SLI Is The Key
Nvidia’s SLI technology is particularly interesting in the entry-level space because gamers spending $100 or $150 on a card today might want to add a second board down the line, rather than replacing one card with another. The flexibility to add performance as money allows is nice. And given scaling results like these, very little performance is left on the table when you add another card.
If I were to identify the GeForce GTS 450’s strongest characteristic, it’d be great SLI scaling. You don’t necessarily double performance, but in each of the games we tested, we realized at least 85% of the second board’s performance, and reached as high as 92% in a couple of titles.
Now, this assumes you’re using a well-balanced platform. Our Core i7-980X is overkill to be sure, but even an overclocked Core i5-750 should be enough to let this two-card combination stretch its legs.
Two GeForce GTS 450s will cost about $260. Are you taking a value hit by going the SLI route, or is it better to save up and buy a single GeForce GTX 460 1 GB for $220 now? The SLI configuration is actually quite a bit faster. So, for about 20% more cost, you’re getting about 25% more performance.
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Man, G92 still holds it own. What an amazing piece of technology.
they are priced too high
Slightly underwhelming to be honest. the GTX 460 seems like a way better choice. or a 5770.
Well now that it is competing with the 5750 maybe they will push both down to $100 and we wouldn't need to buy old G92 or R700's
anyone else NOT so excited about this card?
As Chris pointed out with Tessellation, DX11 isn't going anywhere fast with the programmers. I'd say still go for a 1gb 4850 or CF two and really have a powerful GPU subsystem for the $200-$220 price point. By the time they are aged, you'll have 2nd gen DX11 GPUs out and the software will finally be available to use them.
im still chuggin along on my hd 4850... and if i ever needed to, i can crossfire another one for a mere $90, these cards have been overpriced for a year
its a shame that ati's cards didn't drop in MSRP. hell, the hd 5850 is finally approaching it;s MSRP of $250 from a year ago. I was hopign last year by around this time, hd 5870 would be ~$200... it's not even close =[
Man, I was hoping to see some overclocking; hopefully, they'll be included in another article. But I agree with Chris: the 450 is a bit disappointing at $130.
YAWWWWNN....This card is putting me to sleep. I'm going to bed.
I'd like a gtx 460 maxcore.
Perhaps a gtx 485 aka gtx 460 X2 would be nice as well.
Just bought a second 4870 1 GB to complete my CF setup which was planned 1.5 years ago. Only $130 from Newegg. 4870 vs 450 is not a tough choice if you are buying for a dedicated gaming rig. The 4000 series are still very adequate.
sleep sounds good, not impressed at all. nvidia wasted money on a card slower than previous generations, should have renamed the G92 again with a smaller die, less power more value what were they thinking???
No, it can't play Crysis
Well i should stick w/ my 2 years old OC'ed GTS250
This is the only reason to get this card, though the price will have to drop to something around 100$ for people to get these cards in SLI.
hmmm... not terribly impressed. Power consumption and heat levels look good, and SLI scaling is excellent once again. And I guess it does hold its own against the HD5750, barely. The GTX460 definitely did a better job of catching my attention. I guess I was just expecting a little more performance out of a 192 SP gf106, especially considering their plan to replace the g92. One thing that struck me when reading the specs was the memory bandwidth, it just seems a bit too low for a GPU of this complexity. The GTS450 probably should've had a higher stock memory frequency, though I'm not sure how much of a difference it would've made.
Still can't match the current outgoing radeons.. 450 offers 5750 performance for the price of 5770.. The new amd radeon cards would probably kill NVIDIA, again.
Would have considered this card last year though.
Man, I was hoping to see some overclocking; hopefully, they'll be included in another article. But I agree with Chris: the 450 is a bit disappointing at $130.
Hi Jz!
I know, the overclocking stuff is always sexy to look at. The thing is, when someone tells me "Check out the overclocking on this card--it's a beast," then I know the boards are hand-picked. It's only worthwhile to look at overclocking if you take a retail card and compare it against a competitor's retail board as well. We'll have something like this in the near future. For the time being, though, don't stress too much over the lack of overclocked results--if you can't buy the clocks we'd see, then it's not worth the trouble, right?
All the best!
Chris
Just bought a second 4870 1 GB to complete my CF setup which was planned 1.5 years ago. Only $130 from Newegg. 4870 vs 450 is not a tough choice if you are buying for a dedicated gaming rig. The 4000 series are still very adequate.
Agreed. Unfortunately since the 5700 series is the SAME as the 4700 series, ATI did something with the marketing, and it's extremely hard to find a real 4870 online. I have 2 of them from 2 years ago. I JUST started using crossfire playing the single player of starcraft 2, and I don't get any performance out of it. Reason? Uses more than 4gb of RAM during heavy load. Daaaang!