NVIDIA’s Best Buy GeForce GTX 460 1GB Video Card Overview

Inside The NVIDIA GTX460 Retail Box

Inside the retail packaging we find a black box that has Designed & Built By NVIDIA displayed on the top of it. NVIDIA has really been pushing the designed & built by NVIDIA marketing, as this is the seventh time we have seen it on the packaging!

Inside the inner box we find more packaging!! The box on the upper left contains the driver CD and documentation, while the one on the right contains the cables and other accessories.

Here is a better look at what you’ll see when you open the inside compartments.

Here we can see the Installation CD, Registration card and the quick start guide. NVIDIA went with a black theme here and even the CD protective sleeve is black!

The Installation CD has just the driver and a couple of manuals. We figured NVIDIA would load it up with some of their demos they spent a ton of money making, but none were included. We located Forceware 259.22 drivers on the disc, which is also strange as the latest WHQL drivers are 258.96 and for those that use beta drivers, 260.63 drivers are out now.

The bundle that NVIDIA includes with their own GeForce GTX 460 1GB video card has a mini-HDMI to HDMI six foot cable, a pair of 4-pin Molex to PCIe 6-pin video card power adapters and a DVI-to-VGA adapter. The inclusion of a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable is a nice touch.

Once you get done taking the accessories out of the box you can lift the tray up and you can finally see the GeForce GTX460 video card that you just spent $299 on.

How nice of NVIDIA to thank us for buying their video card! Strange that they included so many languages if the card is just being sold at Best Buy in the Unites States, though. Could NVIDIA be planning on a wider release in the future?

Inside the static bag we find the NVIDIA GeForce GTX460 1GB reference card that we have already reviewed on the day it launched back in July 2010. No sense in going any further since it’s the same thing we have already reviewed. We just thought it was interesting that NVIDIA has brought a retail card to market themselves and wanted to show you what the card was all about. What we find really interesting is that this puts NVIDIA in direct competition with their Add-In-Board (AIB) Partners. In fact, the NVIDIA 3-year warranty is better than some of their partners’ warranties as companies like Galaxy only offer 2-year warranties on NVIDIA video cards.

We heard rumors last year that NVIDIA wanted to reduce the numbers of companies selling their products and when BFG Technologies exited the market we figured those rumors might have been partly true. Now that NVIDIA is trying out selling their own branded cards it will be interesting to see what happens in the market. One thing is certain though: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX460 1GB card at Best Buy costs $299.99 plus tax (we paid $325.18 after taxes) and you can buy a non-reference design GeForce GTX 460 1GB from Newegg for $199.99 after rebate with no tax and the card has a lifetime warranty. Enthusiasts usually don’t buy graphics cards from Best Buy, but we all know consumers that don’t know how much less expensive things are online do.