MSI N450GTS Cyclone 1GB Review

1. Introduction2. The MSI N450GTS Cyclone 1GB3. Testing Methodology4. Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.15. 3DMark Vantage6. Stone Giant Benchmark7. Resident Evil 58. Tom Clancy H.A.W.X.9. Mafia 210. Aliens V Predator11. Far Cry 212. Metro 203313. HQV Benchmark 2.114. Power Consumption15. Thermal Dynamics16. Acoustics Performance17. Overclocking18. Closing Thoughts19. View All Pages

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

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