The last 12 months or so has been a fascinating time for those who watch the goings on at NVIDIA. They have gone from being late to market with their first DirectX 11 parts to launching a fast product, packed with potential but more than a few issues with heat and noise to market leaders with the DX11 refresh that was GTX 580. During that timeframe there were also a few hits and misses, for the latter it was probably the GTX 465... a short lived product which did perform well and supported all of the features of the GTX 470/480 but couldn't quite hit the price point it really needed to. The outstanding card of the product stack had to be the GTX 460 though. Released shortly after the 465 it brought a new level of performance to the mainstream market and thanks to some great card designs and cooling solutions NVIDIAs partners were able to push the new core to its limits, adding performance and value at the same time.