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
Left 4 Dead
Introduced in 2004, Valve’s Source engine continues to live on in new Valve games. At this point even newer Source games like Left 4 Dead are rarely GPU limited to a significant degree, but we keep it on here due to the fact that we’re expecting at least one more souped-up Source game next year’s in Portal 2.
Left 4 Dead is an interesting title as when we throw a slow enough card at it, the CPU limitations give way for a new set of limitations: texturing. The GTX 460 could barely break away from the 5770 here, putting the GTS 450 in a particularly precarious position. Unfortunately for the GTS 450, it falls well below the 5770 and is even outdone by the 5750 by a few frames per second. At 87fps at 1680 this is largely academic, but it showcases where a worst-case scenario might lie.
On the plus side, even at 1920x1200 with 8x anti-aliasing, the GTS 450 still delivers better than 60fps, offering a solid example of why just about anything can play Source engine games at this point.
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just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
overclockers is the only review I've seen that shows the 250 in the mix and by the looks of it the 450 is a good 25-30% faster then the 250 on most games they tested with... what reviews are you reading?Personally I see no reason to rush out and buy two of these. A 460 is cheaper and to close in performance to justify it.
marraco - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gts-45...KG Bird - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Nice review, but answer one question for me. Why does the HD 5770 scale well in crossfire while others like the HD 5870 don't?heflys - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
That's one of the great mysteries that has plagued the Crossfire setup. Might just be crappy drivers. Who knows.....Jedi2155 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Do it right...and do it right the first time is the name of the game.OCNewbie - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Why would they compare a GTS 450 overclocked to a stock 5770? Wouldn't it make more sense to compare apples to apples, or in this case, OC'd versus OC'd? If you're gonna OC the GTS 450, then wouldn't it be reasonable to expect you'd also OC the 5770? Doesn't the 5770 OC quite well? This is probably even less of a debate, as far as which is the best performer, if you factor in OC'ng to BOTH cards.jabber - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
Most 5770 cards go up to 900/1300 pretty easy.Would leave the 450 even further in the dust however.
Belard - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Looks like AMD still has a solid product line of DX11 parts. So an end-user would still be looking at the older 210~250 cards for the $40~80 market.AMD could still easily reduce their prices across the board... but guess they're going to wait until the 6000 series ships and them blow out the 5000 series for cheap.
If the 6750 comes out at $120, but good deal faster than the 5770, that is going to hurt.
KingKuei - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
So what happened to the Release 260 drivers we were supposed to get this morning?Anand mentioned something about a bug in the driver related to OpenGL (or was it CUDA?) that they were going to fix before releasing it. Yet it's already late afternoon Monday and there's nothing on nVidia's site yet.
The big deal for me actually is related to SC2. SUPPOSEDLY, this is the driver release that fixes many of the issues related to framerate drops in SC2. I care more about that than the GTS 450!
Spazweasel - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
One thing to note: there is a low-profile (double slot) version of this card already available from Palit. I can't find a low-profile 5770. For low-profile cases, this is therefore likely the best you can currently get, and given it's a low-thermal-impact part, this makes sense.The ball is in your court, Powercolor/Sparkle!