NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 465: Cheaper Isn’t Always Better
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2010 3:26 AM ESTBattlefield: Bad Company 2
The latest game in the Battlefield series - Bad Company 2 - is another one of our new DX11 games and has been a smash hit at retail. It’s also surprisingly hard on our GPUs, enough so that we can say we found something that’s more demanding than Crysis. As BC2 doesn’t have a built-in benchmark or recording mode, here we take a FRAPS run of the jeep chase in the first act, which as an on-rails portion of the game provides very consistent results and a spectacle of explosions, trees, and more.
NVIDIA’s 257.15 drivers did a lot to improve Bad Company 2 performance, a very necessary thing given the GTX 400 series’ original poor showing at the game. As a result the gap is shorter than it once was, but the GTX 465 still takes it on the chin here. With an increase in resolution comes an increase in the gap between the GTX 465 and the 5850, starting at 9% and culminating at 23%. If NVIDIA can work a bit more out of their drivers the GTX 465 may close the gap at 1680, but it’s still going to be pretty far behind at any higher resolutions. NVIDIA does have an advantage here when it comes to image quality (specifically, anti-aliasing), which will jump in to with our comprehensive review of the 257.15 drivers later this week.
As for the GTX 470 versus the GTX 465, the GTX 465 stays within 78% and 84% of its bigger sibling.
Meanwhile the Waterfall benchmark repeats something we saw on our initial GTX 480 review: NVIDIA does better than AMD when it comes to minimum framerates. We’ve been able to rule out a Video RAM advantage here thanks in part to the use of 1GB of VRAM on the GTX 465, so we have to look elsewhere to explain this. At this point we believe we may be shader bound, which would be to the GTX 465’s advantage.
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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.