NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 465: Cheaper Isn’t Always Better
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2010 3:26 AM ESTConclusion
We opened this article stating that the “sweet spot” for NVIDIA was 93%. The GeForce GTX 465 is 93% of the price of the average Radeon HD 5850, so NVIDIA would want to deliver at least 93% of the performance. All told they come very close to this at 1920 and 1680, coming within 89% and 93% of a Radeon HD 5850 respectively, showcasing just how good of a job NVIDIA is doing positioning their cards as of late.
Unless you’re going to be gaming with a 30” LCD, NVIDIA has done an appropriate job of pricing the GTX 465 on a pure performance basis. For $280 you can have a GTX 465, or for 8% more you can have a card that performs 8% faster (the 5850). If that’s all you care about, stop here and figure out how much you wish to spend and you’ll be able to figure out which card you want.
However if we continue on, there’s an ugly truth to face: the GTX 465 delivers the GTX 470’s power and noise characteristics, but not the GTX 470’s performance. This is a critical difference because while we could make a case for the GTX 470 versus the 5850 based on the former’s superior performance, now we’re looking at a card that is slower than a 5850 but worse in every basic metric except price. The GTX 465 is much louder and much more power hungry than the Radeon 5850 all while being slower – and all you save is $20.
At this point it’s impossible to recommend the GeForce GTX 465 for the average buyer. The extra $20 for a Radeon HD 5850 will buy a card that is cooler, quieter, and appropriately faster. Unless you’re on an edge case and need to be in the NVIDIA ecosystem for a specific reason such as CUDA, 3D Vision, or DX10/11 transparency anti-aliasing (more on this later this week), a 5850 is going to be the better card. NVIDIA is going to have to drive the feature differences between the GeForce GTX 400 series and the Radeon HD 5000 series to sell the GTX 465, as performance won’t do it.
Meanwhile on a broader horizon, we noticed something interesting about the GTX 465: it’s really, really close to the GTX 285. In terms of gaming performance the difference is under 4%, while temperatures, power consumption, and even noise were all very close to NVIDIA’s last-generation king. Whether it was intentional or not, the GTX 465 feels like a GTX 285 with DirectX 11. At nearly 2 years old the GTX 285’s place in the world has been well established in most enthusiasts’ minds and the GTX 465 actually fits this mold nicely. This isn’t necessarily a good thing since we’ve moved on to 40nm and the Radeon HD 5000 series, but if you’ve ever wanted to know what a GTX 285 with DirectX 11 would be like, we would imagine it would be a lot like the GTX 465.
We'd like to once again thank Zotac for providing their GeForce GTX 465 for today's review
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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?