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 |