NVIDIA’s GeForce GTS 450: Pushing Fermi In To The Mainstream
by Ryan Smith on September 13, 2010 12:02 AM EST- Posted in
- NVIDIA
- Fermi
- GeForce GTS 450
- GF106
- GPUs
Closing Thoughts
After the launch of the GTX 460 series, we had been hoping to see NVIDIA continue to drive forward with the same level of hyper-competitiveness that we saw with the 460. In some ways that has happened today, and in some ways that hasn’t.
The GTX 460 was a card that made the comparable AMD card obsolete and brought significantly improved performance to the $200 market. NVIDIA had a card built to hit one of AMD’s weak spots, and it struck beautifully. The same cannot be said for the GTS 450 however. It’s not targeting an AMD weak spot – instead it’s going right for AMD’s stronghold that is the 5700 series, and this is a much harder job.
Had AMD kept the price of the Radeon HD 5770 at $140+, there would have been a well-defined place – however small – for the GTS 450. But instead for the time being AMD dropped the price of the 5770 to $130 and brought it in to direct competition with the GTS 450. The GTS 450 isn’t competition for the 5770; at best it’s as fast, at the worst it’s as slow as a 5750.
What’s funny is that in a roundabout way we have NVIDIA to thank for this, as their pricing tactics with the GTS 450 and GTX 460 made this price drop happen. So in a sense NVIDIA is definitely competitive on pricing. But what this gives us is a situation similar to the GTX 470 launch – a competent card priced right between two competition cards with a performance level that meant it was competitively priced, but not aggressively priced. It’s aggression that’s missing from today’s launch, the GTS 450 simply isn’t aggressive enough on a price/performance basis.
Ultimately the card is not so slow that we would completely write it off; if you need to be in the NVIDIA ecosystem for whatever reason you could grab the GTS 450 and be satisfied without feeling like you’re missing too much by not going with the Radeon HD 5770. But if you’re a free agent and have no attachment to NVIDIA’s ecosystem, there’s not a game we benchmarked today where the 5770 was more than a hair’s width slower. Thus at NVIDIA’s new $130 price point the card to get is not the NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450, it’s the AMD Radeon HD 5770. It’s a bit warmer and a bit louder than the reference GTS 450, but the performance gap is hard to argue with.
Quickly, we’ll also touch on the factory overclocked cards. A good factory overclock can wipe out the 5770’s performance advantage, the only problem is that factory overclocked cards carry a price premium that make them more expensive than the GTS 450, and by extension the Radeon HD 5770. The cheapest factory overclocked card we looked at today was the Asus ENGTS450 Top, which provided 5770-like performance for only $10 more. Ultimately our nod still goes to the 5770 because it’s $10 cheaper, but at this point we’re basing things on what amounts to little more than lunch money. For $140 you could grab the Asus card or a similarly overclocked card and be quite happy with the purchase.
Finally, there's the GTX 460 factor. With the recent price drop to $170, there's only a $40 difference between the GTX 460 768MB and the GTS 450 - and less if we're comparing it to an overclocked GTS 450. The GTS 450 is at that point on the price-performance curve where an extra dollar goes a long way (and the 5770 is just as guilty of this). If you can only spend $130-$140 then what you see is what you can get, otherwise a GTX 460 768MB is much more than a simple step up, offering upwards of 50% more performance for at most 30% more in price. Given those conditions the GTX 460 768MB is in a sweet spot that makes both the GTS 450 and Radeon HD 5770 pale in comparison.
Wrapping things up, we still have 1 more NVIDIA launch to go with: GF108. With the basic details of the chip already announced earlier this month with NVIDIA’s mobile GPU launch we already have a solid idea of how the chip is built. At this point it’s safe to assume that when it launches it will be going up against AMD’s 5500/5600 series, so stay tuned for that battle.
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just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Here in Canada I haven't really seen any 5850's priced under 300 yet and most are up in the 330 range.. The 1G 460 sit's in the 220-240 (no price drops for us) so it's a tempting alternative for many (I think)I also believe the 5850 will be a $200 card sometime in the near future. It's been selling way above it's suggested retail price (at launch) and when that happens it will be harder to consider the 460 as a viable alternative. I can't see it being sold at $150 (for the 1G variants) any time soon... so only fan's of Nvidia would consider it if it's priced in the 5850s range.
jabber - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Big thing is...who actually bought a 5830?When it came out everyone said it was a pointless card so big whoop, Nvidia's 460 beats a card that should never have been released in the first place.
Bit like saying "our car out performed the Ford Edsel!"
If you want middle of the road performance you get a 5770, if you want a better boost you get the 5850.
just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
It was only a pointless card because of it's price... Originally it should have been alot cheaper but supply and demand has inflated the prices of most of Amd's 5X lineup. Sitting near a $100 more then the 5770 is what made it a hard sell.erple2 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Sure it did - the 768MB version fo the 460 now gave you 5830 performance for > 10% less money. To me, that makes it sound like the 5830 was now "obsoleted" by the 460 series. The 1 GB card was significantly faster at the same price point, and the 768 MB version was just as fast, but significantly cheaper. Both using less power, noise and heat.Isn't that essentially what defines "obsoletes"?
SandmanWN - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Throughout the entire test suite the 5850 is within 4-6 frames of the 470. In two it makes it to 8 and 10 frames more. Given you need an extra 100W's on your power supply and the additional cost associated with that just to get that tiny fraction of output, the statement seems fanboyish. AT should be better than this.just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
What does the 470 have to do with this? Most of us all agree that the 465/470/480 are all heat scores with insane power draws.. the 460 addressed that and came in at a price point that hit a sweet spot.. bringing alot of the 470/480's strengths and none of it's weaknesses to the table. Only real complaint I've seen for the 460 is the mini hdmi.IceDread - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
You are missing my point.By saying "and it struck beautifully" implies that you are cheering for the nvidia team. It would be a different thing if he wrote "and it struck hard" or something like that.
adonn78 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
I read another review, damn my cheating heart. That stated the SLI scalling ont hese cards were impressive. You got 2 GTS 450 cards but no SLI?Stuka87 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Er, every single benchmark shows the GTS-450 SLI scores. They are marked in green (like the regular GTS-450).marraco - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Other web sites show that the 450 is slower than the 250.It's strange when the 250 has 128 shaders, and the 450 has 192.... and the 450 has DDR5 vs DDR3 in the 250.
It looks like the texture units bottleneck this design.
Even more strange is that I could not find the 250 on this article charts.
I don't see the 450 as price competitive with the radeons, except as SLI setup. It would be more valuable if 3-SLI way were allowed, and I guess that is not the case, because the photos shown only a single SLI connector.
The SLI setups are unbeatable against the radeons price/performance. Maybe nVidia should design cheap, energy-efficient chips so a card manufacturer can pack 10 video chips on a single card.