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
Catalyst 10.4 refuses to work with 5830 cards. I'm not sure about 10.5's.. gotta check out the forums."""We've often thought that GPU performance in 3DMark's color fill rate test seems to be limited primarily by memory bandwidth. Notice how much faster the Radeon HD 4870 is than the Radeon HD 5770, for instance. The 5770 has a slightly higher theoretical peak fill rate, but the 4870 has nearly twice the memory bandwidth and proves markedly faster in this directed test.
The 5830, however, breaks that trend by delivering much a lower measured fill rate than the 5850, though their memory bandwidth on paper is identical. Heck, the 4870 outscores the 5830, too, even though it has slightly less theoretical peak fill rate and memory bandwidth. Something about the way AMD pruned back the Cypress GPU's render back-ends produces unexpectedly poor results in this test."""
http://techreport.com/articles.x/18521/5
Also, here's an excellent article with much more in-depth analysis on the issue: http://www.behardware.com...eview-radeon-hd-5830.h...
It's a very good read. The R800 architecture appears to have the ROP's linked to the memory controller (bus) in that cutting the ROP's in half really does affect the usage of the available bandwidth.
Simply put, the 5830 is even more of a castrated child of RV870 than the 465 is a castrated child of GF100.
Slayeristight - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - link
But that does not explain why the 5830 performs better on its original review vs this new review. On the HAWX tests show 50%+ slower speeds! I would have thought someone would have seen this problem before the review was posted.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - link
I'll rerun the 5830 later today. There's a pretty good chance I just wrote down the wrong numbers when compiling all of this date for the GTX 480 review, but ultimately you're right: there's something wrong with our HAWX data.Arbie - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - link
It isn't just the cost of the wattage to run the card. That doesn't add much when you consider what a small percentage of the time the thing is loaded. The dominant factor, in most moderate or hot climates, is the cost of air conditioning to keep the computer room comfortable. With central A/C, to cool off a single hot room you have to refrigerate the rest of the house. That is not only very expensive but also inconvenient and uncomfortable.==> After the inefficiencies of your PSU and A/C are taken onto account, each watt of idle power probably translates into 3-4 watts you have to pay for. That's just a guess, but it is clearly pointless to argue about small differences in GPU dissipation without considering these multipliers. That's where the hurt is. And that's one of the *many* reasons to favor ATI now.
Technically, the Nvidia Fermi line is junk, and nobody who doesn't need the few special features of the architecture should be conned into buying one. That means most gamers. Thanks for a good article that doesn't pull any punches on this, and in fact exposes the over-volting Nvidia is resorting to in order to move their leaky culls. The GTX 265 is clearly the worst of Fermi yet.
I apologize if this double posts but it seems to have been lost the first time.
Arbie - Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - link
Typo: I meant "GTX 465" at the end, not 265.
Golgatha - Thursday, June 3, 2010 - link
This is a high end card review. I would personally like to see the 5770 and 5750 results omitted and replaced with 465/470 SLI and 5850 Crossfire results so we can make an intelligent buying decision based on an apples to apples comparison with currently shipping drivers.fingerbob69 - Tuesday, June 8, 2010 - link
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).I'm sorry but that statement re275 v 4890 simply isn't true! If you examine the graphs for CrysisW. (in a "if it can render Crysis all other ingame rendering follows" moment) the 4890 matches or more often betters the 275 in every resolution bar one ...average frame rates@1900x1200 ...here the 275 manages a 0.3 better frame rate. That is a margin so small no human could perceive it, in game or anywhere else for that matter.
As for how the 4890 stacks up against the 465... the 465 never holds a lead greater than 4 frames on the average and 2.7 frames on the minimum, over the 4890. Considering the 465 is a year young new architecture and costs av £240 compared to the £160 the 4890 was, before it went eol, that is an appalling return for the extra £80 or so premium Nvidia expect you to pay.
The 465 is to Nvidia what the 5830 is to Ati, wrong on so many levels; the most important being performance v price.
RoninK - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - link
Did anyone else notice that the benchmark results on Bad Company 2 show the 480 performing worse than the 470 and even the 465 (especially at the 1680 resolution)? In fact the fps numbers for the 480 are the same as the ones used in the old article where they performed the test using the OLD FIRMWARE VERSION:http://www.anandtech.com/show/2977/nvidia-s-geforc...
The new firmware definitely made a big difference so you definitely should not compare the 480 running the old firmware to the 465 and 470 running the new firmware. Shame on you, Mr. Smith!
GamerDave20 - Saturday, July 3, 2010 - link
This card should of been called the GTS 460. At some point in crippling a video card, it ceases to be a GTX. I know we are pulling for less naming confusion, but now NVIDIA has hemmed themselves in on their naming scheme with there third card. Now there is no room for continuity between the 485, 475, and 465 which will inevitably come out in a year.Also, in response to the question about posting typos - don't do it. I know it's irritating and unprofessional but it is petty to point out. Email the writer direct to point these out. The forum part of the article is for pointing out and discussing technical features, comparisons and inconsistencies.
Strangely, this article makes the 5830, 4890, and 4870 look good. In the past, the 5770 seemed to be the value leader, but in these benchmarks the 5770 looks like a poor choice for this years' games.
Anyways, as a long-time Anandtech reader I it odd that this article caused me to finally register and post, but I really think NVIDIA naming is about to become an issue again and was curious if anyone else agrees. Keep up the good work - I look the GPU reviews/comparisons as well as the gaming notebook reviews!
Dave
GamerDave20 - Saturday, July 3, 2010 - link
Ah ha...that's funny to talk about type-o and then make a few myself. Sorry, but posting from an iPhone works but is kinda cumbersome!Also, isn't it odd what a dog the 8800 GT looks like now - 3 years after being such a darling of the review sites!
Bring on another review of a powerful GPU!
Dave (GamerDave20)