In an interesting turn of events, EVGA is turning up the heat on its graphics competition by providing what it terms a 'Free Performance Boost' for select GeForce GTX 460 cards.

Specifically aimed at four models in the range - part numbers 768-P3-1360-XX and 01G-P3-1371-XX only - EVGA is providing BIOSes that increase the speed of the cards to 720MHz core. Memory, meanwhile, is left at the particular card's default clocks.

EVGA provides instructions on how to do this in this post, and you should have a faster GTX 460 by the end of it. What's more, for those that don't mind a bit of noise, the new BIOSes enable you to whack up the fan speed to 100 per cent - it is limited to 70 per cent for shipping GPUs.

The FPB provides a 6.7 per cent improvement when compared to the reference-clocked model, and any increase is appreciated when it's for free. We wonder how other partners will respond. Watch this space.