The GTX 460 launch is still a week away, but some eager retailers have chosen to ignore NDA’s, much like Fudzilla, hence we’re seeing the first relatively credible listings in the European market.

Nvidia has high hopes for its new GF104 core, as it is significantly cheaper to produce than the GF100 and it doesn’t require nearly as much power as Fermi cards. In fact, the GTX 460, in both 768MB and 1024MB iterations, should finally provide Nvidia with a competitive DirectX 11 product in the lucrative performance segment.

Our price search engine is currently listing Asustek’s ENGTX460/2DIS/768MD5, a reference board clocked at 675/900/1350MHz for the core, memory and shaders. It packs 336 shaders and 42 texture units. Power consumption is rated at 150W, which seems a world apart from the GTX 470 and 480.

Of course, the GTX 460 should not be compared to the GTX 470 or GTX 480, as it is supposed to take on AMD’s highly successful HD 5800-series cards.  Although we’ve seen some early benchmarks, it’s still a bit too early to say how the GTX 460 will measure up to AMD’s HD 5850 or HD 5830. In terms of pricing,  it’s somewhere in-between, as it’s currently listed just above €200, so performance should be close. Mind you, the GTX 460 768MB will probably sell in the €180 to €200 region once it becomes widely available. The 1024MB version should cost around €30 more, depending on the rest of the spec.

Be as it may, we’re glad to see Nvidia back in this very popular market segment, as it might put more pressure on AMD to reduce prices, which have remained steady since Cypress series launched in Q4 2009.

You can check out the listings here. The launch date is July 12 and at this point we don't expect major availability issues, so consumers will probably be able to pick up a GTX 460 as early as next week.