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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Raraniel - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
Never hurt anyone. However, if people have complaints about the use of factory overclocked cards, perhaps include them only in the section on overclocking, and then compare them to your overclocked reference cards.darkvader75 - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
1. You have every right to include any available card in the article.2. You included the REFERENCE clock version as to show the base comparison.
3. The 460 has been out for awhile and Nvidia and it's board partners have had time to cherry pick cores for certain cards and make custom cooling systems and validate test them.
4. ATI has not had time to do 3 yet. This is a brand new core on launch day. Full factory overclocks are not a typical option on launch day. So you all want Anand to randomly overclock reference boards and compair that to a custom built factory overclocked cherry picked core?
5. I think the community has to allow Anand the time to work with these cards abit and the manufactuers to work with them too. I have seen some overclock reviews so far on this card. The 6850 overclocking very well with the GPU only and the 6870 not overclocking hardly at all. However only referance editions of the 6870 are available at this time. Not custom boards or cooling or power solutions like the FTW EVGA. Anand and his team had NOTHING to properly compair it too. But give these guys time. They are professionals they will do 6000 series roundups and even the supposed new card nvidia is about to launch to up the anti slightly. If they do hold back something it's due to signing NDA agreements and keeping us out of politics. Every company is full of politics and it causes confusion and does not increase our capabilities as the reader base. I don't want the he said she said circus at Anand. This is a PRO's site. I remember the scandel with Toms hardware taking money from Intel for advertising right before what seemed to be a heavily biased and terrible review of a Intel vs AMD product line. This caused that site to loose much of its readers for along time and it hurt them alot. However none of it may have even been true. They may have had a 3rd party to the advertising, but it got spun by fanboys and cost a honest man alot of shame and pain. This is the kind of crap we want to avoid here.
6. Anand and his staff work their asses off to give us unbiased and very clear reviews. If any of you think he was wrong for putting in a retail oc card then you are telling me that you are not inteligent enough to handle information. Thus you may need to pick a new website to read. www.disney.com is a good place to start or possibly www.apple.com
7. Think clearly about the situation from all angles. Before attacking Anand.
Thanks Guys.
Marburg U - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
Multiple 800 MHz gtx 460s were out the day the NDA expired.doobydoo - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
And your point is?SniperWulf - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
I don't mind the inclusion of factory OC'd cards ***AS LONG AS*** the reference card is included too. If you didn't have time to test a reference card, I think you should have downclocked the FTW to reference clocks and put it in the review. Then, a few days later, write up a quick part 2 with the OC'd datamapesdhs - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
The reference card _was_ included. It's shown on every 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 page.
Ian.
arthur449 - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
I feel that including overclocked cards in comparison to new cards is fair if it's done in the manner of the 6870 review. Do it on a case-by-case basis and only if, as with the 460, the overclocked card is significantly faster than its reference clocks.Posting everything the vendors suggest as far as benchmarks and settings would run the risk of violating an NDA, or just more likely rub the vendor the wrong way and harm your relationship with them in the future for review samples. That would hurt us in the end.
jed22281 - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
No need to worry about your journalistic integrity.It's a cut above many, many, other sites on the net, period.
But one thing I do beg of you....
Please put a better commenting system in-place!
And not disqus, it fracking blows IMO!
One that allows you to be emailed when there's new posts etc.
dertechie - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
I would say the only spot you screwed up with the OC GTX 460 was not giving us the specs or cost of the EVGA card. I had to hit Newegg to get the specs (and that is one hell of an OC), that information should have been in the test setup page and conclusion. When I think factory OC'd cards I think nice aftermarket cooling and a 7-15% OC, the 26% OC surprised me there.Just make sure you don't use the FTW card NVidia sent you when you do an article on the relative OC ability of Barts and GF104. I don't trust either company to not cherry pick review samples.
Leyawiin - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
I would love to see an HD 6870 and GTX 460 1GB when both are OC'd to their maximum. That's information that the consumer could really use instead of trying to cobble an idea together from several review sites or current and past reviews. Have a highly OC'd card from both camps would level the field and deflect criticism of perceived favoritism.