Galaxy Nvidia GeForce GTX 465 Review
Conclusion
Today Nvidia has successfully launched a mid range card for the gamers who are not willing to pay $349 for the GTX 470. For $70 less ($279), you can buy the GTX 465. However, it is only $20 cheaper than the HD 5850 which should provide better performance. The GTX 465 is expected to slot in between the HD 5830 and the HD 5850 in terms of price and performance. At the last moment, Nvidia informed us that in partnership with select participating retailers, they will be offering a free download copy of Just Cause 2 game which is a $50 value. I believe this adds substantial value to the card.
In our testing, the GTX 275 was uncomfortably close the to the GTX 465 at stock speeds in terms of performance. From a mid range card of a new generation and one with more stream processors, we would expect better performance. I believe there are two reasons why the GTX 465 is so close to the GTX 275 in terms of performance.
1. Please see the table below. As a result of having a wider memory interface, the GTX 275 has a higher memory bandwidth. The GTX 275 also has a better texture fill rate.
2. After overclocking the GTX 465, we saw very impressive gains on average FPS. The gains ranged from 10 FPS to even 16 FPS. This leads me to believe that the GTX 465 is bandwidth starved.
My advice to the manufacturers would be to come out with overclocked editions of the GTX 465 as it offers a lot of performance increase. Fortunately, our review sample from Galaxy was a champion overclocker which allowed me to verify this theory. Even though this card did not allow me to change the GPU voltage, I was still able to overclock it from 608 MHz/1215 MHz/3348 MHz (Core/Shade/Memory) to 790 MHz/1580 MHz/4000 MHz (Core/Shade/Memory) which gives us an overclock of 30%/30%/25% on core, shader and memory respectively. With a voltage increase I’m sure the core could overclock more.
For the users who currently own a GTX 275, the GTX 465 will provide you almost similar performance in DX9 and DX10 games. However, it will also allow you to play DX11 games with the potential of unlocking hidden potential by overclocking. As the GTX 465 is fabricated on a 40nm process, it also consumes less power than the GTX 275.
If I was in the market looking to buy a new DX11 card in the $200-$300 price range, I would very seriously consider the GTX 465 as it sits right in between the less expensive and slower HD 5830 and more expensive and faster HD 5850. In the end, the decision will be up to you, the user, if you would like a card that supports AMD’s Eyefinity technology or NVIDIA’s PhysX.
Galaxy GTX 465
Pros-
- Great Overclocker
- Flip fan design is very innovative
- Mini-HDMI to HDMI cable adapter is included
- The fan is quiet and comes with a blue LED!
- “Just Cause 2” offered by select retailers in partnership with Nvidia
Cons –
- No voltage modification capability
- Performance too close to the last generation GTX 275
I would like to award this card ABT Overclocker Award and ABT Innovation Award for the unique design by Galaxy.
I see you had less than stellar performance in CoD 4 just like I did. For me the GTX285 outruns the GTX470, and the gap is even wider with Windows 7.
Dude, your graphs are completely screwed up. Lower numbers are sometimes showing higher bars than higher numbers and vice/versa. You have a lot more work ahead of you. This article could not possibly have been edited and proofread as there are several model number, shader number mistakes throughout the article.
Nice thorough article, but it shouldn’t have been released like this. And if somebody did edit the article, fire them. 😉
– Keys
Hey Keysplayr, I think that the “screwed up” bar charts are actually cool. I noticed that the length of the bar is the addition of the minimum frame rate plus the average, then plus the maximum.
It gives greatest emphasis on the minimum, and also greater emphasis on the average than the maximum. Say, if the minimum is really low, then it will really affect the rest of the bar. (If the game dips to the “average minimum” quite frequently, say a few times a minute or so, then I’d definitely emphasize it the most.)
Oh well, yeah, I know it’s screwed up anyways, but this is an awesome review. Didn’t know about the RE5 3D vision demo (one of my fave games and I have Stereo 3D)!!! Thanks, MrK!
Only 1 in a hundred thousand would notice those “errors”, and only 1 out of them all said anything. =P
Good article, although it would have been nice to see that card face against the 5850!
I agree Bo_Fox, this is a pretty good review and I can’t wait to get my GTX 465 to replace my aging AGP slot’d PC with a new system.
The price seems very reasonable at less than $300 at newegg
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