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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Parhel - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
There are a lot of non-fanboys upset about this, myself included. I haven't owned an ATI card since the 9700 Pro. ATI fans have nothing to be upset about for this release. The 6850 at $180 beats the stock 460 1GB at $20 more, and will likely be a good OC'er. The 6870 at stock beats the GTX 460 more often than not, even OC'ed to 850Mhz.Today, it would be a tossup for me as to which card to purchase. If I only cared about performance at the sub $200 price range, I'd go with the 6850, and OC it. In the end, I'd probably go with the MSI model 460. It's under $200 shipped, and comes with a nice custom cooler, and it offers PhysX. Both companies have compelling products.
But the issue here is having standards for testing, and sticking by them. Anandtech has long had a policy NOT to test OC'ed cards for many reasons which they themselves spelled out in the article. In a month, when all the FTW edition cards have dried up off the market, and the average user is looking at paying $220 for a 460 that will only clock to 800Mhz, this article will still be looked to, and will be a disservice to the readers, especially the less tech-savvy ones. What NVidia did amounts to a transparent PR stunt, and Anandtech caved under their pressure.
mapesdhs - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
"The 6850 at $180 beats the stock 460 1GB at $20 more ..."
In terms of making a purchasing decision, that fact is completely
irrelevant. Nobody in their right mind would buy a stock-clock 460
with 675 GPU.
Using Scan UK as an example, their cheapest 1GB 460 _is_ an oc'd
card (700MHz Palit Sonic). Indeed, the 800MHz Palit Platinum is
cheaper than a couple of brands with stock 675 cores! (Zotac and PNY)
"... and the average user is looking at paying $220 for a 460 that will
only clock to 800Mhz..."
Wrong. Just buy a Platinum which is already at 800.
Simple fact is, the entire 460 landscape is now overwhelmingly an oc'd
product range. For this reason, including the FTW was absolutely the
right thing to do since showing how it performs truthfully represents
what is available to buy, even if the brand in question isn't specifically
the FTW (Scan has _nine_ different brands with core clocks of 800 or
higher, the Platinum merely being the best priced given its 800 clock).
If wanting FTW-level 460 performance is a problem because the FTW isn't
available from your favourite supplier, then just get a Platinum and oc
it with Afterburner, which will cost less anyway, and the Platinum is
easy to obtain; review sites typically reached 850 core without a voltage
increase, 890 to 900+ with a voltage increase.
IMO the earlier poster stm1185 was correct when he said much of the
moaning is down to people being peeved that the 6850/6870 aren't as
fast as they'd hoped, ie. slower than the 58xx equivalents (how quiet
they are about AMD's naming scheme con, yet happy to complain about the
FTW). But they shouldn't be worried, I'm sure the 6900 cards will give
solid competition against the 470/480.
To me the graphs make it very obvious that a 460 with 800+ core can
match or beat a 6870 at much lower cost, at least for the game(s) I
care about (Stalker); the FTW sits right inbetween the 6870 and the
470, so I've no doubt that two FTWs (or two Platinum's oc'd) would
perform really well, matching 6870 CF and yet costing significantly
less. Surely if Anand was being _deliberately_ biased (as many have
claimed), they would have asked for a 2nd FTW so they could include SLI
numbers - which, I've no doubt, would put the 6870 even more to shame. :D
I just don't get this mindset that one should not be able to see the big
picture, just because a new card from one vendor can't match an older
card that's available factory oc'd. Tough cookies, AMD should have made
a faster product then.
Ian.
lakrids - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
I'm afraid you are the one missing the larger picture here. Anand is who one who has become an nvidia fanboy if anything.Just count the articles over the past 3 months:
460 review
450 review
6800 review
Percentage of factory overclocked nvidia cards: 100%
Percentage of factory overclocked ATI cards: 0%
This is pretty damning evidence, I don't see how you can argue this.
And to bench the best of the best of the best 460 card is still misleading as heck, since it doesn't represent the majority of overclocked 460 by far.
He chose the maximum overclock to make nshit look as good as possible. Look at toms Hardware, they took the average overclocked 460 to represent most 460 cards.
Notice the difference in intentions. Anand argues he wants nvidia's market represented fully by including that one card, but that's not what he's doing, or he would have been on a more fair approach like Tom's hardware.
Couple that with the 100% and 0% statistics, Anand is the big fanboy here.
Parhel - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
"To me the graphs make it very obvious that a 460 with 800+ core canmatch or beat a 6870 at much lower cost, at least for the game(s) I
care about (Stalker)"
Maybe we read different reviews. I game at 2560x1600, and at that resolution, the 6870 beat the FTW edition in 6 out 9 tests, and likely would have beaten it in Starcraft as well but wasn't tested. That means it won 66% of the time against the 850Mhz card.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
I game at normal HD (very few will be using 2560x1600, sorry).
I found plenty of reviews where the FTW beat the 6870. Found
another one today - FTW faster in every case except one.
But like I say, your argument fails anyway since the 6870 is more
expensive.
The next poster must be blind, there are several others clocked
over 850, or as I said just oc a Platinum.
Looks to me like a lot of choose are choosing to believe a lie
(that Anand is biased) because you want to believe it's true.
I proved that if Anad was being deliberately biased, they could
have mentioned simply oc'ing the Palit which would give FTW
performance at MUCH lower cost than the 6870, with two of
them SLI making 6870 CF look insanely overpriced.
Ian.
Parhel - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
"The next poster must be blind, there are several others clocked over 850"No there aren't. If you're so sure, please provide a link. AFAIK the FTW edition is the highest clocked card on the market by quite a bit.
"or as I said just oc a Platinum"
Manually OC'ed cards aren't applicable to this review. It's done at your own risk, it will void the warranty, and is simply something most non-technical consumers shouldn't attempt. Not a fair comparison at all, especially now, when it's too soon to know how the 6000 series OCs.
lakrids - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
There are various degrees of bias. So Anand might not be at the ultimate nvidia fanboy level like you, but once again, if you observe his actions and methodology over these past few months, you will see:Percentage of factory overclocked nshit cards: 100%
Percentage of factory overclocked ATI cards: 0%
THAT, is bias. You have not attempted to argue this because you know you cannot.
As far as me being blind, the burden of proof is on you if you want to claim higher factory core overclock than 850mhz. There are none on newegg.
Also, Anand's cherry picked low voltage 460 chip already use more power than a standard HD5870 and 850mhz. Using any crappier chip will net you far worse power consumption at best, and at worst you won't even reach that clockspeed. Overall, I would conclude the 6870 is superior. Just my opinion of course.
vedye - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
RE: Questions on Nvidia's suggestions by Quizzical on Saturday, October 23, 2010How available to buy is it, again?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Out of stock at New Egg.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtool...
Out of stock at Tiger Direct.
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-External-PCI-Express-Gr...
Out of stock at Amazon--and $261 even if it were in stock.
http://www.avadirect.com/product_details_parts.asp...
Oh hey, I found one in "low stock"--for $291. Not such a competitor to the Radeon HD 6870 at that price, now is it?
It's probably mostly a fake card (i.e., extremely limited quantities). New Egg has 43 GTX 460s listed. Eight of them are clocked at 800-815 MHz. EVGA is the only company that has one clocked above 815 MHz, and they clock it at a whopping 850 MHz. If so many GPUs could clock that high, don't you think Zotac, Palit, Gigabyte, Galaxy, or MSI (all of which have a GTX 460 clocked at 800 MHz or higher) would have one clocked above 815 MHz?
And this is the day after Nvidia's big PR stunt. If availability is this short now on a card that launched three months ago, do you think it's going to improve in the future? Not at that price, it won't.
vedye - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Did nVidia called and requested Anandtech to test with OC'ed 460?Yes.
Did Anandtech did it?
Yes. And it happens to be the FTW -- the 26% OC'ed version.
What's in between?
Lots of explanations and points from every where. Kind of like the tribal council in Survivor. People give explanations why they want to vote off someone is for the tribe's good. But everyone knows it's because of the alliances.
BusyBeaverHP - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
"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. " - AnandBut this goes against your policy of benchmarking overclocked cards, especially against a reference card at launch. If you're going to include overclocked cards in the review, do it apple-to-apple with both sides OC'ed.
Another thing I don't understand: if you included NVidia overclocked parts in the past, why haven't you ever included overclocked AMD parts? GTS 450 vs OC'ed 5770 for example. Something is wrong here...
I'd like to believe that you were doing a fair and honest review of the 68XX series, but the 6850 was NOT included in many of the benchmarks... virtually cut off from its own review! What's even more appalling is that you don't have time to benchmark the 6850, yet had time to bench the GTX 460 FTW??? Example: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-687...
I think the inclusion of the 460 FTW was another case of AnandTech caving in to NVidia pressure, and the integrity of the review is once again compromised. I don't believe for a second that AnandTech's decision to include the 460 FTW was independent of the NVidia coercion.