NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 Review | 118 Data compared

The Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 is a budget-oriented graphics card launched at a stock price of £110, designed to compete directly against ATI’s HD 5770. In terms of pros, the GTS 450 manages playable frame rates at resolutions up to 1,920 x 1,200 with 4x anti-aliasing (AA) in lighter titles like Dirt 2, and it serves as a viable option for specific scenarios such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at 1,680 x 1,050 with 4x AA. Additionally, because Nvidia did not enforce a reference design, board partners have the freedom to implement custom cooling solutions, higher factory overclocks, and unique designs. However, the card suffers from notable performance cons, delivering frame rates roughly 30% lower than the GTX 460 768MB and generally lagging slightly behind the ATI HD 5770 in titles like STALKER: Call of Pripyat, Crysis, and Bad Company 2. Power efficiency and thermals are also underwhelming; when heavily overclocked, the card draws as much power as the superior GTX 460 768MB while running hotter, despite only featuring a single 6-pin power connector. Ultimately, the review concludes that the...

The TechPowerUp review of the NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 in SLI shows that pairing two cards offers high scalability, nearly doubling performance in modern games at high-definition resolutions. The configuration boasts efficient power usage, compatible with a 500W power supply, alongside low noise levels from custom coolers. Conversely, the review notes significant drawbacks, particularly that purchasing two cards at $130–$150 each is less cost-effective than buying a single, faster card, which offers more consistent performance. Physical limitations include high heat on the primary card and restricted multi-display support, which limits user functionality, according to the review.

The Guru3D GeForce GTS 450 SLI review provides a comprehensive evaluation of pairing two mainstream, DirectX 11 compatible graphics cards in a multi-GPU configuration. Originally released in September 2010, a dual-card setup combined the hardware power of 384 shader processors and two 1024MB memory partitions to transform a budget 1600x1200 graphics card into a capable performer at resolutions up to 1920x1200 with 4x or 8x anti-aliasing (AA). Guru3D compared this specific layout directly against its closest market competitor at the time, a dual Radeon HD 5770 configuration running in AMD CrossFireX mode, assessing gaming metrics across a suite of modern titles alongside power, noise, and temperature analyses. The final evaluation outlines clear advantages and limitations for builders evaluating this budget-oriented configuration. The primary pros highlighted are the exemplary SLI scaling performance that practically doubles rendering speeds in intensive games, hassle-free driver stability that works straight out of the box, and an exceptionally quiet profile under load that measures below 40 dBA. Additionally, the setup runs cool (under 80°C), draws a very reasonable 400 Watts peak system power from the wall,...

The ZOTAC GeForce GTS 450 AMP! Edition is a lower-midrange card featuring a significant factory overclock (873 MHz core, 1000 MHz memory) and a quiet, efficient cooler derived from the GTS 250. Pros include low power consumption, a compact design with full-sized native HDMI and DisplayPort, and solid performance for gaming at 1680x1050. However, the card faces cons in its high price point, which struggles to compete with the established ATI Radeon HD 5700 series in the budget market. It offers only a marginal performance increase over the GTS 250, and its limited multi-monitor capabilities reduce its long-term value.

The Palit GeForce GTS 450 Sonic Platinum is a factory-overclocked (930 MHz core) 40 nm card that provides solid performance for lower-midrange gaming and HTPC use thanks to very low noise levels and native HDMI support. It delivers full DirectX 11 capability alongside PhysX and CUDA support, offering decent manual overclocking headroom. However, the card faces stiff competition in the $140 market from the Radeon HD 5770, which generally offers better value, while the high 1.17V voltage required for the overclock increases power consumption. Additionally, performance over older cards like the GTS 250 is limited, and output flexibility is restricted to two displays.

The Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 (GV-N450-1GI) is a decent mid-range graphics card priced at £100 including VAT. Based on Nvidia's 450 chipset, this card features a GPU clock speed of 810MHz and 1GB of RAM running at 902MHz across a 128-bit bus, which yields a memory bandwidth of 57.7GB/s. In benchmark tests, the card shows respectable performance by pushing 52.2fps in Call of Duty 4 at Full HD, and achieving a playable 29.4fps in Crysis at 1,680×1,050, which bumps up to 35.5fps when anti-aliasing is disabled. Physically, it requires a single PCI-Express 6-pin power connector, draws a maximum of 160W under load, and features two DVI outputs alongside a mini HDMI connector. The card's main pros include its stable and cool operation, reasonable power consumption that avoids the need for a new power supply, and capable baseline performance for its £100 price bracket. However, its major cons lie in its hardware limitations and local design flaws; it has half the memory bus width of the GTX 460, and its attached cooler blows hot air directly into the PC case...

TechSpot's review of the $129 Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 highlights it as a power-efficient, budget-focused DirectX 11 card designed for resolutions between 1280x1024 and 1680x1050. The Palit Sonic Platinum variant demonstrated excellent, quiet cooling, while 2-way SLI performance scaled impressively, offering up to an 88% boost in certain titles. However, the card is restricted by a narrow 128-bit memory bus and often struggled with demanding titles, delivering unplayable framerates in games like Just Cause 2 at 1680x1050. Due to strong competition from AMD's established HD 5700 series, the GTS 450 was considered a late arrival with performance that, while solid, rarely bested the Radeon HD 5770.

The Guru3D GeForce GTS 450 Review Roundup evaluates NVIDIA's budget-oriented, DirectX 11 mid-range graphics card, which launched at approximately 120 EUR. Powered by the GF106 GPU, the reference card features 192 shader processors, 1 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit interface, and clocks in at 783 MHz core / 1566 MHz shader / 900 MHz memory. It is explicitly targeted at cost-conscious gamers playing at resolutions up to 1600x1200. The comprehensive article tests ten different models from various board partners—including ASUS, Gigabyte, EVGA, and MSI—most of which feature custom dual-slot coolers and factory overclocks. Key Pros and Cons Pros: Excellent thermal and noise design: Board partner custom cooling solutions, such as the Sparkle Calibre Accelero and Inno3D iChill Freezer, deliver incredibly quiet, near-silent acoustics while keeping load temperatures exceptionally low (between 40°C and 45°C). Strong value and software features: It offers a fair price-to-performance ratio for entry-level gaming and includes premium NVIDIA ecosystem perks like PhysX, 3D Vision Surround, and robust multi-GPU driver scaling in SLI. Substantial overclocking headroom: The card handles significant manual frequency adjustments, and variants like...

The Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 marks the official transition of Nvidia's mainstream lineup from the aging three-year-old G92 architecture to the newer, Fermi-based GF106 graphics processor. Built as essentially half of a GF104 chip (the GPU behind the well-received GTX 460), the GF106 architecture on this card features 192 shader cores, 4 Polymorph engines, and 32 texture units. However, despite early marketing diagrams indicating a fully intact core, the silicon is deliberately handicapped by Nvidia, leaving one ROP partition turned off and limiting the card to 16 ROPs and a narrow 128-bit memory bus. A major benefit of the card is its architectural leap forward, offering solid DirectX 11 capability and robust tessellation performance compared to older generation hardware. It also provides excellent scaling potential when paired in an SLI configuration, much like its bigger sibling, the GTX 460. On the downside, the card falls flat as a standalone option due to its aggressive backend hardware cuts; the restricted 128-bit memory bus causes a massive performance bottleneck when anti-aliasing is enabled. Furthermore, at its $130 launch price, the GTS 450...