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With the launch of the GTS450, those with around £100 ($150) to spend on a new graphics card are in for a treat. Not only is the new nVidia product exciting on paper but we are also seeing some price movement from AMD that's going to make the whole market segment very interesting indeed. With prices moving faster than quicksand, will the GTS450 also manage to steal market share from AMD's golden 5770? Today we find out.
The vast majority of graphic cards sold in the world cost less than £100 ($150/€120). The GTS450 has been created to satisfy the demands of gamers on a strict budget. Internally, nVidia is calling GTS450 ‘The Sniper‘. In their own words ‘With fewer hardware units at its disposal, it doesn't have the firepower of our GeForce GTX class GPUs. Instead the GTS450 has to be precise, targeted, to accomplish its mission. Just like a Sniper'.
Corny analogies aside, the price conscious GTS450 is supplied with 1GB of GDDR5 on a 128 bit memory interface and is brought to market to replace the GTS 250. Nvidia are marketing it to go head to head with AMD's successful HD5750.
Due to recent GTX460 price drops, partners are releasing standard clocked models around £100, with overclocked models aiming to hit retail around £120 inc vat. Whatever else happens, this could very well be a great ‘bargain basement' win for the punter … yes you.
We really don't like receiving reference boards for our reviews (although sometimes we have no option) as we know most people who read KitGuru want enhanced third party models. Fortunately MSI kindly supplied one of their Cyclone 1GB cards with a custom cooler and overclocked core and memory speeds.
| GTS 450 1GB | MSI N460GTS 1GB | |
| Graphics Processing Clusters | 1 | 1 |
| Streaming Multiprocessors | 4 | 4 |
| CUDA Cores | 192 | 192 |
| Texture Units | 32 | 32 |
| ROP Units | 16 | 16 |
| Graphics Clock | 783 Mhz | 850 Mhz |
| Processor Clock (CUDA Cores) | 1566 Mhz | 1700 Mhz |
| Memory Clock (Clock Rate/Data Rate) | 902 Mhz | 1000 Mhz |
| L2 Cache Size | 256KB | 256KB |
| Total Video Memory | 1024MB GDDR5 | 1024MB GDDR5 |
| Memory Interface | 128 bit | 128 bit |
| Fabrication Process | 40nm | 40nm |
| Transistor Count | 1.17 Billion | 1.17 Billion |
| Connectors | 2x Dual Link DVI-I
1Mini HDMI |
2x Dual Link DVI-I
1Mini HDMI |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 6 pin | 1 x 6 pin |
| Recommended Power Supply | 400W | 400W |
| Thermal Threshold | 95c | 95c |
Seems ilke a really good little card from nvidida again
performance seems close to HD5770, with these overclocked solutions anyway
seems a little too late to me, with ATIs new range around the corner
seems a little too late with atis new range around the corner
It is a very good card to be fair and I think the review shows that. even though these are overclocked boards, it seems that reference solutions with this product are thin on the ground ! I see a few partner cards are clocked at 930mhz core !!
It just seems to me, and no offense to nvidia that this is just too late, I hear strong rumours that new ATI series might even hit in a months time !
Whats with the GTX460 pricing? some of the 768mb cards this morning dropped to the same price as overclocked 450s?! they are pricing themselves out of the game. total mess.
I am not that impressed with this. 460 is the way to go, still. especially as the prices of 460 have dropped so much.
IT is the biggest issue with the product. the timing is all wrong. 6 months ago, it would have been great. in september 2010? im not sold. its on the tail end of ATI’s last generation really which have been selling all year.
I hate knocking a company cause the 450 is a very good card with great tessellation performance, as all fermi cards have, but its not the knockout punch in this sector that nvidia would want. I spent all morning reading reviews and while some always will say different things in certain games and tests, the overall view is that the ATI cards are still competitive. thats not really good considering the difference between launch times.
bit of a non event really, everyone is waiting on the next generation cards now.
Its a good enough card, well priced, but very boring really 🙁
Tessellation performance is excellent as expected, but until more games use it, its just a selling point for nvidia. Nothing really uses it right now. metro 2033 a little.
I wonder why nVidia feel the need to restrict SLi on these lower end boards where you can only use the 450/460 in 2xSLi? Compared to ATi, whose 5750/5770’s are still Quadfire enabled. Especially since SLi seems to scale so well at the moment, I wonder if 4×450’s would completely hammer 3 or 4 5770’s? And I’d LOVE to see 3 or 4 460’s in SLi.
Crossfire X that is, not Quadfire.