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
The Test
For today’s launch, we’re looking at the NVIDIA reference card along with samples from Asus, Palit, EVGA, and Sparkle (under their Calibre brand). For the sake of brevity we’ve split off our in-depth look at those cards in to a companion article, but we’re still including them in the charts for this GTS 450 review. 3 of these cards are overclocked to around 920MHz, so this provides a good idea of where the performance of top overclocked cards will lie.
Since NVIDIA gave us a pair of reference cards, we’re also looking a SLI performance. As GTS 450 is a mainstream card we consider buying a larger card to be a better solution than SLIing lesser cards (unless you need surround vision, at least) but this is something to consider if you have an SLI-capable motherboard and may add a second card in the future.
We’ve also added a 9800 GTX to the mix to showcase G92 performance, as we don’t have a GTS 250 available. It shouldn’t be used as a proxy as GTS 250 cards are clocked higher and most have additional RAM, but it offers a glimpse of where GTS 450 stands compared to G92 based cards.
Finally, we’re using the latest AMD Catalyst drivers for our Radeon HD 5700 series benchmarks: 10.8b.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard: | Asus Rampage II Extreme |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Summit (120GB) |
| Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 5970 AMD Radeon HD 5870 AMD Radeon HD 5850 AMD Radeon HD 5830 AMD Radeon HD 5770 AMD Radeon HD 5750 AMD Radeon HD 4890 AMD Radeon HD 4870 1GB AMD Radeon HD 4850 AMD Radeon HD 3870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 Asus ENGTS450 Top Palit GeForce GTS 450 Sonic Platinum EVGA GeForce GTS 450 FTW Sparkle Calibre X450G |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 197.13 NVIDIA ForceWare 257.15 Beta NVIDIA ForceWare 258.80 Beta NVIDIA ForceWare 260.52 Beta AMD Catalyst 10.3a AMD Catalyst 10.8b |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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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.