NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 465: Cheaper Isn’t Always Better
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2010 3:26 AM ESTIn recent years it’s become customary to have 3-4 high-end cards on the market at the same time using the same GPU. For the GTX 200 series we had the GTX 260, GTX 275, and GTX 285, while for the Radeon HD 5000 series we have the 5830, 5850, and 5870. With the launch of NVIDIA’s GTX 400 series last month NVIDIA filled in the first 2 spots in their lineup with the GTX 480 and GTX 470, with obvious room to grow out the family in the future.
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. However there’s also room for a card below the $350 GTX 470, particularly with AMD being the sole inhabitant of the “bargain” high-end $300 point. NVIDIA is to the point in the Fermi rollout where they want a piece of that market, and they have a stash of further-binned so-so GF100 chips they want to fill it with. This brings us to today, and the launch of the GeForce GTX 465.
| GTX 480 | GTX 470 | GTX 465 | GTX 285 | |
| Stream Processors | 480 | 448 | 352 | 240 |
| Texture Address / Filtering | 60/60 | 56/56 | 44/44 | 80 / 80 |
| ROPs | 48 | 40 | 32 | 32 |
| Core Clock | 700MHz | 607MHz | 607MHz | 648MHz |
| Shader Clock | 1401MHz | 1215MHz | 1215MHz | 1476MHz |
| Memory Clock | 924MHz (3696MHz data rate) GDDR5 | 837MHz (3348MHz data rate) GDDR5 | 802MHz (3208MHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1242MHz (2484MHz data rate) GDDR3 |
| Memory Bus Width | 384-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit | 512-bit |
| Frame Buffer | 1.5GB | 1.25GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| Transistor Count | 3B | 3B | 3B | 1.4B |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 55nm |
| Price Point | $499 | $349 | $279 | N/A |
In a nutshell, if you take a GTX 470 and disable some additional functional units, additional memory controllers, and additional ROPs, while turning down the memory speed any further, you get the GTX 465. NVIDIA has shut off another 3 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs) from GF100, leaving the GTX 465 with 11 of them, giving it a total of 352 CUDA Cores/SPs, and 44 texture units. Meanwhile the ROPs have been cut down to 32 ROPs, and another memory controller disabled, making for a 256-bit memory bus attached to 1GB of 802MHz (3208MHz effective) GDDR5. All told the GTX 465 has around 78% of the texture/shader power of the GTX 470, 80% the ROP power, 76% of the memory bandwidth of the GTX 470, and 80% of the memory capacity. The loss of 256MB of RAM will be particularly interesting, as it means NVIDIA has surrendered its memory capacity advantage over AMD’s reference cards – both are even at 1GB.
With all of that in mind, compared to the GTX 470 the GTX 465 may be the more interesting card. While NVIDIA simply disabled some additional functional units compared to the GTX 480 to get the GTX 470, disabling even more functional units required a different strategy. Rather than disabling additional units from each of the GF100 GPU’s 4 Graphics Processing Clusters (GPCs), NVIDIA outright disabled one of the GPCs. This is the first time we’ve seen them disable a GPC on a GF100 card, making it an interesting first for Fermi. By disabling a GPC, not only does NVIDIA surrender CUDA cores, texture units, and polymorph engines, but they also surrender one of the 4 raster engines. As a result the GTX 465 takes a straight 25% hit in rasterization abilities compared to GTX 470, slightly greater than the loss for any other part of the GTX 465.
Top: GTX 465. Bottom: GTX 470
Along with similar clockspeeds as the GTX 470, the GTX 465 also shares the GTX 470’s design. It’s the same PCB and cooler – only the GPU has changed, with NVIDIA’s partners laying down one of NVIDIA’s GTX 465-binned GF100 GPUs.
With the disabling of additional functional units, the TDP has come down compared to the GTX 470. NVIDIA pegs the GTX 465 at 200W TDP, 15W below the GTX 470’s official TDP. We were not given the idle power consumption; however we’ll see quickly that it hasn’t improved when looking at our own power consumption numbers.
As we stated earlier, this is NVIDIA’s shot at the sub-$300 market, which is currently dominated by the Radeon HD 5850 at $289 and up, and the Radeon HD 5830 at $225 and up. Like the GTX 470, NVIDIA has built a product to slot in between AMD’s cards in terms of performance rather than taking AMD head-on, and the pricing reflects this. The MSRP of the GTX 465 is $279 accordingly, maintaining AMD and NVIDIA’s more-or-less neat division of the high-end market and putting the performance “sweet spot” for the GTX 465's performance at roughly 93% of the 5850.
Meanwhile this is the closest the two have come on pricing in quite some time, as a $279 MSRP puts the GTX 465 within $10 of the cheapest Radeon HD 5850. The pricing on the GTX 465 may change in the next month as NVIDIA’s North American partners are currently packing in Just Cause 2 with the card (a last-minute deal as we understand it), so there may be some flexibility on pricing once that promotion ends and NVIDIA’s partners no longer have to chip in for the game.
Finally, this is a hard launch, a very hard launch. In fact the cards started showing up on etailers 2 days before our NDA expired. After the farce that was the GTX 480/470 launch, it’s fantastic to see a proper hard launch. As far as we can tell you won’t have any problem finding a GTX 465 – thanks in large part to what looks to be quite the stockpile of GF100 GPUs that only meet GTX 465 specifications.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
71 Comments
View All Comments
BoFox - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
Catalyst 10.4 refuses to work with 5830 cards. I'm not sure about 10.5's.. gotta check out the forums."""We've often thought that GPU performance in 3DMark's color fill rate test seems to be limited primarily by memory bandwidth. Notice how much faster the Radeon HD 4870 is than the Radeon HD 5770, for instance. The 5770 has a slightly higher theoretical peak fill rate, but the 4870 has nearly twice the memory bandwidth and proves markedly faster in this directed test.
The 5830, however, breaks that trend by delivering much a lower measured fill rate than the 5850, though their memory bandwidth on paper is identical. Heck, the 4870 outscores the 5830, too, even though it has slightly less theoretical peak fill rate and memory bandwidth. Something about the way AMD pruned back the Cypress GPU's render back-ends produces unexpectedly poor results in this test."""
http://techreport.com/articles.x/18521/5
Also, here's an excellent article with much more in-depth analysis on the issue: http://www.behardware.com...eview-radeon-hd-5830.h...
It's a very good read. The R800 architecture appears to have the ROP's linked to the memory controller (bus) in that cutting the ROP's in half really does affect the usage of the available bandwidth.
Simply put, the 5830 is even more of a castrated child of RV870 than the 465 is a castrated child of GF100.
Slayeristight - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - link
But that does not explain why the 5830 performs better on its original review vs this new review. On the HAWX tests show 50%+ slower speeds! I would have thought someone would have seen this problem before the review was posted.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - link
I'll rerun the 5830 later today. There's a pretty good chance I just wrote down the wrong numbers when compiling all of this date for the GTX 480 review, but ultimately you're right: there's something wrong with our HAWX data.Arbie - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - link
It isn't just the cost of the wattage to run the card. That doesn't add much when you consider what a small percentage of the time the thing is loaded. The dominant factor, in most moderate or hot climates, is the cost of air conditioning to keep the computer room comfortable. With central A/C, to cool off a single hot room you have to refrigerate the rest of the house. That is not only very expensive but also inconvenient and uncomfortable.==> After the inefficiencies of your PSU and A/C are taken onto account, each watt of idle power probably translates into 3-4 watts you have to pay for. That's just a guess, but it is clearly pointless to argue about small differences in GPU dissipation without considering these multipliers. That's where the hurt is. And that's one of the *many* reasons to favor ATI now.
Technically, the Nvidia Fermi line is junk, and nobody who doesn't need the few special features of the architecture should be conned into buying one. That means most gamers. Thanks for a good article that doesn't pull any punches on this, and in fact exposes the over-volting Nvidia is resorting to in order to move their leaky culls. The GTX 265 is clearly the worst of Fermi yet.
I apologize if this double posts but it seems to have been lost the first time.
Arbie - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - link
Typo: I meant "GTX 465" at the end, not 265.
Golgatha - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
This is a high end card review. I would personally like to see the 5770 and 5750 results omitted and replaced with 465/470 SLI and 5850 Crossfire results so we can make an intelligent buying decision based on an apples to apples comparison with currently shipping drivers.fingerbob69 - Tuesday, June 8, 2010 - link
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).I'm sorry but that statement re275 v 4890 simply isn't true! If you examine the graphs for CrysisW. (in a "if it can render Crysis all other ingame rendering follows" moment) the 4890 matches or more often betters the 275 in every resolution bar one ...average frame rates@1900x1200 ...here the 275 manages a 0.3 better frame rate. That is a margin so small no human could perceive it, in game or anywhere else for that matter.
As for how the 4890 stacks up against the 465... the 465 never holds a lead greater than 4 frames on the average and 2.7 frames on the minimum, over the 4890. Considering the 465 is a year young new architecture and costs av £240 compared to the £160 the 4890 was, before it went eol, that is an appalling return for the extra £80 or so premium Nvidia expect you to pay.
The 465 is to Nvidia what the 5830 is to Ati, wrong on so many levels; the most important being performance v price.
RoninK - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - link
Did anyone else notice that the benchmark results on Bad Company 2 show the 480 performing worse than the 470 and even the 465 (especially at the 1680 resolution)? In fact the fps numbers for the 480 are the same as the ones used in the old article where they performed the test using the OLD FIRMWARE VERSION:http://www.anandtech.com/show/2977/nvidia-s-geforc...
The new firmware definitely made a big difference so you definitely should not compare the 480 running the old firmware to the 465 and 470 running the new firmware. Shame on you, Mr. Smith!
GamerDave20 - Saturday, July 3, 2010 - link
This card should of been called the GTS 460. At some point in crippling a video card, it ceases to be a GTX. I know we are pulling for less naming confusion, but now NVIDIA has hemmed themselves in on their naming scheme with there third card. Now there is no room for continuity between the 485, 475, and 465 which will inevitably come out in a year.Also, in response to the question about posting typos - don't do it. I know it's irritating and unprofessional but it is petty to point out. Email the writer direct to point these out. The forum part of the article is for pointing out and discussing technical features, comparisons and inconsistencies.
Strangely, this article makes the 5830, 4890, and 4870 look good. In the past, the 5770 seemed to be the value leader, but in these benchmarks the 5770 looks like a poor choice for this years' games.
Anyways, as a long-time Anandtech reader I it odd that this article caused me to finally register and post, but I really think NVIDIA naming is about to become an issue again and was curious if anyone else agrees. Keep up the good work - I look the GPU reviews/comparisons as well as the gaming notebook reviews!
Dave
GamerDave20 - Saturday, July 3, 2010 - link
Ah ha...that's funny to talk about type-o and then make a few myself. Sorry, but posting from an iPhone works but is kinda cumbersome!Also, isn't it odd what a dog the 8800 GT looks like now - 3 years after being such a darling of the review sites!
Bring on another review of a powerful GPU!
Dave (GamerDave20)