Your Feedback On The Use of EVGA's GeForce GTX 460 FTW in Last Night's Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 22, 2010 5:55 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Last night we published our Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 review. In it we made a decision to include a factory overclocked GeForce GTX 460 from EVGA (the EVGA GeForce GTX 460 FTW). For those who aren't aware, NVIDIA has allowed a number of its partners to ship GTX 460s at higher than stock clock speeds. A practice that has been done in the past. The cards are available in retail with full warranties.
A number of you responded in the comments to the article very upset that we included the EVGA card. Even going as far to accuse us of caving to NVIDIA's pressure and demands. Ryan and I both felt it was necessary to address this front and center rather than keep the discussion in the comments.
Let's start with the obvious. NVIDIA is more aggressive than AMD with trying to get review sites to use certain games and even make certain GPU comparisons. When NVIDIA pushes, we push back. You don't ever see that here on AnandTech simply because I don't believe this is the place for it. Both sides (correction, all companies) have done nasty things in the past but you come here to read about products, not behind the scenes politics so we've mostly left it out of our reviews.
NVIDIA called asking for us to include overclocked GTX 460s in the 6800 series article. I responded by saying that our first priority is to get the standard clocked cards tested and that if NVIDIA wanted to change the specs of the GTX 460 and guarantee no lower clocked versions would be sold, we would gladly only test the factory overclocked parts. NVIDIA of course didn't change the 460's clocks and we ended the conversation at that. We gave NVIDIA no impression that we would include the card despite their insistence. The decision to include the EVGA GeForce GTX 460 FTW was made on our own entirely.
We don't like including factory overclocked parts in our reviews for reasons we've already mentioned in the article itself. This wasn't a one off made for the purpose of reviewing only, it's available from online vendors and a valid option from a price comparison. Furthermore it presented us with an interesting circumstance where the overclock was large enough to make a significant impact - the 26% overclock pushed the card to a performance level that by all rights could have (and should have) been a new product entirely.
From my standpoint, having more information never hurts. This simply provides another data point for you to use. We put hefty disclaimers in the article when talking about the EVGA card, but I don't see not including a publicly available product in a review as a bad thing. It's not something we typically do, but in this case the race was close enough that we wanted to cover all of our bases. At the end of the day I believe our conclusion did just that:
At $179 buy the 6850. At $239 buy the 6870 for best performance/power. If you want the best overall performance, buy the GTX 470. However, as long as they are available the EVGA GeForce GTX 460 FTW is a good alternative. You get the same warranty you would on a standard GTX 460, but you do sacrifice power consumption for the performance advantage over the 6870.
We were honestly afraid that if we didn't include at least a representative of the factory overclocked GTX 460s that we would get accused of being too favorable to AMD. As always, this is your site - you ultimately end up deciding how we do things around here. So I'm asking all of you to chime in with your thoughts - how would you like to handle these types of situations in the future? Do we never make exceptions even in the case of a great number of factory overclocked cards being available on the market? Do we keep the overclocked comparison to a single page in the review? Or does it not matter?
And if you're worried about this being tied to financial gain: I'll point out that we are one of the only sites to have a clear separation of advertising and editorial (AnandTech, Inc. doesn't employ a single ad sales person, and our 3rd party sales team has no stake in AT and vice versa). The one guarantee that I offer all of our writers here at AnandTech is you never have to worry about where your paycheck is coming from, just make sure you do the best job possible and that your conclusions are defensible.
If we've disappointed you in our decision to include the EVGA FTW in last night's review, I sincerely apologize. At the end of the day we have to maintain your trust and keep you all happy, no one else. We believed it was the right thing to do but if the overwhelming majority of you feel otherwise, please let us know. You have the ability to shape how we do things in the future so please let us know.
Whether you thought it was an issue or not, we'd love to hear from you. I do appreciate you reading the site and I want to make it better for you in the future.
GP
Take care,
Anand
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lesherm - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
As a longtime reader of AT and purchaser of AMD and Nvidia products, I like knowing who offers the best product in a given price range. I think it made sense to include a representative for OCed 460s since they really change the landscape for the consumer. Even reference cards have problems with availability sometimes, and I feel like AT does a good job on calling companies out on availability issues. There was a pretty large caveat slapped on the 460 FTW's inclusion in this review, and I am better informed for it.Keep up the good work.
Donnie Darko - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
The greatest problem with using an overclocked card is that it produces an unrealistic expectation of what an end user is going to expect. Factory overclocked cards are all binned chips, but a typical consumer will see that card as 'just another 460' that had the frequency turned up. This leads to the problem that people will purchase the cheaper version and expect it to perform like the binned chip by just turning up some sliders.A reference design and a factory overclocked card are really two separate products that unfortunately share the same name. If the chip is capable of performing that much better, and there are enough of them to bin, then the parent corporation can produce a new SKU and release it.
Using an OC card in a review is dishonest for the simple reason that it builds false expectations since the end user cannot bin their own chips, and therefore should not be done.
OCing should stand alone in a separate article as it represents a different focus and value proposition. People that are savvy enough to differentiate between a factory OC part vs the DIY route don't need to see the OC version in the review to know of its potential and those who aren't need to be protected from the risk.
Leave OCed parts out of reviews, but not out of the whole analysis process.
spigzone - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
" People that are savvy enough to differentiate between a factory OC part vs the DIY route don't need to see the OC version in the review to know of its potential and those who aren't need to be protected from the risk"Nicely differentiated and stated.
rocky12345 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
As stated in the title there is no reason to include a overclocked card like the EVGA one. Some else pointed out well if AMD didn't have a OC card then tough for them. Well the same thing could be said for Nvidia if they did not have a refreshed product to compete with the new AMD cards in the same price point then tough cookies for them grin & bear it. For Nvidia to actually call rview sites & ask them to include a overclocked card in a newly released product like the 6800 cards only shows that Nvidia wasunprepared & had to act in desparation to make themselves look good. Just because you can buy a OC'd card online or in a store does not make it a full channel product it is what it is a overclocked card plain & simple it is running out of spec from what it was released as. I dont care if Nvidia or EVGA say oh well you got full warranty the cards are out of spec & they will fail & most likely just after the warranty runs out. Like I said if Nvidia wanted to have something to put up against AMD in these reviews then maybe they should have released a higher clocked 460 & called it a 460+ or 461.
As always good review from Anandtech when I am about to buy new gear I use this site as my starting point. You guys seem to be on the level & makes people like me trust your reviews.
Thanx
Sind - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I don't believe they have any place in a review like was presented last night. Adding an overclocked version of a card versus a stock clocked just released product and then not even exploring overclocking that newly released card in the article is misleading. I have no problems comparing stock to stock or oc to oc in seperate articles. I'm disappointed however that you went against your own policy and included it anyhow, regardless of this request for feedback, you still went and did this in the review.destrobig - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I didn't think much of it when reading the 6800 article. It seemed like you were pretty upfront about the OC 460 and what it meant. As a test, I looked through the 460s on Newegg and most of them are overclocked (pretty significant overclocks too). To compare some AMD cards, I looked at 5770 and 5870 cards and most are not overclocked (those that were were rather mild overclocks). If you were in the market for a 460 you'd have to out of your way to get a non-overclocked card so including the OC 460 in the review was a logical choice. If you had include an OCed card that was in general not OCed then it would have been a bad comparison.soydios - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
In my humble opinion, the original article more than sufficiently highlighted the fact that it was using an overclocked but warrantied card and elaborated on both your reasons and your concerns in doing so. Ultimately, if I am using the article to guide my purchases, then I want a comparison and explanation of the widely available products on the market, and the original article gives just that. If you encounter a similar situation again in the future then I encourage you to do exactly the same thing that you did there, including continuing to give heed to and notice of your reservations.shaggart5446 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
my believe is that it shouldnt have been there at should wait until amd partners get theirs oc out and then do a different comparison on all oc cards and see the result there wasnt any oc amd cards so how r u comparing oc against stock just doesnt make any sence i think nvidia has to do something with this review because the 6800 was just too good for the 460 and nvidia doesnt have anything to match so they went to evga and cook up something for launch day why wasnt this card available from 2weeks ago why is it just showing up nowStuka87 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I commend the standpoint of you and the other contributors of this site for not giving in to the companies that want to you review specific products, or shows them in a better light.On that note, the fact that there are so many variables in the over clocked cards, I do not agree with them being used to compare to factory cards. I can see why nVidia would want reviewers to do this, but I feel its almost false advertising. As people see "GT460" and think "Oh, that beat this and this card". When in fact, a factory GT460 doesn't. Only the over clocked model does. And even then, only some over clocked cards may in fact perform better. As there is know standards for the various card companies to follow.
As for keeping the politics out of the reviews, I agree with that. I have worked directly with some companies on reviews and testing, and the behind the scenes stuff should stay behind the scenes. People who visit this site regularly should know that you don't bend to every whim from the various companies you deal with.
I enjoy this site so much partly because I know the reviews are typically the least bias'ed reviews around.
Keep up the great work Anand and Crew.
Twoboxer - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
The review gave data and a conlsuion. The conclusion was clear from the data. What's the beef? I think the only other thing you could/should have done would have been to attempt to OC the 6850 to the same degree.Every 460 on the market has a different clock rate lol; they seem easy to OC. Maybe the 6850/70 will too. OTOH, maybe those two cards don't OC as well as a 460. Shouldn't people know that?
Besides technical competence, the most important thing is for this site to maintain the perception of honesty, and have that perception match reality. You know that. I think your rapid reaction and explanation is once again testimony to both.
Now, I'm sure you'll give us more data - push the 6850 and 460 from stock and lets see how they fare/compare.