NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 465: Cheaper Isn’t Always Better
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2010 3:26 AM ESTMass Effect 2
Electronic Arts’ recently released space-faring RPG is our new Unreal Engine 3 game. While it doesn’t have a built in benchmark, it does let us force anti-aliasing through driver control panels, giving us a better idea of UE3’s performance at higher quality settings. Since we can’t use a recording/benchmark in ME2, we use FRAPS to record a short run.
Mass Effect 2 was not a game the GTX 470 did particularly well at in the first place, so it should come as little surprise that the GTX 465 fares worse. The performance gap between it and the 5850 fluctuates some, but ultimately it’s around 20%. Interestingly enough, the gap between the GTX 465 and the GTX 470 fluctuates even more, with the deficit peaking at 1680 and shrinking to its lowest point at 1920.
Meanwhile we once again see the GTX 285 pull ahead of the GTX 465 in a game, and this time it’s even worse. The GTX 465 starts behind by 25% at 1680, and closes the gap to just 15% at 2560. Unlike Left 4 Dead, Mass Effect 2 is not a particularly easy game to render, so this isn’t just a case of the GTX 465 trailing with lighter games. Perhaps it’s optimization issues or perhaps it’s those texture filtering units, but the GTX 465 is definitely lacking something compared to the GTX 285.
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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?