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

So there you have it. nVidia has a Fermi card in the market that makes perfect sense. While you can’t argue with the overall top speed of the GTX 480 (in the same way that we all know drag racing cars are amazing over a quarter mile), it really isn’t practical for most people to spend over £400 for a single card.

The GTX 465 succeeds in delivering Fermi to the masses. It’s that simple. This is a proper, next generation nVidia card at a much more affordable price.

Is it perfect? Far from it. nVidia has obviously hit a series of problems (not least of which is the dollar rate), which means that the GTX 465 is probably around £50 more expensive that it needs to be if it really wanted to shake AMD’s tree. It’s clearly a better product than the 5830 but by the same token, it’s clearly not more powerful than the 5850.

Each generation of graphic card produces its ‘golden child’. For nVidia, the 6800GT was one such card. Same for those lucky people who bought an early 8800GT card (which still plays many games well today).

At £199 inc vat, the GTX 465 would be nVidia’s ‘golden child’ of the Fermi generation. But it isn’t £199, it’s probably going to be just over £250. With the benchmarks we’ve seen, at that price point, it’s definitely worth buying if you are an nVidia fan, but it’s not a ‘must have’ product.

One note of warning to the Radeon fans out there. nVidia is investing an arm, leg and half a merchant bank in TWIMTBP titles for the second half of the year. Given nVidia’s success in influencing code over the years, don’t be surprised if the GTX 465 improves greatly. Improved drivers and a lower price could make this into a vintage card that just gets better with age. KitGuru is a wizened sommelier, with a nose for such things. This card is not a classic now, but has the potential.

KitGuru says: Fermi at a reasonable price, we like it. Want to know if we like it more when it's been overclocked? Stay tuned!

Discuss over here in our forums or just leave a quick message below.

Become a Patron!