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
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
620 Comments
View All Comments
RagingDragon - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
I would've been upset if you included the overclocked card whithout also including a factory clocked model. As it is, I think you made the right call in including both a stock clocked 460 and the (or at least close) fastest available factory overclocked 460, and making it very clear that the overclocked model was overclocked. In doing so you clearly demonstrated the range of performance 460 options currently available.lakrids - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
The only problem is that the 450 review had no factory overclocked 5770 or 5750 cards from ATI. Only factory overclocked gts 450 nvidia cards. That doesn't upset you?Anand is biased toward Nvidia.
geniekid - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
You had the numbers for the stock 460. The OCed 460 was labeled as such on graphs and there was sufficient disclosure about its inclusion. I think anyone who read the entire article and even those that read it in the future will have an accurate picture of the graphics card market right now.Even if I did think it was misleading, based on the history of the site and just having open articles such as these, I'm inclined to believe that any sort of misleading article coming from AnandTech would be a result of oversight, rather than a result of any bias/greed. My trust with AT remains intact.
lakrids - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
This article would have never seen the light of the day if not for the uproar in the HD 6800 review.Anand got away with his bias in the 460 review 3 months ago. Only factory overclocked nvidia cards, none for ATI.
He continued being biased in the 450 review. Again only factory overclocked nvidia cards, none for ATI.
No admission came from him until now. Isn't that rather suspicious?
Teizo - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
How many overclocked boards from those manufacturers did he have in his hands that they sent him to test to put in the review? Is he supposed to go out and buy them himself or something?lakrids - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
That's what some reviewers do actually. Anand shouldn't be above that.The 1st time it happened was the 460 launch. We could forgive that.
But he made two articles for the 460, there was no hurry for the 2nd, why didn't the second 460 article contain factory overclocked ATI cards?
Then the 450 launch. He has by now come to accept nvidia's pressure. There was no excuse for him to not call ATI's vendors to have them send some factory overclocked cards. He should have been prepared, this is his new policy after all.
And then this review happen, and he gets busted by too many people and has to confess.
No matter how you look at it, if he was fair, he would have had factory overclocked ATI cards for the 2nd 460 review, and for the 1st 450 review. But he didn't, Anandtech isn't fair towards ATI.
lakrids - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Also, read the article by Anand Lal Shimpi on 7/11/2008 12:00:00 AMPosted in Smartphones
He personally went and bought some stuff to be reviewed. Sometimes it's really done this way.
Hot Rod - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
1. Anand, Plz give us a reason why you have not OC'ed the new AMD cards and include the data in the review.. dont say "Time Constraint". After all this im kinda surprised ur still not out with a new OC article for the 6850 & 6870..!2. How could u even recommend the GTX470 even with the new pricing, we all know its power consumption is way off..i know u stated "if performance is ur only concern" then go for it, but really Anand u'v gotta to be kidding
3. Anand tech is for all kinds of readers, but i believe most people who come here know Overclocking quite well and can do it safely..and if ur talking "money" tell me why i should pay even $10 more for some thing that i can do my self? (Dont say custom cooling and volt mod switch's)
Anand besides awesomely explaining the architecture, its time u overhaul the way u present ur test suite. it doesn't matter if ur one day late with ur review, people are gonna read it..! X-bit labs has one of the best test suite's in my opinion. We all believe ur the tech site for the people, and by the people to a great extent, but plz don't be too diplomatic in ur conclusions. Good luck :)
kmccaughey - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Dear Anand,I would suggest you watch the episode of South Park about their flag for further guidance on this matter.
Kevin
stm1185 - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Any review of a new graphics card should have a comparison to what consumers are currently purchasing. As such I think the inclusion of the GTX460 FTW was not only correct but necessary to provide the reader with a realistic view of the competition at that price price level.I think most of the complaining about this is happening to mask fanboy disappointment at the new cards not being the fastest at their price range.