV-N470UD-13I GTX 470 runs at stock reference speeds but achieves almost identical benchmark scores to last month’s kick-ass overclocked EVGA GTX 470. Blame it on new drivers versus old.

To be fair, the N470UD-13I isn’t exactly a stock card. While the card ships at reference clock speeds for core, shader, and memory, Gigabyte builds the board using its Ultra Durable manufacturing methods, which includes two-ounces-of-copper PCB technology, Japanese solid capacitors, high-end Samsung or Hynix GDDR5 memory, and low RDS(on) MOSFETs, which are designed to minimize switching resistance for faster capacitor charging and discharging. The PCB itself is blue, unlike many reference GTX 470 cards.

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Factory overclocked graphics cards seem too good to be true. You get increased performance plus the manufacturer’s warranty. XFX’s Radeon HD 5870 XXX was the first factory-OC’d version of that GPU we reviewed (May 2010); that card pushed core clocks to 875MHz and memory to 1,300MHz (5,200MHz effective.) Now MSI is jumping into the game, and unlike XFX, builds a custom cooler onto its 1GB R5870 Lightning.

If you have any doubts about the amount of customization MSI put into the R5870, one look at it tells you it’s not your typical reference card. The custom cooler uses two fans instead of one, and the heatsink is a massive chunk of metal that runs the length of the card and features numerous heat pipes. The PCB is also anything but stock, and extends about 3/4 of an inch taller than other Radeon HD 5870 cards. Stock Radeon HD 5870 cards run off an 8-pin and 6-pin power connector. The R5870 features support for two 8-pin connectors for “extreme overclocking.”

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