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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spenfunk - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Not only was it the right decision to include a competitive retail product in the review, but I would say it is actually required to provide a comprehensive review.As you mention, to not include it would have been unfair also.
For the record I am an ATI fan. (If there is still such as thing!)
Thanks Anandtech for the excellent and unbiased articles. Your integrity is appreciated, and I for one consider your reviews the "gold standard".
Now where are those Intel G3 specs?!
Will Robinson - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I doubt any AMD fan here was too happy about seeing the OC card in the comparison.If the standard card is used as well with the OC card clearly labeled then I guess its tolerable but not preferred.
In the interest of fair play I suggest the next NVDA launch (GTX580?) is put up against an overclocked version of Cayman XT which will have preceded it to market.
Naturally NVDA fans will understand,even if it does make their new product look weaker than it would otherwise.
El_Capitan - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Fans? I never understood it. Why can't someone just be a fan of performance/cost, or performance/power. Why does it have to be Nvidia or AMD? Fans of either Nvidia or AMD, regardless of benchmarks or reviews, will stick to their guns. It's not rational.I've had and have right now, both Nvidia and AMD products, and decide on the card right for me at that time. I'm a fan of choice.
mapesdhs - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
By the very nature of us humans when we're annoyed by something, those who didn't
like the inclusion of the EVGA are more likely to complain, as opposed to those who
approved of its inclusion (like me) who mostly will not say anything.
Thus, I believe it's very possible the responses we see here are biased because
people who don't think the card should have been included are more likely to say so,
because they were annoyed. Contented people don't moan about things.
So Ryan, _please_ don't make a decision on whether or not to include such cards
again based purely on the replies you read here - that would be a statistical mistake
of the highest order. If you want to go down that route then do it properly, send out
an email shot to all members in a proper poll or something, ie. to get the opinions of
everyone evenly, not just those with negative feelings who are by definition going to
be more vocal..
I understand why those who don't think the card should have been included hold that
opinion. Principles are principles, at least in theory. The reality is though that the EVGA
is real product, it's out there (or will be) and I for one would have been most annoyed to
discover the EVGA was a purchase option only after having bought the lesser Palit
Sonic Platinum (PSP for short), purely because it was never mentioned in reviews.
As always, I read the 68xx reviews on both toms and Anand. Toms didn't include the
EVGA in their tables, except for the oc table, but reading their results pages I
immediately found myself wanting to know how the EVGA would compare, especially
in SLI, ie. IMO I was being denied information which would have been useful.
Helping readers make better purchasing decisions is surely the ultimate goal of these
articles. To that end, more information is always good. When I read your intro and saw
the EVGA specs, my initial assumption was that it would be too expensive (200 UKP
or more) and thus not worth it compared to a 6870 or existing oc' 460. Searching on
Google, I was amazed to see it on Scan for only 174 UKP (though not yet in stock),
that's not much more than the PSP (which itself has dropped down from 183 last week
to ~160).
My budget is 185 UKP per card (buying 2 for SLI), so the EVGA info was incredibly
useful. Without it, I might have bought the Palit cards, never knowing there was a faster
option available, or that others might follow.
So, thankyou Ryan/Anand for including the card. IMO it was a good decision. For all
those who moaned about it, take a good, long, hard look at the power/temp/noise tables:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-687...
Given that two EVGA SLI are highly likely to be a match for 470 SLI and 6870 CF, are
you really suggesting that readers did not deserve to know that the EVGA was a viable
alternative? (especially given toms showed 6870 oc CF wasn't that much better than
6870 CF). With the 470 price drop, I was sorely tempted by the idea of 470 SLI, but for
me the temp/noise/power numbers are the clincher: if I can get them, two EVGAs look
perfect. Perhaps toms is right and these better 460 prices will only last a few weeks,
but if so then I'm sure the 6950/70/90 launch will cause yet another downshift in pricing,
and in the meantime I wouldn't be surprised if other highly oc'd 460s become available.
Talking only about reference cards is a great intellectual exercise, but how does that help
one make a real decision when hardly any of the cards available actually run at
reference clocks? This is the situation atm with 460s; toms dealt with it by using an
artificial 'average' oc, which to me is worse than choosing to exclude all oc'd parts.
Better to show just how good a genuine top-oc'd product can be and thus allow
readers to extrapolate from that best case down to whatever lesser version they might
wish to consider. It's simple math afterall. If one judged by reference results alone, one
could be forgiven for ignoring the 460 completely, whereas in reality there are some
excellent 460 products available like the PSP (800MHz GPU for 160UKP?!). Should
they be called something different though like a 461? Probably yes, given how much
faster they are.
I appreciate the rationale of not normally covering oc'd cards, but in this case, with
all the crazy price movements, I have no doubt that including it was the best choice.
Real data helps one to make decisions in the real world. As a result, between the two
reviews, I find the Anand article to be far more useful as a basis for decision making.
The only thing you could have done to make it even better is add EVGA SLI results;
is that possible? Please do if so!! 8)
If there are other readers who also think including the EVGA was a good idea, please
speak up! Ryan/Anand deserve to hear a balanced share of opinion.
Ian.
PS. I skipped the last page of comments before posting; hehe, I see AstroGuardian has
covered similar points. :D Kudos dude!
Flunk - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
The card is a regularly available retail product so I don't see any issue with it. I think you should have mentioned what the actual GPU and Memory clocks are but otherwise I don't have a problem.I personally find that factory overclocked cards quite often use quite conservative frequencies. It's normaly quite easy to get to similar or better speeds with bog standard cards. I have the bottom of the line Palit GTX 640 card and it easily matches the 850Mhz core and 4000Mhz memory clocks of the EVGA FTW card. Factory overclocked cards quite often just give you a good idea of what you can do on your own..
spigzone - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
If it is your editorial policy to not include overclocked cards in your initial review, DON'T INCLUDE THEM. PERIOD.In addition the time used including the FTW card contributed to the review's incompleteness and dis-jointedness.
Lame, lame lame.
Why didn't you just include the FTW card in your 'round-up' next week and include the highest stable overclocked 6870 in the bunch too? Are we going to make a terrible 'mistake' buying AMD based on the review because by following your own policy you 'unfairly' tilted the field against Nvidia? Are we too stupid to grasp the nuances involved and if on the fence on what to buy unable to wait a week until you can do a full fledged 'round-up' including overclocked boards from both sides?
Your audience IS (mostly) savvy and capable of overclocking their graphics boards.
What is your uncompromised integrity worth?
Listen to the sychophants on this thread clamoring to cover your @$$ for you at your peril.
lifeblood - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
If the 26% factory overclocked cards remain on the market for the reasonable future, then it was the right decision to include them. If they quickly disappear from the market due to insufficient chips, then it was the wrong decision. The problem with this is none of us can read the future.I would not have included the overclocked card in this review. While ALL companies have cheated and deceived customers, NV seems to be doing it a lot lately. For that reason I would not trust them. However, you were open about your decision and made clear your concerns so I have no grounds to complain.
Otherwise, excellent review.
IMPL0DE - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I think that factory overclocked cards should be benchmarked against other factory overclocked cards. EVGA GTX 460 FTW is a good card, true, but the whole review gets skewed when you mix it all up. Furthermore, even making a review with any card that would be overclocked by factory or by end user distorts the comparison given the fact that not all GPUs overclock the same. Expecting to overclock a card is a risky business. I couldn't get past the 725MHz on my Gigabyte GTX 460 without artifacts showing in games (and that's only 10MHz overclock over the stock card!!!) and so I've changed it to Gainward which reached 835Mhz with no problems.Keep the OC cards in comparison to other factory OC cards, or the whole review gets misleading to the users that are not very much tech savvy.
Also, you might also post a poll on this issue for us to vote.
Will Robinson - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Unfortunately I was banned from the AT forums about an hour before the launch of the review here at TR by moderator "I don't care"(irony) so I missed the opportunity to comment on this aspect of the AT review.It appears NVDA have done their homework for this launch,get an overclocked card in the review and make sure the forum opposition is effectively muzzled.
Good game NVDA.
GaiaHunter - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Can you, NVIDIA or EVGA guarantee that if every person that would buy a stock 6870 see this review instead decides to buy a eVGA GTX460 FTW will be able to?How many of these cards are out there compared to stock GTX 460 and stock 6870 and factory OC 6870/6850?