14 DAY TRIAL // Not long ago, the GeForce GTX 465 video board from NVIDIA was reportedly benchmarked and, soon after, a strange mix-up led to someone receiving one such adapter instead of the GTX 470 that had been ordered. As such, the basic specifications are not exactly a mystery. Nevertheless, an actual review of the product had yet to come out. Now, Xbitlabs seems to have fulfilled this wish as well, though what it found may not be as grand as some may like.
Basically, the reviewers somehow got their hands on a reference GeForce GTX 465 and went ahead with testing it against the ATI Radeon HD 5850, which it is supposed to compete against. Being based on the GF100 GPU, albeit toned down, the card was likely expected to do at least as well as AMD's device. Unfortunately, for NVIDIA and its fans at least, the adapter fell short of fulfilling these expectations.
In fact, not just the HD 5850, but even the previous-generation GeForce GTX 275 scored better in some instances. This led the testers to the conclusion that, even though cheaper than ATI's card ($279 compared with $299), the GTX 465 doesn't perform well enough to be truly competitive.
On the other hand, it should be noted that the test was done in absence of new drivers. This means that, when made available, the video board may be up for a better fight.
“Summing up the results of our preview, the GeForce GTX 465 is not such an interesting buy as the senior models in the GeForce GTX 400 series. Its performance may be improved by a new driver and we will carry out a full test session as soon as possible. However, we do think that Nvidia will have to lower the price of its new product in order to make it competitive,” is what the review concludes.