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Zotac GTX 465 Review: Full-on, affordable Fermi?

Overclocking the GTX 465 proved to be extremely difficult as none of the applications available supported it – we did however get lucky with a beta of the Zotac Firestorm overclocking software. Although it was a little ‘crash happy', it did manage to let us overclock the card.

Using the Firestorm suite we were able to push the card to 820mhz on the core and 3700mhz on the memory. We will be delving into overclocking performance on the GTX 465 at a later date and putting it head to head with other overclocked cards from various partners.

For temperature testing, we set our air conditioned lab to 25 degrees and the Silverstone Raven 2’s case fans to ‘high’, ensuring maximum air flow across all of the components.

I have been singing the praises of the Raven 2 since it was released as it is one of the most thermally effective cases on the market with the tri 180mm fans blowing directly  from bottom to top. It appears even nVidia agree with me according to their reference reviewers guide.

At idle the card runs at a very comfortable 40c and to test load we ran a loop of Crysis Warhead (max settings) which recorded a final temperature of 82c. When overclocked this rose to 86 under load. Just to put that figure into perspective, at 82 degrees the GTX 480 would be reaching for a jumper – scared that it was about to catch a cold.

The card remained reasonably silent inside our chassis throughout all our testing. However, just out of interest, we manually cranked the GFX fan to 100% – and recorded noise of over 70db. Thankfully, under real world conditions, it never reaches this – being no louder than a reference 5850 card in normal use.

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45 comments

  1. Thats actually a really good card. thanks for the unbiased and impartial results 🙂

  2. its still quite hot for a mid range card but compared to the higher end models its pretty cool. Nice performance.

  3. 5850 is definiately faster overall but it holds onto it pretty well. if you dont like ATI drivers this is a good option.

  4. Interesting results – but the pricing is off. thanks for explaining why though, I will wait for it to drop a little over the next month. my next card!

  5. I was expecting the 465GTX to score a little better, but its clearly outclassed by the 5850. That said, for nvidia fans this is a good option, just seems a little too little , too late.

  6. Funny text in places, gave me a chuckle. 5850 is a better card which this review verifies but the 465 is better than I thought it was going to be.

  7. 260 is too much money for this. 200 quid id be tempted. nothing more.

  8. excuse my english – 255 will be how much euros?

  9. bit disappointed, thought it would be the class leader

  10. drop the price nvidia, get into the real world !

  11. good review, informative. it seems to hold its own again the strong AMD competition, noise seems ok, temps a bit hot, but not like 480. all in all a pretty good card, even if its late to the table.

  12. better than I expected, nice card. drop the price.

  13. I am not really that impressed . it should be beating the 5850, its more expensive, later to market and runs hotter while consuming more power. Why is everyone so positive about this?

  14. I agree with long jumper – why is this being received so positively?

  15. because ATI drivers suck, thats why. people are prepared to pay a little extra for forceware, its well known 🙂

  16. Thats actually quite a good card, nice performer. Temps are still a bit worrying for me to be honest, I don’t have a great case at home.

  17. 5850 is still better and actually cheaper, dont know what nvidia are thinking

  18. Nice nice nice, I like it. I prefer nvidia cards to ATI and this is next on my list. ill do some shopping around to see if I can get a bit of a deal on one.

  19. I was expecting this to be crap, its not bad. still cant believe how hot they get though, thats really poor design methodology from nv

  20. surprised kitguru got a sample after all the ermm interesting nvidia news reportage lately.

    Still have to say, good unbiased review. seems to be a capable board. good job,

  21. Its pretty close to HD5850, which is good enough for me. ill have one 🙂

  22. very nice, thanks

  23. too hot for me, i like my cards cold. will wait on third party cooler to come out. hopefully by then the price has dropped also as they cost a bit much right now. good to see why they cost more though in the conclusion.

  24. not a flop at all. I bet KitGuru are gutted they couldnt slag it off 😉

  25. im impressed with the review, thanks for the coverage so soon.

  26. Overpriced, too hot. no thanks.

  27. This is a total flop. its far too late and offers no performance improvements over 5850, it actually costs more too ! WTF!

  28. wise up NV, almost 90 c under load when overclocked? could double up as a good egg frier. toasty, far too toasty

  29. AMD really have this market still in their pocket. If NV drop the price by £30-50 quid then its a different story, but its still AMDs market.

  30. You AMD fanbois need to shut up. this is a wicked card, the review shows its actually very close in some and WINS IN OTHERS! I wouldnt touch AMD with a 10 foot pole, cause the drivers such azz.

  31. Sam, NVIDIA recently had drivers which bricked cards. I don’t think AMD got to that level.

  32. @Vivian: My guess is that it will be almost the same from $ to £ to €

  33. 300 euros I hear.

  34. Good review – I wouldnt touch ATI cards with a bargepole. last card I had the drivers were absolutely shite

  35. The ATI drivers are really good now, I prefer them for watching movies on my tv for instance, the controls work so much better for vibrance, noise reduction and sharpness.

  36. You probably just forgot to test power usage, but this card almost takes as much juice as the 470.

    I bet NVIDIA is glad you forgot.

  37. I actually didn’t get time to start running power consumption tests however nvidia have rated the card at 200watts against the 470 at 215watts. 480 is 250 watts. Interestingly they say “TDP is a measure of maximum power draw over time in real world applications. It does not represent the maximum power draw in pathological cases such as Furmark.”

  38. @Zardon: How does one achieve the proper FurMark anyway ?

  39. AMD really have this market still in their pocket. If NV drop the price by £30-50 quid then its a different story, but its still AMDs market.

    Thats actually quite a good card, nice performer. Temps are still a bit worrying for me to be honest, I don’t have a great case at home.

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