NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 465: Cheaper Isn’t Always Better
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2010 3:26 AM ESTSTALKER: Call of Pripyat
The 3rd game in the STALKER series continues to build on GSC Game World’s X-Ray Engine by adding DX11 support, tessellation, and more. This also makes it another one of the highly demanding games in our benchmark suite.
At lower resolutions, the GTX 465 does consistently worse than the 5850 – at both 1680 and 1920 it’s 12% behind. What’s more interesting is that at 2560 the GTX 465 gets absolutely demolished – that’s not a typo, it really did get 4.7fps. Why? We know that Stalker loves VRAM, which is why 2GB Radeon cards and NVIDIA’s other GTX 400 series cards do so well. But with only 1GB the GTX 465 pays the price. As for why the price is so severe, AMD and NVIDIA use different memory management strategies, so AMD is likely using a strategy that handles texture swapping under Stalker better than NVIDIA does. As a result the 5850 can generally cope, while the GTX 465 chokes. Ultimately this is not a game the GTX 465 will ever be playing at 2560.
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iantis - Monday, May 31, 2010 - link
Honestly, I feel like the more important measure is greenhouse gas emissions, anyway. Power is so cheap in America. I suppose if you play computer 20 hours per day it will hit your wallet, but the carbon emissions are what really matter imho.Zoomer - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - link
Think it's getting off topic now. Others may not agree.oldscotch - Monday, May 31, 2010 - link
I thought it'd be a good year or two before we'd start seeing gpu reviews with the phrase "only 1gb of ram".aegisofrime - Monday, May 31, 2010 - link
"NVIDIA pegs the GTX 470 at 200W TDP, 15W below the GTX 470’s official TDP"I believe the first 470 in the sentence should be 465 instead?
Exodite - Monday, May 31, 2010 - link
The GeForce GTX465 comes off as an even worse deal than the Radeon 5830, no mean feat to be sure.It'll be interesting to see how the GTX460 holds up under scrutiny once it arrives, being based on another chip should help a lot with the worse metrics of thee 400-series I hope. Meaning power, heat and noise that is.
gtr92 - Monday, May 31, 2010 - link
I think there's a typo on the L4D page."The GTX 465 ends up losing to the GTX 285 here, and even the GTX 475. Compared to the GTX 285 the GTX 465 is..."
The 2nd and 3rd sentence in the last paragraph, I think it's supposed to be GTX 275, not 475.
xxtypersxx - Monday, May 31, 2010 - link
I have had my GTX 280 for 2 years now and it is pretty surprising to see how close its die shrunk brother the GTX 285 is to the GTX 465 and Radeon 5850 in benchmarks. I will likely not upgrade for another year while I wait for meaningful advancements and that gives this card a usable lifespan rivaling the fabled 8800gtx!On another note, after reading this and my recent experience with a GT240 I have definitiely learned to look beyond SP count. For a while the number of shader processors (within a brand anyway) was a pretty dependable way to gauge relative performance. Now with Nvidia and ATI hacking away other critical components in their salvaged dies we see this really fall apart (GTX 285 vs GTX 465 and Radeon 5830 vs Radeon 4890).
JAG87 - Monday, May 31, 2010 - link
after I read the BC2 charts, I just moved on to a different review. if you don't have time to re-run the benchmarks then don't include skewed numbers in your charts, just for the sake of completion. we understand that you don't have a week to dedicate for every product review, but don't make these silly mistakes.fausto412 - Monday, May 31, 2010 - link
i'm sorry but nvidia must think we are idiots. trying to sell us these super power hungry, super hot, not 100% cards and not competing head on with AMD? what game of chicken shit is this?i'm waiting for them to get real and for prices to come down. at this pace ATI will have something faster than 5870 for me to buy that will run cooler and be positioned to make the gtx480 look like a freaking toy.
osideplayer - Monday, May 31, 2010 - link
I really don't know what's up with Nvidia right now, but I hope they don't go downhill. It seems with like they are really falling apart with intel and now they are loosing at their own game :( I have a Nvidia 260, an I7 920 and 6GB DDR3 ram they have worked together flawlessly. I'm glad you guys are still putting up benchmarks for them. I love this site.