Home / Tech News / Featured Tech Reviews / Zotac GTX 465 Review: Full-on, affordable Fermi?

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

The makers of Metro 2033 – 4A Games was founded by people who split off from GSC Game World a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, in particular Oles' Shiskovtsov and Aleksandr Maksimchuk, the programmers who worked on the development of X-Ray engine used in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. There is some contention regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine (as claimed by Sergiy Grygorovych, the founder of GSC Game World, as well as users who have seen the 4A Engine SDK screenshots, citing visual similarities, shared resources, and technical evaluation of the pre-release 4A Engine demo conducted at the request of GSC Game World), or whether the engine is an original development (as claimed by 4A Games and Oles' Shiskovtsov in particular, who claims it would have been impractical to retrofit the X-ray engine with console support). 4A Engine features Nvidia PhysX support, enhanced AI, and a console SDK for Xbox 360. The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as “a love letter to PC gamers” because of the developers' choice to “make the PC version [especially] phenomenal”.

We tested Metro 2033 at the native 1080p resolution of our Panasonic 600hz Plasma Television. DX11, 16af with AAA. We benchmarked with in-game ‘very high' settings as well as ‘medium'.

Testing Metro with all the eye candy cranked at 1080p proves an issue for all the cards on test today with the HD5850 putting in the best showing. It is still reasonably unplayable however so we turned down the settings to ‘normal' within the in game panels. Doing so results in a much more playable experience for both the HD 5850 and the GTX465 – both cards remain playable throughout most of our testing area with only occasional dips into sub 25fps. We recorded a section of gameplay with the GTX 465 at normal settings with the same 1080p resolution.

The results, considering the high resolution are very impressive for the GTX465 with most of the gameplay hovering between 30-32fps. For a truly immersive experience we would suggest slightly lowering the resolution however.

Become a Patron!

Check Also

Our Top 3 OLED Monitors of 2024!

We pick our top three OLED monitors for 2024!

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.

    http://comprarbaratosmoviles.com/moviles-octa-core

    http://movilesbaratoschinos.com/comprar-moviles-chinos