Should AT include OC'd Cards in Reviews?

[NoQuarter]

Again, how much do the stock clocked GTX 460 cost compared to the EVGA OC'd one?

I understand the parts are competitive in their price brackets. The only part I don't actually like is AT not clearly denoting the 850 clock speed on the benchmark graphs. I like having as much info as possible.


The part that perhaps AT themselves questioned themselves on is that the standard review practice seems to have been specialty cards having a separate review where they are compared to stock release cards.

It would be ideal to either always compare stock release cards to all available cards including specialty ones, or only show the specialty cards when reviewing them specifically. Bringing them up as a special case is just a little weird. nVidia probably should have released a 460/850 sort of how they released the 260 216.

 

[notty22]

For those that keep saying out of stock , there is evga ftw model in stock
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-581-_-Product
edit ff topic, whether AMD sends cherry picked parts out.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Doesn't matter what they cost when you can't buy one.

You can't buy a Sapphire or Gigabyte 6850 at newegg today either, even though you could yesterday (along with the FTW). People went card shopping yesterday.

Edit: also, see above (notty22), the other 850mhz FTW is in stock for $10 more, at $240 (item N82E16814130581)

 

[NoQuarter]

Unfortunately it's out of stock.

The FTW part is in stock. There's 2 EVGA FTW 850Mhz editions listed for some reason. One is in stock, the other is out of stock.

 

[Scali]

I personally thinks it's fine to include OC'd cards or OC'd stock cards. I for one am always game for more information.

I agree.
As long as it is clear that it is an OC'ed card, and the actual clockspeeds etc are mentioned, I see no problem with it. Just another videocard.
Obviously when a new product is introduced, I guess we'd all like to see how it performs at stock first.

I guess roughly I'd say that OC'ed cards are 'optional'. Stock cards should be required in your reviews, and optionally OC'ed versions of those cards can be included as well.

 

[Douglar]

Agreed, putting OC card against stock cards in a launch review is questionable.

But I stop short of making accusations that Anand intentionally tried to deceive readers and somehow undermine the launch.

I agree. I don't think Anand is on the take, but you shouldn't allow crazy cherry picked over clocks from one side without allowing the other side to submit theirs. The writer and editor got baited into a bad decision here by a bunch of marketing people using some inventive tactics. All is fine if A.T. learned their lesson and don't do it again. But if it happens again, then the accusations will start to stick, in my point of view.

p.s. Congrats to Tomshardware for not getting suckered into this mess.

 

[apoppin]

I understand the parts are competitive in their price brackets. The only part I don't actually like is AT not clearly denoting the 850 clock speed on the benchmark graphs. I like having as much info as possible.


The part that perhaps AT themselves questioned themselves on is that the standard review practice seems to have been specialty cards having a separate review where they are compared to stock release cards.

It would be ideal to either always compare stock release cards to all available cards including specialty ones, or only show the specialty cards when reviewing them specifically. Bringing them up as a special case is just a little weird. nVidia probably should have released a 460/850 sort of how they released the 260 216.

Well, yes. It is important to clearly label the charts. In my own they are labeled and i still got negative comments.

Frankly, any bit of OC'ing always interests me .. it shows what the current (now mature) process can do as to scaling and it DOES point to a "+" kind of GTX 460 (since 465 is taken) that could morph into a GTX 475 just like GTX 260 > 260+ > 275. There is nothing stopping Nvidia from tweaking their architecture and speed-bumping it like AMD has done.

AND there is nothing stopping AMD from (1) overclocking their current parts and then (2) bringing out their own HD 5870 speed bump if necessary; it doesn't look like AMD nor Nvidia have reached their limits on current 40nm. Now it's Barts (and Cayman) vs Fermi (what Nvidia originally planned for).

 

[Janooo]

If GF104 is so good why 850MHz is not a stock speed?

 

[Idontcare]

If GF104 is so good why 850MHz is not a stock speed?

It is, isn't it? What is the stock speed of FTW OC card used in the review?

 

[AnandThenMan]

It is, isn't it? What is the stock speed of FTW OC card used in the review?

Depends what you consider stock. Isn't an overclock the opposite of stock? Then let's rephrase. Why aren't all the 460's@850mhz. Especially considering much slower clocked versions are sometimes the same price.

 

[apoppin]

Depends what you consider stock. Isn't an overclock the opposite of stock? Then let's rephrase. Why aren't all the 460's@850mhz. Especially considering much slower clocked versions are sometimes the same price.

And very soon AMD's partners will release O/C'd versions of HD 6870 and HD 6850. Especially considering much slower clocked versions will be sometimes the same price of the overclocked versions.

What then?

 

[AnandThenMan]

Then you do an article that pits overclocked version vs. overclocked. Simple.

 

[Idontcare]

Depends what you consider stock. Isn't an overclock the opposite of stock? Then let's rephrase. Why aren't all the 460's@850mhz. Especially considering much slower clocked versions are sometimes the same price.

Uhm...for the same reason that not all Thubans are 1090T's, and the same reason not all Gulftown's are 980X's.

We do understand the device physics that are at play in the creation of clockspeed binning, yes?

If you are asking why Nvidia doesn't officially release a higher clockspeed SKU of their GF104 inasmuch as AMD released both the 1070 and the 1090T thubans then you are asking the same question that Anandtech asked out-loud in their article.

Only Nvidia can answer that question.

But stock clock is whatever the manufacturer wants to call it. If I can buy a GF104-based video card that comes with warranty and is clocked to 850MHz out of the box then that is the stock clockspeed for that product.

If it delivers a compelling price/performance then it merits consideration among the field of contenders.

 

[frostedflakes]

Depends what you consider stock. Isn't an overclock the opposite of stock? Then let's rephrase. Why aren't all the 460's@850mhz. Especially considering much slower clocked versions are sometimes the same price.

Same reason my dual core AMD chip can unlock to a quad and overclock 600MHz. Not uncommon for these companies to gimp chips in order to segment their market. If GTX 460 ran at 850MHz, they couldn't get away with charging what they do for the GTX 470 and 480. You could just get a GTX 460 and have it perform about on-par with a 470.

At the time the 460 came out it was intended to fill a portion of the market ($200-230) that was pretty empty. It was spec'd and priced to fill this gap. They didn't need more performance so why clock it higher? It would just potentially cannibalize sales of higher end cards and hurt them. But circumstances change, and now AMD has a card (6870) that nVidia didn't really have an answer for. But fortunately for them the GF104 has a fair amount of headroom for clocks. As Anand pointed out, the better thing to do is to release a new card (GTX 461 or something like that). But I guess they didn't have the time or whatever, so their solution (pretty lazy, but it works I suppose) is to point consumers toward an overclocked GTX 460 card.

Like I said, probably not the best way to handle things. But not nearly as reprehensible as some people here seem to make it out to be.

 

[AnandThenMan]

But stock clock is whatever the manufacturer wants to call it. If I can buy a GF104-based video card that comes with warranty and is clocked to 850MHz out of the box then that is the stock clockspeed for that product.

It says in green bold letters for the EVGA card, FTW Edition+ 130 MHz Overclock to 850 MHz. So it could easily be argued that the card is not at stock clocks, and in fact the advertising of the product makes sure they highlight this fact. You're no doubt going to say that it is the stock clock for that product. But that is not the original question. The question was, what is the stock clock of GF104. And it's reasonable to say that value is the what the lowest clocked, basic cards are set at. Just like the 68xx cards.

But that doesn't matter to people who are intent on driving a certain point home.

If it delivers a compelling price/performance then it merits consideration among the field of contenders.

This completely misses the point. And for some reason no one can answer the one simple question. If having overclocked versions in reviews is all good, then why was it strictly against policy? It's a simple but fundamental question that needs to be answered.

 

[arkcom]

Anyone with an IQ of more than two digits can figure out the article and the options with ease.

Just thought I should point out that just under half of the world population has an IQ of two digits.

 

[AnandThenMan]

At the time the 460 came out it was intended to fill a portion of the market ($200-230) that was pretty empty. It was spec'd and priced to fill this gap. They didn't need more performance so why clock it higher? It would just potentially cannibalize sales of higher end cards and hurt them. But circumstances change, and now AMD has a card (6870) that nVidia didn't really have an answer for. But fortunately for them the GF104 has a fair amount of headroom for clocks. As Anand pointed out, the better thing to do is to release a new card (GTX 461 or something like that). But I guess they didn't have the time or whatever, so their solution (pretty lazy, but it works I suppose) is to point consumers toward an overclocked GTX 460 card.

No no that card is not overclocked, it's stock. :sneaky:

So if I follow your line of thinking (which is good) then going forward, Nvidia will clock all the 460's to 850 or perhaps higher. It makes sense to do this, at least at a given price point. The confusion (and trickery) is coming from having such a drastic difference in clockspeed, for the same product # and price. Worse, you can't say how many of said products available are at what clocks.

 

[frostedflakes]

I agree that it's a pretty sloppy and last minute solution, but oh well. It is what it is. But unlike most of you guys I don't think there was any deception or malice intended. It was just a desperate attempt by nVidia to steal some of AMD's thunder during the launch and bring a card to the table that was competitive with the 6870.

GF110 is in the works to compete with 6900 series cards I think, so hopefully they won't need to overclock any 480 cards to trade blows with AMD on the top end.

 

[cplusplus]

Depends what you consider stock. Isn't an overclock the opposite of stock? Then let's rephrase. Why aren't all the 460's@850mhz. Especially considering much slower clocked versions are sometimes the same price.

Because they still have 470s they want to sell.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Because they still have 470s they want to sell.

That would make the EVGA a benchmark card, designed to look good on the graphs, but not sell in quantity to hurt 470 sales.

 

[Idontcare]

It says in green bold letters for the EVGA card, FTW Edition+ 130 MHz Overclock to 850 MHz. So it could easily be argued that the card is not at stock clocks, and in fact the advertising of the product makes sure they highlight this fact.

It also says it is "FTW Edition"...so, is it FTW?

It must be, says so right in the label.

You're no doubt going to say that it is the stock clock for that product. But that is not the original question. The question was, what is the stock clock of GF104.

You are changing the question.

The question was not "what is the stock clock of GF104".

GF104 is an architecture, like Thuban or Gulftown. What is the stock clock of thuban? Such a question makes no sense unless you also specify the SKU.

As in "what is the stock clock of the 1090T?"

So what is the stock clock for SKU "FTW Edition+ 130 MHz Overclock to 850 MHz"?

 

[Idontcare]

No no that card is not overclocked, it's stock. :sneaky:

So if I follow your line of thinking (which is good) then going forward, Nvidia will clock all the 460's to 850 or perhaps higher. It makes sense to do this, at least at a given price point. The confusion (and trickery) is coming from having such a drastic difference in clockspeed, for the same product # and price. Worse, you can't say how many of said products available are at what clocks.

huh? Intel is about to release their 3.46GHz Gulftown 990X. Are you expecting them to clock all gulftowns to 3.46GHz once they release the 990X?

 

[busydude]

But stock clock is whatever the manufacturer wants to call it.

Who is the manufacturer? Is it EVGA or Nvidia? Is the clock speed of 850 MHz specified by Nvidia or EVGA? If these cards are overclocked by EVGA then, why is Nvidia pushing them to be reviewed?

These are genuine questions though, I am totally ignorant of how this works.

 

[AnandThenMan]

You are changing the question.

No I'm trying to expand the question, and get some answers. But we seem to be getting bogged down in semantics here. And I find it a bit difficult to compare CPUs with GPUs in this context, because you don't buy a GPU in a cardboard box, you buy a graphics card.

But the basic question is still not answered. Going forward, are all graphics reviews going to included "factory" overclocked cards?

 

[3DVagabond]

Again, how much do the stock clocked GTX 460 cost compared to the EVGA OC'd one?

No one answered because it's rhetorical at best and a straw man at worst. It has been pointed out that there are in actuality very few 850MHz GTX-460. Price isn't the argument.

I noticed that the GTX-470 is not included in your review, while the GTX-460 FTW was. Exactly as nVidia wanted. How does a stock GTX-470 compare to the GTX-460 FTW? Not too well, and nVidia I'm sure thanks you for not making that comparison. Just as much as they thank you for using the highest O/C GTX-460 for comparison to the 6800. nVidia should have zero say in the review of an AMD card!