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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Tunnah - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
thats the thing OC'ed cards are always labelled as such one way or another; anand is hardly a site for the laymen, we come here for in depth reviews that aren't watered down for the everymanwhen i look over a chart i realise if there's a card with the same name but with a few extra letters, its gonna be an OC'ed model
if you think otherwise then i dunno what the hell you're doing here
brybir - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Here is my opinion for what its worth:I have a 4850 in my rig. I will be upgrading this Christmas to a new card. When I come back to AT around that time and look at reviews (and specifically bench), I dont want to have to wonder if the cards I see there are actually available, if they are the same card, same freq, same memory etc....
The indisputable fact is that reference cards will last throughout the life cycle of the product, overclocked cards come and go for many reasons that you know, making performance, price and availability somewhat questionable. In six months we will know if the EVGA 460 FTW is available at the current price, but we dont really know.
So my vote would be stock v stock in your baseline reviews of new products, and then OC reviews separately against other OC'd cards.
I like that you told us that Nvidia asked you to use the 460 FTW card, and that they lowered prices (although other sites say its possible that the price drops will not last) but then it feels like you sold out to appease them (even though I know you didnt, this is Anandtech, it feels and reads that way, and I dont like it one bit).
So in the end, stock v. stock, separate OC article is what I would like to see.
doobydoo - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
So you're suggesting splitting up a coherent, logical review into 2 parts.For what? How is that a benefit? It changes nothing.
They included a Stock vs Stock comparison in the article, which is what you're asking for, so what's the problem?
They didn't manually overclock, they compared STOCK FACTORY overclocked cards to STOCK reference cards. Since there WASN'T an available Factory overclocked 6870 at the time, they didn't have the option to compare Factory overclock to Factory overclock. Is that fair, I hear you cry? Well of course it is, because right NOW, that is an accurate reflection of what CONSUMERS CAN BUY. You can't ignore factory overclocked product A because company B hasn't pulled their finger out yet and got their own factory overclocked product out. You include everything you know at the time.
cusideabelincoln - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I don't mind that you test overclocked cards, but I think you should keep them separated from the normal, reference data in a review. So either dedicate a few pages in the review discussing overclocked options and their performance, or make an entirely separate review like you did with the Gigabyte GTX 260 Super Overclock (which was an awesome article):http://www.anandtech.com/show/2854
Hrel - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I think you should definitely choose a card to represent overclocking for each GPU. AMD and Nvidia. Especially if there's a card that's factory overclocked that's really spectacular, and actually offers a tangible performance adavantage; whatever companies GPU is powering it. Though I think you could probably keep the factory overclocks on their own page or 2 and then your own custom overclocks on their own page or 2. Now, if a certain companies GPU, 400 series or 6800 series for instance, overclock really really well, better than the competition that's DEFINITELY something I want to know.Personally I buy the cheapest version of whatever GPU I'm buying that I can find. I don't care if it's pre-overclocked or not; if I want it overclocked I'll do it myself. So personally I mostly just want to know the limits of the card without increasing core voltage and with increasing it, and I want to know if AMD overclocks better than Nvidia or visversa. As far as factory overclocks it's not something that I'll pay extra for; but I'm sure some people will so it should surely have its own little section.
doobydoo - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
@ both of the above.Are you both seriously saying that you lack the mental capacity to distinguish a factory overclocked model from a reference model in a series of graphs?
Really? Poor little monkeys need it broken down?
It's like an insanity defence, but with stupidity instead.
Parhel - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
We all have our opinions on this, but if you can't treat others with respect, nobody is going to be interested in what you have to say. Seriously, if you aren't capable of having a debate without resorting to insulting other people, you aren't worth talking to.Parhel - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I spoke up on the other article, but since you've asked, I'll say it again. This move has caused Anandtech to lose credibility in my eyes. I've used your articles to assist in making purchasing decisions many times, and have often recommended it to colleagues to do the same, but I won't feel comfortable doing that any longer.Since Derek stopped writing the video card reviews, they have slowly become more and more biased. The HD 5870 review was "damning with faint praise" at best when the rest of the world considered it the most significant launch of the year, and your GTX 480 review was by far the most positive spin of anything I read.
If you truly felt that including OC'ed cards was proper for a comparison, you would have done it before today. You would at least have OC'ed the 5970 in your review of the GTX 480, as that card was built to be sold to enthusiasts and OC'ed. Or, you would have compared a Toxic model 5850 to the GTX 470. But instead, every AMD card you have ever used for comparison in an NVidia launch was stock.
OC'ed cards will come for 6000 series, prices will drop, alternate cooling and memory configs will appear etc., etc. But people will look to this review for months to come, and come away with the wrong impression from your charts. It's a disservice to your readers, and has lowered my opinion of the site.
doobydoo - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
OH wake up.Any review of any graphics card would be a FAIL if they didn't look at the prices of the cards.
And those prices will NEVER stay the same for 'months to come'.
Reality check please? It simply isn't possible to write a review, particularly in this industry, which will still contain the accurate prices in months to come (unless they tied it to some kind of API to update them automatically - which BTW Anandtech, if you need, contact me).
It's obvious that reviews and the prices they quote can become outdated, but everybody knows that, and would obviously notice by simply looking at the latest prices on newegg.
The second part of your criticism is that people will come away with the wrong impression. Did you? Because I know of 10 monkeys that would be capable of reading those graphs. Unless you question the accuracy of the data, there is nothing to suggest anybody would come away with the wrong impression. If they come away thinking that the EVGA card is better value for money, then they are CORRECT, not 'wrong'.
JasioKwasio - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I've seen all the disclaimers, including comments on the temporary state of the EVGA offer and your doubts of how long it is going to last. I perceive your site as credible one.Way to go!