Final thoughts and rating
NVIDIA's release of the $129 (£99) GeForce GTS 450 GPU paves the way for the company to address a larger proportion of the PC games-playing market. The new GPU harnesses the Fermi architecture's modular design to bring a truly mainstream part to the market. GeForce GTS 450 is practically half a 'perfect' GeForce GTX 460 1,024MB GPU, and as such it is equipped with 192 CUDA cores, a 128-bit memory bus, and GDDR5 memory.With AMD's near-year-old Radeon HD 5750 firmly in the crosshairs, both in terms of cost and performance, GeForce GTS 450's gaming credentials are generally analogous to AMD's mid-range offering. This means that both will play most modern games at a 1,680x1,050 resolution with medium-detail eye-candy turned on. Putting the numbers into wider context, our benchmarks also show that, on average, GTS 450 provides around 70 per cent of the performance exhibited by the recently price-reduced (£120) GeForce GTX 460 768MB, which is rumoured to be made end of life soon.
While NVIDIA matches AMD on gaming performance, the company's latest GPU doesn't do so well with respect to energy efficiency, drawing, as a system, some 26W more than its immediate AMD competition. What's more, we're unlikely to see single-slot GTS 450 cards any time soon, given the power-draw, so folk looking for a decent card to house in a small form factor system may need to wait a while.
Appreciating the frequency potential that exits in mid-range Fermi cards, NVIDIA is giving partners carte blanche to launch overclocked models from the get-go. Perhaps the best example of the GTS 450's scope lies with the ASUS ENGTS450 TOP - accelerated from the default 783MHz/3,608MHz clocks to 925MHz/4,000MHz. The extra speed puts it in touch with a Radeon HD 5770 GPU, but the downside of such grand overclocking is power-draw that's higher than a GeForce GTX 460 768MB's.
The mainstream graphics market is highly sensitive to price. NVIDIA and its partners need to ensure that GeForce GTS 450 cards are priced at below Radeon HD 5750 1,024MB levels, to pull potential purchasers away from AMD. This dictates an at-launch price of under £100 for basic models and not much more than £100 for factory-clocked cards, frankly, because the excellent GTX 460 768MB now retails from £120.
The bottom line is that the GTS 450 1,024MB GPU is a welcome addition to the mid-range fold if priced sensibly. It carries all of Fermi's goodness, albeit naturally pared down, and is backed by NVIDIA's 3D Vision and PhysX goodness. We're a little less keen on super-highly-clocked partner cards; they're compromised by high power-draw and pricing that's a little too close to GTX 460 768MB's. Perhaps NVIDIA will solve this mid-range conundrum with the release of a full-fat GF106 die, that is, GTS 450 cards equipped with a 192-bit memory interface and 24 ROPs. We wait with bated breath.
The Good
Solid performance for a
£100 card
Decent overclocking headroom
ASUS card is highly overclocked
and provides voltage adjustment
The Bad
ASUS card has unenviable
power-draw characteristics
GTS 450 not much better than year-old AMD GPU
GeForce GTX 460 768MB offers stern competition, priced at
£120-plus
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS Where2Buy
TBC.
HEXUS Right2Reply
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