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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BoFox - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
10.5's offer almost zero performance improvements over 10.3a. Remember, the 10.3 drivers already brought the largest boost to 5xxx cards since they came out in October.Lapoki - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
With the latest series from ATI and nVidia one thing that didnt happen at all were the price wars. I loved watching that with the last gen and remember the day when i almost purchased a non-reference 4890 for just $179.Then came the 58XX and i thought i'd wait for nVidia's response which took quite a while but in the end i was sorely dissapointed. It looked like both teams had decided upon a performance point to target with a price
$250 - HD 5830
$280 - GTX465
$300 - HD 5850
$350 - GTX470
$400 - HD5870
$500 - GTX480
Is it just me or these alternating figures look fishy?
In the end, after delaying my purchase by quite a few months, i gave up and bought a 5850 for ~$280 and i have to say i really like its performance though wish i it was cheaper by $30-$40.
Also, this is my first ATI or for that matter non-nVidia card in 12 years.
BoFox - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
Yeah! Nvidia is deliberately avoiding price wars by avoiding the exact same price categories this time around.ATI's Southern Islands (HD 6770) is due in a couple months or less, since it already taped out. It will give GTX 480 a spanking, for sure.
ragejg - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
In my GTX 465 review for nVNews I took an average for a 1 minute run in a repeatable firefight in SP, and a 1 minute run in a full MP server. How did you guys do the BC2 benching? Could you explain what the waterfall benchmark entails, as well as the other one? I'd like to do a better job of benchmarking with this game.- john
-nVNews Staff/Mod
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
The text and pictures from our GTX 480 review should do a good enough job explaining our test methodology.http://www.anandtech.com/show/2977/nvidia-s-geforc...
Chalnoth - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
"Above the GTX 480 is of course the “full” GF100 with all of its functional units enabled, and which is still missing in action on both the consumer and HPC markets."What the hell are you smoking? As of the time of this post, all 10 GTX 480 products listed on newegg's website were ready for immediate shipping. Can you at least get your simplest facts straight?
silverblue - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
He said the "full" GT100, which offers 512 shader cores and not 480 as is the case with the 480. As such, I believe he's correct to make that statement.silverblue - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
They used Catalyst v10.5, and the 5830 was far closer to the 465. In most games, it was behind at the lower resolutions, then ahead as you went higher. Pretty easy to conclude that, unless you're playing MW2, the 465 was a waste of time unless you wanted PhysX, CUDA and 3D gaming/BluRay.I know you use a different gaming test suite but I'm surprised that the 5830 is relatively nowhere on your test. Are you using AA at any point?
BoFox - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
Perhaps you are the owner of a 5830, but just check dozens of review sites out there and see for yourself how a 5830 is rather lackluster even compared to the 4890 (which is already slower than GTX 275 and 465 in overall DX9/10 games).Slayeristight - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
I just lost a lot of respect for this website with the posting of these benchmarks. I looked at the 5830 number and they are very, very low. I compared the numbers from this review to the of the 5830 and they are a lot lower! How can this be with all the performance upgrades in the drivers that they have had. Also, while I am speaking of drivers, why not use the newest drivers for ATI? Why use AMD Catalyst 10.3a that is 2 driver releases old?If you messed up on the 5830 so bad how can I trust any of the other numbers that were put up for any of the other cards be it Nvidia or ATI?