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
Crysis: Warhead
Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead, still the toughest game in our benchmark suite.Even 2 years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question.
Ideally, NVIDIA would like the GTS 450 to be able to play everything at 1680x1050 at high settings with 4x anti-aliasing. Crysis of course eludes this, just as it does all attempts to play it at a decent framerate. Even the factory overclocked cards can’t muster 30fps here. For that we have to drop our settings to Gamer quality without AA.
Overall, at reference clocks the GTS 450 doesn’t fare so well here. At our standard 1680 setting it just falls to the Radeon HD 5750, and is miles away from the 5770. At Gamer quality it switches positions with the 5750, but still has quite a gap with the 5770. However the overclocked cards fare much better here, and they can bring the GTS 450 up to parity with the 5770. Since the cheapest 5770s are selling for no more than the GTS 450, ideally it (or its overclocked variants) need to be able to keep up with the 5770.
When it comes to minimum framerates the GTS 450 does a bit better here by edging out the 5750, but it takes a factory overclocked card to beat the 5770.
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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.