NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 Launch Roundup: Asus, EVGA, Palit, and Calibre Overclocked and Reviewed

Closing Thoughts

Wrapping up our look at vendor cards for today's GeForce GTS 450 launch, we’ll start with the Calibre X450G. The Twin Turbo Pro cooler keeps the card’s GPU at amazingly low temperatures, and while we appreciate low temperatures to a point, we can’t find the usefulness in being able to keep a GPU that cool when overclocking is held back by the VRMs. It’s louder and slower than the rest of the cards in this roundup, and the warped PCB is the final straw. There are other, better performing cards in this roundup that are faster, cheaper, and not at risk of long-term damage.

This brings us to the EVGA GeForce GTS 450 FTW. While it too has a slightly warped PCB due to a lack of spacers on our sample, it’s not a problem here like it is with the Calibre card. It’s built on the NVIDIA reference design so we know it’s a solid card, but at the same time this is a pitfall. Its smaller heatsink means it can’t dissipate heat as well as the other cards, so it gets a bit warmer and a bit louder than they do. And EVGA’s excellent overclocking tools are nice to see, but as a FTW card is already heavily overclocked, there’s not a lot of headroom left to play with, and as a result these tools aren’t quite as useful here. EVGA’s distinguishing feature is going to be their legendary support and their step-up program along with the card’s strong factory overclock, which may be enough for some people while other people will want to look at the Palit and Asus cards.

Finally we have the Asus ENGTS450 Top and Palit GeForce GTS 450 Sonic Platinum, both of which turned in top overclocks and both of which set high marks for temperature and noise respectively. Taking in to consideration some variance from card to card, the Palit design offers the smallest and the quietest card, while the Asus is a bit bigger and a bit louder but also noticeably cooler. We would choose noise over temperature in this case and consider the Palit the better card, but the drawback ends up being pricing. Palit is charging $160 for their card while Asus is charging $140 for theirs. We can think of some very specific situations where the Palit card would be worth the premium (e.g. HTPCs) otherwise it’s a $20 premium over the Asus card for a card that draws a bit less power and gets a little less loud. By that token the Asus card is likely going to be the best fit for most buyers.

Ultimately though all of these cards are hobbled somewhat by NVIDIA and AMD’s pricing schemes. Even the “cheap” Asus card only performs in-line with a Radeon HD 5770 and costs $10 more, while the Palit card is only $10 cheaper than a GeForce GTX 460 768MB. Among the cards in our roundup it’s clear what the better cards are, but outside of that microcosm they don’t really change our thoughts on the GTS 450. The GTX 460 768MB and the Radeon HD 5770 are a tough crowd to beat.