Should AT include OC'd Cards in Reviews?

[HendrixFan]

Do some of you actually think Anand sits in a dark room petting a white cat in his lap plotting to mislead readers of this site with the invisible hand of NVIDIA guiding his motives?

No, he got suckered by a PR machine. He obviously felt some remorse about it, as evidenced by the followup article. If you are second guessing whether or not you should have done something, chances are you shouldn't have done it. He made a mistake, and he is pretty close to fully admitting a mistake, and hopefully the corrective action will take place.

 

[Gikaseixas]

The GTX 460 FTW should have been in a follow up kind of review, not on a official card launch. Anandtech went out of it's ways by doing it.

The good side is that we all know how a highly oc'd GTX 460 does against 6850/6870.

 

[Evilhomer99]

Have any proof that they don't? Of course not, so your post adds nothing to the discussion.

I've been reading articles here for years, I've never had any reason to believe Anand is acting as a shill for greedy corporate fat cats. Plus they were very forth coming in response to the upset.

I was alluding to the fact conspiracy theory has been injected here.

 

[AnandThenMan]

One thing is for sure, this IS an issue people are concerned with. Some here have said this is making mountains out of moll hills. Well the follow up article explaining Anandtech's actions has 241 Comments and counting, that is more than the original review, and far higher than almost any article on this site.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Could someone tell me how rare it is to overclock a 460 1gb to 850mhz? Is it about like clocking a i7 920 to 4.5ghz?

 

[Evilhomer99]

One thing is for sure, this IS an issue people are concerned with. Some here have said this is making mountains out of moll hills. Well the follow up article explaining Anandtech's actions has 241 Comments and counting, that is more than the original review, and far higher than almost any article on this site.

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.

 

[AnandThenMan]

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.

What matters is the result. And it's up to the individual to decide if this move is a fair way to do reviews. But remember, there is/was a policy in place to prevent this kind of thing, so people should ask themselves why that policy was ignored.

 

[notty22]

Could someone tell me how rare it is to overclock a 460 1gb to 850mhz? Is it about like clocking a i7 920 to 4.5ghz?

Its about as hard as o/c a i7 920 to 3.7ghz, its That easy.
Thats why I disagree with it being 'hand picked silicon'. Just look at forums , TH, here , Hocp. Almost no hot questions/problems and most having fantastic o/c results. On launch day, there were numerous 820mhz models, Sonic platinum, Galaxy- Evga SC.
I have two, with one 920, stable, with two 890mhz core. Voltage adjustment is actually very limited compared to AMD cards.
.987-1.087 .

 

[Attic]

Its about as hard as o/c a i7 920 to 3.7ghz, its That easy.
Thats why I disagree with it being 'hand picked silicon'. Just look at forums , TH, here , Hocp. Almost no hot questions/problems and most having fantastic o/c results. On launch day, there were numerous 820mhz models, Sonic platinum, Galaxy- Evga SC.
I have two, with one 920, stable, with two 890mhz core. Voltage adjustment is actually very limited compared to AMD cards.
.987-1.087 .

On launch day there were few, not numerous 820mhz models. There were no models that did 850mhz. The EVGA SC clocked at 763mhz, not 820mhz. Sonic platinum was 800mhz I believe, but it was very hot and noisy (updated bios appeared to fix this), the sonic platinum card was caught ina bit of a scandel when it was found that the card Sonic sent to reviewers was built differently (better) than what was being sold at retailers. I bought one, and returned it after finding out this info and having HDMI issues. Bought evga SC instead.

The 460's are great o/c's, but 850 is an outlier value. My 460 did 800mhz fine, it would not do 850mhz. That card has been sent to EVGA for replacement because it died.

 

[apoppin]

Well, AT got tricked by NV. They did what NV wanted.
AT is under NV influence for some time already.

That is nonsense and rather rude.

As i reviewer. i also made a conscious choice to use the EVGA 460-OC card because it gives more information to the reader. This is not a card that i overclocked myself but it can be got from one of Nvidia's premier partners at about the same price as a HD 6870. It gives people more information to make a good choice for themselves.

i also ran the Galaxy GTX 460-1GB at stock clocks so that was also represented alongside the O/C'd GTX 460 and i also overclocked my HD 6870 and HD 6870 as far as i could reasonably and 6850 got a very good OC (900/1100 MHz).

Heck, Galaxy was backordered and my GTX 460-768M arrived this last THURSDAY - i held up publication to include even MORE information

So what is wrong with including a factory o/c'd card? Shall we hide information to make one side look better? To be fair, i have consistently included my overclocked HD 5870 PCS+ in my reviews since April.

 

[notty22]

On launch day there were few, not numerous 820mhz models. There were no models that did 850mhz. The EVGA SC clocked at 763mhz, not 820mhz. Sonic platinum was 800mhz I believe, but it was very hot and noisy (updated bios appeared to fix this), the sonic platinum card was caught ina bit of a scandel when it was found that the card Sonic sent to reviewers was built differently (better) than what was being sold at retailers. I bought one, and returned it after finding out this info and having HDMI issues. Bought evga SC instead.

The 460's are great o/c's, but 850 is an outlier value. My 460 did 800mhz fine, it would not do 850mhz. That card has been sent to EVGA for replacement because it died.

The Palit card was 800, the Galaxy is 820 and then
there are these:
GTX 460 1GB Ultra Charged 820mhz http://www.fudzilla.com/reviews/item/19826-tgts-magic-makes-povs-gtx-460-the-fastest-gtx-u460-around
Colorful iGame GTX 460 1 GB 820 mhz


Point of View GeForce GTX 460 TGT Beast 1 GB 855mhz

Axle GTX 460
Ace Edition 900mhz

They are hardly rare.

 

[apoppin]

No, he got suckered by a PR machine. He obviously felt some remorse about it, as evidenced by the followup article. If you are second guessing whether or not you should have done something, chances are you shouldn't have done it. He made a mistake, and he is pretty close to fully admitting a mistake, and hopefully the corrective action will take place.

No suckering. No mistake and i would do it again.

i included it also. i expect my readers are intelligent enough to understand that the EVGA card is factory overclocked and it is positioned by Nvidia at about the same price point as the HD 6870. i also included stock GTX 460 results and overclocked HD 6870 and HD 6850 (900/1100 MHz)

Since lst April, i regularly included my overclocked PowerColor HD 5870 PCS+ card in my evaluations and no one has said a word about me being unfair to Nvidia

 

[AnandThenMan]

I count 42 GTX 460's @newegg.com. The average clock is 736mhz. So 736mhz is about what the GPU yields at where it can have long term reliability and be backed by a warranty. An 850mhz version is obviously the high end of the bin.

Here's the clock speeds. Note that the forum software puts spaces in the values to prevent continuous text over a specific character count.

675,675,675,675,675,675,675,675,675,675,700,700,700,700,700,700,710,715,715,720,720,720,725,725,750,763,763,763,763,765,765,775,780,800,810,810,810,810,810,815,850,850

 

[apoppin]

I count 42 GTX 460's @newegg.com. The average clock is 736mhz. So 736mhz is about what the GPU yields at where it can have long term reliability and be backed by a warranty. An 850mhz version is obviously the high end of the bin.

Here's the clock speeds. Note that the forum software puts spaces in the values to prevent continuous text over a specific character count.

675,675,675,675,675,675,675,675,675,675,700,700,700,700,700,700,710,715,715,720,720,720,725,725,750,763,763,763,763,765,765,775,780,800,810,810,810,810,810,815,850,850

What is the PRICE of the EVGA oc'd card?

 

[NoQuarter]

I count 42 GTX 460's @newegg.com. The average clock is 736mhz. So 736mhz is about what the GPU yields at where it can have long term reliability and be backed by a warranty. An 850mhz version is obviously the high end of the bin.

Here's the clock speeds. Note that the forum software puts spaces in the values to prevent continuous text over a specific character count.

675,675,675,675,675,675,675,675,675,675,700,700,700,700,700,700,710,715,715,720,720,720,725,725,750,763,763,763,763,765,765,775,780,800,810,810,810,810,810,815,850,850

I counted 38 cuz I left the 4 'out of stock' options out. I made a pie chart when I was messing around with the other pie chart I posted earlier too:

 

[AnandThenMan]

^^ Nice work, very helpful. Beats my line of text. :awe:

 

[apoppin]

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

 

[tviceman]

I would have been fine with a review of the FTW card on the main page, we see quite a few reviews of OC'd cards. But to include it, for the first time, in a review of the new AMD cards was poor judgement.

Anand needs to do the right thing and scrub the FTW card from the review and make a separate posting for it.

I think that would have just drawn more attention to the fact that this card is every bit as competitive in price and performance as the hd6870.

The fact that it runs cooler and draws less power is proof enough that it is hand picked silicon. It is well known that the 460 pushes well with OC'ing but at a considerable heat/power expense.

It could also be that TSMC's 40nm process in regards to manufacturing the gtx460 has matured, and therefore newer gf104 chips coming out of the plant require less power to operate.

 

[AnandThenMan]

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

You keep asking the question, why don't you tell us?

 

[apoppin]

You keep asking the question, why don't you tell us?

my pleasure

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130575

The same price as the HD 6870

$240

Anand or i would be remiss not to include it

And it is a preview of what is to come from Nvidia to counter the AMD 600 series.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Wow just wow. The guys defending the shenanigans by AT and nvidia have also gotten strangely silent.

Either that or we don't spend all day posting in AT

The FTW offers great price / performance and was just featured in a major product review, so it shouldn't be surprising that newegg is now sold out. There will only be an "OMG SCANDAL!" if newegg doesn't ever get more of them.

FYI, the Sapphire and Gigabyte 6850 cards that were in stock there yesterday are also now OOS. Is that part of some AMD conspiracy?

Or does it just mean for both the 6850s and FTW that people were waiting to buy cards until after the reviews were out yesterday?

 

[AnandThenMan]

Unfortunately it's out of stock.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

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

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

 

[AnandThenMan]

FYI, the Sapphire and Gigabyte 6850 cards that were in stock there yesterday are also now OOS. Is that part of some AMD conspiracy?

Or does it just mean for both the 6850s and FTW that people were waiting to buy cards until after the reviews were out yesterday?

The good news is, the 6850's that are in stock have the same clock as the OOS units.

 

[Voo]

i included it also. i expect my readers are intelligent enough to understand that the EVGA card is factory overclocked and it is positioned by Nvidia at about the same price point as the HD 6870.

At least some other person who doesn't think readers are all idiots - from all those "But hey you can't expect people to understand what OCing is.. after dedicating half a page to it" I got really worried.
And while there may not be lots of cards at XYmhz, if you approximate the performance of any other card assuming a linear scaling you'll get a good enough result (obviously only works for lower OCed cards, which is also why it's just stupid to include lower cards instead of a high one), so that tells you something about all the other cards in between as well. And yes I'm positive that a linear approximation is something any tech inclined reader will be able to get right.. but then again I also assume that they've got the reading comprehension of a 12year old.


So again, is here really anybody who believes that the average informed reader who read the whole review didn't get the thing about the card being OCed?