EVGA and Galaxy GeForce GTX 465 SLI Video Card Review

[Apoptosis]

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 is the new "entry level" DirectX 11 graphics card. Just because it is NVIDIA's entry level DirectX 11 graphics card doesn't mean it it is aimed at the entry level crowd. This bad boy is aimed at those looking for great DirectX 11 performance, but want to keep the budget under $300. Read on to see if this is the card fits that bill!




Article Title: EVGA and Galaxy GeForce GTX 465 SLI Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1317/1/

[Frostbyte]

I guess the idle power consumption numbers are with a single monitor attached? Is it as bad as the 470 and 480 with two attached?

[Computer Ed]

While I do not disagree with your overall conclusion there are a few off statements. The 465 did not beat the 5830 in every test.

Throughout the testing today, the GeForce GTX 465's were able to outperform the XFX Radeon HD 5830.

The 5830 did beat the 465 in the Aliens vs Predator test and in the 3D Mark test the 5830 did have higher GPU scores. The pricing right now keeps the 5830 competitive but only barely, since you can get 5830s for right at $200. However as the 465 price drops it will become the card at price point to buy for sure.

I am also curious why you are still using 1280x1024 for any kind of reasonbale performance judgement. Anyone buying this level of video card is not likely to play anything at that resolution. Yet with this in mind it is the benchmark you used to define a lead fro the 465. Citing that the 465 gained almost 20FPS at this resolution in Dirt II thus overstating it's gains by nealry double at a realistic playing resolution.

Again I am not disagreeing that the Fermi architecture is not a better choice for DX11 gaming. They have done a great job of taking the DX11 features and maximizing performance in this GPU with it, far and away passing ATIs efforts to date. However some of the comments seem to be sensationalized and thus out of place in an otherwise solid review.

[Apoptosis]

We run 1280 x 1024 as that resolution is still rather popular for gaming around the world. Not many people have 30" monitors.

[XstollieX]

I guess the idle power consumption numbers are with a single monitor attached? Is it as bad as the 470 and 480 with two attached?

You are correct, the power consumption numbers were done with a single monitor attached. Unfortunately That test system has been broken down already. So I threw the Galaxy GeForce GTX 465 into another system and threw on a pair of monitors.
The system I used for this is similar to the test system in the article. The differences include an EVGA X58 SLI motherboard, Water Cooling and a Corsair HX 1000 power supply.

power_consumption2.jpg (16.11 KiB) Viewed 6114 times

The power draw under load was the same when two monitors were attached. The Idle numbers were quite a bit different though. Just having the second monitor attached we were drawing an additional 50Watts.

load_temperatures2.jpg (17.78 KiB) Viewed 6114 times

Similar story when it comes to the temperatures. Under load the Galaxy GeForce GTX 465 was sitting just shy of 90 degrees Celsius in both tests, and it was 10 degrees warmer at Idle with the second monitor attached.

While I do not disagree with your overall conclusion there are a few off statements. The 465 did not beat the 5830 in every test.

Throughout the testing today, the GeForce GTX 465's were able to outperform the XFX Radeon HD 5830.

The 5830 did beat the 465 in the Aliens vs Predator test and in the 3D Mark test the 5830 did have higher GPU scores. The pricing right now keeps the 5830 competitive but only barely, since you can get 5830s for right at $200. However as the 465 price drops it will become the card at price point to buy for sure.

I am also curious why you are still using 1280x1024 for any kind of reasonbale performance judgement. Anyone buying this level of video card is not likely to play anything at that resolution. Yet with this in mind it is the benchmark you used to define a lead fro the 465. Citing that the 465 gained almost 20FPS at this resolution in Dirt II thus overstating it's gains by nealry double at a realistic playing resolution.

Again I am not disagreeing that the Fermi architecture is not a better choice for DX11 gaming. They have done a great job of taking the DX11 features and maximizing performance in this GPU with it, far and away passing ATIs efforts to date. However some of the comments seem to be sensationalized and thus out of place in an otherwise solid review.

Computer Ed,
You are correct in the fact that the 5830 did out score the GTX 465 at a couple of points, and perhaps that quote you took from the article should be reworded. The reason we use 1280x1024 is that is still a popular resolution, plus wit will give you an Idea of what you can expect if you play at a resolution between 1280x1024 and 1920x1080.

Thank you for your comments.
Dan

[Frostbyte]

XstollieX: Thanks, looks like the idle power use difference is a bit lower than with the 470 (~50W vs ~75W). Still a bit high though.

[IRQ Conflict]

We run 1280 x 1024 as that resolution is still rather popular for gaming around the world. Not many people have 30" monitors.

Your right! Some of us have 24" monitors and game @ 1920x1200.

[smilingbounder]

The Galaxy casing looks really cool.

I was really excited for these cards until I heard about them disabling things on the card to make them work. Aren't they basically a GTX 470 with some things disabled?