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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maree - Sunday, October 24, 2010 - link
+1 to that.This is definitely one of the most reasoned comments on this debate.
My personal point of view is that Anand was within his rights to include an OC card, as it seems that is going to be the strategy of NVIDIA to fight the 68xx onslaught. But the problem I feel here is I dont think Anand bought it from the market like rest of the readers do. We dont get the card delivered to our doorstep by EVGA. In fact I dont even get to buy the EVGA card in my country. My strong feeling is when the readers attempt to buy this card, either the price will be up or power and/or performance will be worse
Anand's explanation seems reasonable, but bottomline is, it is not in good taste going against their own policy. so time to redefine/crystallize thier policies and have separate section/article for OC cards, where needed.
cactusdog - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
Exactly, review all the OC models or none at all. The manufacturers know most users just skim the bar graphs when making a purchase decision. Shenanigans.Quizzical - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
Except that that wasn't my point at all. That was just a side comment in the second paragraph.The bigger issue is that comparing a card that is going to be produced by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to a limited edition card only briefly available at the claimed price on the day of the review muddles things for people who want to find out about cards months later, therefore making the review less useful to that audience. In particular, it encourages more marketing shenanigans and PR stunts, making it harder for less tech-savvy users to decipher which cards are better than which others.
The card is a PR stunt, and not representative of the factory overclocked GTX 460s that are widely available. If it's such a real card for $240, why did New Egg sell out the day after the reviews went live? Tiger Direct is sold out, too:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtool...
It's likewise sold out at Amazon, in spite of a price tag over $260 there:
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-External-PCI-Express-Gr...
There are a couple other places that have it in stock, but what I could find charged over $260. Matching the performance of a $240 Radeon HD 6870 with a $260+ card that is hard to find and much higher power consumption isn't so impressive.
Now, there's a place for saying "here's a great deal on a card for much less than the usual price". But in a review of a competitor's card is not it.
anactoraaron - Sunday, October 24, 2010 - link
+1Excellent post. And your reward for such an excellent post is a GTX460 1gb FTW from EVGA! They will ship one out to you when they are in stock... i.e. when Ryan sends the review card back.
My guess is there were 25 cards like this made. The next version of the 460 FTW (different SKU) will likely be at 825mhz...
I can recall AMD messing up numbers and us readers calling the numbers into question sparked AMD to give Anand full disclosure about the testing - I believe it was the article about Zacate - and they redeemed themselves. I doubt EVGA or Nvidia will do something similar as I agree with everyone else that this card was merely a PR stunt.
doobydoo - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Why can they not say 'here's a great deal on a card for much less than the usual price' in a review of a product?It would be IRRESPONSIBLE of them not to! If I read this review, and decided to buy a 6870 based on it, and then I later read a separate post saying 'Oh by the way, the EVGA 460 FTW is actually a better card, get that instead' I would be EXTREMELY annoyed.
Who cares if it doesn't have the same availability? If people can't buy it, they wont see it as competition. Simple. If at some point in the future, the price is higher, or people can't buy it, then of course they wont buy it. So what harm is done? On the other hand, if it IS available, then they CAN buy it, and it gets them a better deal. The fact is, it IS available still, despite your nonsense, and people CAN buy it if they want, and if they do, they will have gotten better value for their money.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
doobydoo - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Why should they review all or none?By that logic, a tech review site can only ever review an overclocked card if they also happen to own every overclocked card which ever existed.
They can review any cards they want.
The fact is at the time of the review there weren't any 6850/6870 factory overclocked cards, so they gave a full picture IMO.
Most users know how to read, and seeing the EVGA FTW card will not lead them to believe that the reference card is the same.
doobydoo - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Wow Watson.You managed to deduce that electrical components in the PC industry can change in price.
Shocker.
There are two GTX 460 FTW's available (and in stock) on Newegg right now, and it certainly doesn't look like a short term product, blowing your whole nonsense conspiracy theory out of the window.
Big surprise that after such a positive review on a popular review website, lots of them got sold. How could we possibly explain that within the normal dynamics of supply and demand? Oh wait, it must be a big conspiracy to trick Anandtech and the world.
Seriously, give yourself a kick. Of course a manufacturer could lower prices for a specific product for a really short period of time to coincide with a competitor launch and make that competitor look bad. But so what? That means that they have to give customers a card which is better, for less money. Those b******s.
Even if this is for a short time only, and if they do later increase the price, given that the review will have stated something like 'great value for X', do you not think consumers will notice before buying that the card costs X+15%? If the cost increases significantly, Anandtech could of course update the article, or they could simply do a more recent round up.
No tech site will ever be able to 'future proof' the prices mentioned in their articles. An article HAS to consider price, and those prices HAVE to be the current ones. What you're claiming assumes that a) People don't look at the prices when they buy. and b) Anandtech wont add any updates if EVGA hike up the prices at some point. Both of which aren't necessarily true.
The bottom line is that the EVGA card IS AVAILABLE right now, and it IS better value for money. So why shouldn't Anandtech tell people that?
The complains on here about a 'predicted' (and totally unfounded) lack of availability in future, or price increases, are total nonsense. Not only are they 100% speculation, it would be irrelevant even if true. Any review is aimed at letting the customers know the best deal NOW, not in 2 months time.
heflys - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Hence forth, I shall be getting my opinion more so from sites like [H]ardocp. That's all.Roland00Address - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
1) I don't mind you testing OC cards, I am all for it, more data is not a bad thing.2) I don't believed you caved to nvidia pressure or think you are trying to be biased in any way.
That said
3) I am very much AGAINST having OC cards in the first review in the card. For a couple of reasons
A) The first review of a card should give you information on how this card generation compares to the previous generation and two generations ago. The first review should help give you a general idea of how card A performs against its father and grandfather card. It is more important to add older cards such as the 9800GT, HD3870, or HD4890 cards which many owners own but weren't listed on your review. (You did included the HD4870 and GTS250 which is somewhat of a measuring stick.) Having two many info points about this generation doesn't clarify this generation vs the last generation either there are two many datapoints on the graph that boggles the mind or you have to not test some older cards due to time constraints.
B) You sacrificed time adding this datapoint to your review, you already had to rush to get the review done in time, it showed in the HD6800 series review (still a good review but rushed). Some of this time from testing could have been saved if you did this superfluous datapoint.
Thus in my mind the OC GTX460 should have waited for a future review (which you customary do when many vendors send their own tweaked versions of the card.) It would have been useful then, adding it to this review detracted from it.
NewBro - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
I have to admit, I did feel weird reading the review and found a specific brand card 'EVGA GTX 460 1GB FTW (OC)' in the otherwise generic reference card benchmark. I didn't flip out or anything like the others, but to me I feel like you're treating it like it was a different model/chipset, which I believe is what gets the others.