Sparkle GeForce GTX 465 Video Card

Analysis and Conclusion:

One subject that comes up in a discussion of any GF100-based card is that of heat and noise. There’s no denying that the GTX 465 runs hot; even in our well-ventilated test case it idles around 70° C, and under heavy load it shot up to 92° C. What surprised me, however, was the noise level. At idle, the card’s exhaust was inaudible above the case fans. Even under maximum load, the card never rose above a low roar; while far from silent, it is nowhere near the infamous “Dustbuster” GeForce 5800, as some fanboys would claim. Subjectively speaking, the fan noise is fairly even and low-key, without the high-pitched whine that characterizes so many other stock coolers.

There are only two main gripes I have with this card, and only one is significant long-term. The first is the layout of the power connectors; for some inexplicable reason, the two 6-pin PCI-E power plugs are arranged with a different pinout than those found on ATI cards. My power supply has all the cables needed to supply the card directly, but this pinout forced me to utilize the MOLEX adapters. Given that four MOLEX plugs are needed to supply this card with the proper amount of power, this entailed a number of awkward compromises in cabling. If you plan to get this card, be sure your power supply has the needed plugs.

The second, and more significant, gripe has to do with display outputs. Where ATI’s 5800 series cards support at least three displays driven off of a single card, the GTX 465 can only drive two due to the lack of a DisplayPort output. While DisplayPort is still quite uncommon, this lack of forward-compatibility is unfortunate.

So, on to performance. While the GTX 465 is significantly less powerful than the GTX 480, it also comes at a significantly lower price. The benchmarks we showed you were all “worst-case” scenarios; we went out of our way to find the most punishing combination of settings possible for each test. With a slight reduction in detail settings, the GTX 465 easily produces 60+FPS averages in most modern games. The ~$270 price tag (at time of publishing) certainly places it above entry-level, but for that cost you get a very solid performer.