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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43n1m4 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
If you test a non-overclocked launch card, test it against a non-overclocked card from the competition.Seeing as the EVGA 460 GTX FTW isn't available in my country at all (the best I could find was a "superclocked version" at 763 Mhz, far from the 850 Mhz version you had), and the regular non-OC version almost flood our webshops, your review automatically seems biased.
Add to this your charts - look at them. Then remove the EVGA card. Does it look different? Doesn't the HD6850/6870 GPUs look like a much better deal? Yes, they do - and they are available in every country.
Another point against OC card is they differ from one company to another, some specifically go for the 'golden samples', some make minor overclocks at no extra cost to give the AIB a little edge, but making factory cards that actually cannibalizes on the next GPU in your lineup - like the 470 GTX - is rare, and usually not something Nvidia would approve. But at this release, suddenly we see a 460 GTX OC card that does exactly that.
You did cave in. Talking about it won't change that fact that the results on your chart, to the layman, presents Nvidia in an extraordinarily good light, and unfairly so.
Iger - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
I, personally, definitely think, that having more information to base a buying decision on is a nice thing; and the separation between stock and OC'ed 460 it was absolutely clear from the text of the article. I had absolutely no problem with this inclusion and think that it brought value.By the way, it would be easier for you to accumulate results by including a poll (I remember you were testing a few of these some time ago)
Touche - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Any poll on a subject like this would be worthless. It would be too easy to vote multiple times and skew the results, and in this case there would be many who would do that.It seems to me, though, that this discussion is worthless as it doesn't look like Anandtech will do anything different or even respond to all the points that were made here. It's business as usual for them. At least now I know to stop reading Anandtech's articles after architecture and features details pages, before benchmarks. Even the former was below Anandtech's standars (hmm, that one sounds funny now) in this article.
GinandTonic - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
1. A good review and a good editorial decision that only burnishes your rep in my eyes2. If you back away from it now under pressure from trolls/fanboyz/wannabe ignorant masses I will be seriously disappointed in you (and I'll bet that I am not the only one)
3. Keep your reviews as they are and keep your focus on providing as much relevant information as possible to your readers
Most of the negative comments I have read regarding this are clearly by people who either did not read the review, were not capable of understanding a simple, clearly written and informative article, bear manifest animus against Nvidia, or are unable to reason critically.
Your only mistake so far has been to take them at all seriously. I for one, am mortally tired of seeing people accepting public humiliation/forced mea culpas for speaking a truth some vocal pressure group finds offensive.
I feel compelled to address some of their more obvious errors of thought.
- The entirely artificial distinction between "stock" and"factory overclocked" cards. This is truly a distinction without a difference. All that should really matter is performance, reliability, price and warranty. Reference clocks represent a lowest common denominator for the chipset maker. If a card maker can improve on that (no matter how they accomplish it) and will guarantee the results, good for them and better for me.
- The idea that somehow the results of individually overclocking any one specific card are/would be relevant to this discussion. Individual samples may well vary in the amount of headroom they have. It's fun to read about individual feats and learn how they were acheived. But I do not find them relevant to my purchase decision, as they do not inform me what my results will be for the card I purchase. A statistically valid sampling would be impracticable for a website,and besides makers of factory overclocked cards essentially already provide that service.
- The idea that you must always follow guidelines you wrote to the letter, or forfeit all credibility. I am still astonished by that mental leap. Anyone who grows and learns will evolve their internal guidelines. Failure to do so is what creates stultified, inflexible, and ultimately dysfunctional bureaucracies.
- The idea that every occurrence is the result of an evil, greedy conspiracy. Paranoid much? How to break this to them.... This phenonomen is called "projection" and actually says more about them than it says about objective reality.
I could go on, but it is time for my - wait for it - Gin and Tonic. Keep up the good work Anand.
lakrids - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
No one has yet attempted to explain this following strange statistic:Articles spanning to 3 months ago :
460 reference card review
450 reference card review
6800 reference card review
Percentage of factory overclocked nshit cards: 100% (7 cards)
Percentage of factory overclocked ATI cards: 0%
Even if you personally don't distinct between "stock" and "factory overclocked", how else would you explain these statistics, other than simply realize that Anand is biased?
Guidelines are broken to make nvidia cards look good, but these same guidelines are restricting ATI cards...
It's astonishing that you cannot see this.
GinandTonic - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Mmmmm....... OK, here's the explanation.Are you familiar with the "arrow of time?"
How about that notorious Rumsfeld (never liked the guy, but he was right this one time) quote, "you don't go to war with the army you want, but the army you've got."
Check Newegg and tell me as of now, how many 6850/6870oc cards you find vs 460 oc cards. Based on that data (and bearing in mind nda restrictions on things not yet released), how many 6850/6870oc do you extrapolate are available for review? I know, I know Newegg is part of the conspiracy.
It is a matter of timing. I anticipate that in a few months there will be some (if the cards have any headroom), but there are none now.
So should Anandtech have withheld the info on an available competitor from us? For several months?
What if I needed a card now?
Note: The last two videocards I bought have been ATI, a 3850agp and a 5870 mobile. Both were the very best choice available to me at the time I bought them and have proven more than satisfactory.
Unlike the Gin and Tonic which was outstanding.
lakrids - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Look, the 6800 review isn't the first time this happen.I would suggest you to look back at the GTS 450 launch review.
FOUR factory overclocked nvidia cards.
NONE of the factory overclocked cards are from ATI.
Even back then, we had lots of factory overclocked 5770 cards, as well as factory overclocked 5750 cards.
What excuse are you going to use this time?
mapesdhs - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Thanks for that post!! (and your 2nd one) By far the best comments I've read so far.
Ian.
GTVic - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
To summarize your comment, most of the people who disagree with you are idiots.The people on both sides of this issue, and that includes you, seem to be highly inflexible and incapable of understanding the other person's point of view.
The point people are trying to make is that NVIDIA went out of their way to encourage the use of a particular card that features dramatic over-clocking. 25% on a factory video card is extremely rare and availability seems to bear that out. So they may be comparing a pie in the sky to real cards.
NVIDIA is counting on the fact that a lot of people skim the reviews and are not particular about filtering out biased sites so if they see that one card is beating all the others, that generates an impression. It may not sway you, but globally it makes a difference. And if AnandTech bows even a little to tactics like this, they are seen to be caving in to companies that profit on how well they can "spin" their wares rather than relying on actual product quality.
Touche - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
You failed to address most of the issues that were mentioned in the comments, and your third point is...funny...or sad.More tonic and less gin and it'll be ok.