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This review was very interesting because it has proved one thing – all these cards on test today are fantastic value for money. A few years ago you just could not have walked away with a card delivering anything close to these performance levels for £100.
Buying a cheap and cheerful video card in 2010 is not a difficult proposition and if you ended up with any of these cards on test today we are confident you would be a happy customer.
The eVGA GTS450 is a very solid card which is not only facing heavy competition from the HD5750/5770 solutions, but from its bigger brother, the awesome GTX460. We do like the GTS450 however as it offers decent performance, is cool running, doesn't make much noise and is able to handle modern day engines at 1680×1050, and even some at 1080p.
The Fermi Tessellation performance is currently much superior when compared with the AMD hardware and we can see this with the Heaven Benchmark and the Stone Giant Benchmark. Sadly very few games are utilising this technology so nVidia are unable to reap the benefits of their hardware design. As expected the nVidia card scored the win with Far Cry 2 and Tom Clancy HAWX.
eVGA have increased the core clocks a little from reference speeds but don't advertise it as an overclocked model, so you are getting a little extra performance for your money. The unfortunate thing is that this card is the most expensive on test today, retailing for £105.99 inc vat. The bundle is also rather weak.
We score this card as an 8/10 and it earns our ‘Worth Buying' Award. It is a good value for money purchase, especially for nVidia fans on a tight budget.
The Powercolor HD5750 Low Profile Edition is an unusual design that we grew to like. The card certainly looks different and the dual fan solution manages to improve the heat sink ‘return to idle' state when compared with the XFX single slot solutions. The only issue is that the Low Profile cooler does generate a little more noise, which while not hugely negative has to count slightly against it, especially as this card looks to be targeting a media audience.
When compared with the other cards today in the £100 price point, it was always going to be fighting a losing battle as Powercolor have supplied it at the reference HD5750 clock speeds. It overclocks rather well too, so it seems like a slight oversight that Powercolor didn't supply it with even a modest boost. It certainly would have helped with our game benchmarks results.
We score this card as a 8/10 and it earns our ‘Worth Buying' Award. It is a good value for money purchase retailing under £100. The cooler is a very unusual design and we like the fact you can remove the VGA cable to add in the supplied low profile bracket.
The XFX HD5750 XXX is another fantastic product from XFX, the single slot cooler is both reasonably quiet and keeps the card just as cool as the deeper, two fan based Powercolor solution. This is even more impressive as the card is supplied with very good overclocks on both the core and memory.
On a performance level, the XFX HD5750 XXX held onto the shirttails of the GTS450 and even outperformed it in Mafia 2, AvP and Resident Evil 5. The generous overclocks always managing to generate a handful more frame rates in the leading engines.
The bundle is also the most impressive as XFX are including a free downloadable copy of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This has been out for a while now, but for £95 inc vat this bundle is noticeably superior to either the eVGA or Powercolor offerings. We certainly weren't expecting a free game with a graphics card in this price range.
The single slot cooler is capable, and while the return to idle state takes a little longer than the other cards we tested today, this doesn't really make much of a difference in the ‘real world'.
We score this card as a 9/10 and it earns our ‘Must Have' award. For £95 there is not a better GFX on the market right now and the card exhibits no weaknesses. The bundle is the icing on the cake. If you need a cheap video card with DX11 support and decent overclocking capabilities, then this should be top of your list.
KitGuru says: You can't go wrong with any of the cards on test today. They are all great buys and there has never been a better time to purchase a budget model.
It is really good to see lower end cards reviewed here, the high end boards are great, but I doubt many people can afford them.
That XFX board is great. looks like a bargain to me.
This market is really so friggin sweet right now. anyone with a semi decent sized monitor, this is all they need. im not a gaming fanatic so maybe people wouldnt agree.
Nah its a good point Tom. if someone has a 1920×1200 screen, a 460GTX is all they need, unless they want crazy performance. 1080p, or 1680 then the cards on test today are great. the low end is so strong right now, it has to be killing high end cards sales.
I actually might pick one of these up for my kid brother for christmas. we are all putting a system together for him. cant believe how good the performance is for the price.
XFX and Sapphire, only cards to buy IMO
450GTS is good but I dont think its a dominating product like the 460 was. its killed 5830, and even hurt 5850’s. The 450 is a good board but the overclocked ATI cards are really going punch for punch.
I like that single slot design. the powercolor card is different but the shape looks weird.
Fantastic review, loads of detail and useful info.
wonder how long it will be for other sites to copy the return to idle concept 😉
GTS450 is a good card but I agree, it isnt dominating like the 460 is. the price is good and I like evga, this would be my choice out of the three, mainly cause I dont like catalyst.
@ Tri Color – Catalyst is great now, not a problem, I wouldnt let the drivers put you off the hardware.
@ Stefan – nah, they still suck. my buddy has a 5850 and the cat alyst 10.8 broke his HDMI scaling and every time he boots up he has to fix it. same with Cat 10.9. they are still a poor driver compared to nvidia forceware.