You might say that nVidia has been on fire lately. The launch of their extremely successful GTX 460 was an all out win for not only the company, but also for gamers around the world looking for a great PhysX supporting GPU at a really affordable mainstream price point of $199 US. We appreciate what ATI, or shall I say, AMD has done for gamers up until this point with their HD 5770 and HD 5830 GPUs, but the new hotness has really rained on their parade.
While the GTX 460 was really a shot across the bow of the HD 5830 which inhabits a similar price point, nVidia still needed a challenger to the entry level price point held by AMD’s HD 5770 and to a lesser extent, their HD 5750 GPUs. That’s why this week the green machine launched a new aggressively priced GTS 450 GPU (as low as $129 US) to complete their attack. They call this one the “Sniper” in their line up and this might very well be a head shot.
Completing the Trifecta
When nVidia launched their GTX 460 they had a specific group of gamers in mind and similar goals were front of mind when they created the GTS 450. This card completes their trifecta of target groups they wanted to take care of with an offer of the latest technologies like DX11 and PhysX support at specific price/performance points. $499 US for the GTX 480 for best possible performance, $199 US for the GTX 460 and the best all around performance, and the GTS 450 at around $129 US for the best entry level gaming experience.
nVidia looked at common screen resolutions provided by STEAM’s gamer surveys and realized that there were a bunch of gamers that used 17 – 22 inch monitors and played their games at resolutions of 1280×1024 – 1680×1050. This sounds very much like LAN gamers and nVidia has certainly pandered to that demographic with this product. While these are solid facts, we also have to look at the state of LCD monitors today.
Since HD gaming means a resolutions of 1920×1080 many monitors on the market today in the 20 – 22 inch range are actually 1920×1080 and not 1680×1050 and below. It’s more likely that many gamers could simply be accepting lower resolutions simply because their current video card cannot play at reasonable frame rates at 1080p. But of course, if you’re not playing at 1080p, you’re not really gaming in HD and to compete against AMD’s HD 5770 that’s where the battle needs to take place and we’ll be taking it there.
A Brand New GPU for a Worthy Group of Gamers
Instead of simply underclocking an existing GPU, nVidia went out and created a new chip for this price sensitive but demanding group of gamers. Whereas the GF104 chip used in the GTX 460 has little in common with the GF100 chip used in GTX 480/470/465, the new GF106 chip in the GTS 450 shares a lot of similarities. In fact, it looks like it’s half a GF104 with some tweaks to ensure that gamers still get a great gaming experience.
As you can see above, it’s almost half of a GTX 460 768MB GPU. But it’s not completely half in some areas in order to maintain the necessary gaming performance required to win and keep gamers at this very sensitive price point. It was the same thing that nVidia balanced very well when they created the GTX 460 and didn’t just simply cut a GTX 480 in half. Whereas performance of the GTX 465 was basically eclipsed by the cooler running and higher clocked GTX 460, we expect that there will still be a healthy gap in performance between it and the GTS 450.
GeForce GTS 450 vs the Competition
nVidia has really priced the GTS 450 aggressively against its chief rival, the HD 5770 and the slightly detuned and cheaper HD 5750 not shown. The GIGABYTE Super Overclocked version shown in our chart is actually a little more expensive and slightly overclocked than your run of the mill GPU. A regular one from one of the many vendors will be within lunch money of each other on the street. Spec for spec, the GTS 450 sizes up really nicely against the HD 5770 in many categories and this is the fight we want to see in terms of gaming performance.
You Can Have GTS 450 Anyway You Want
It’s nice to see so many different non-reference designs for this GPU out of the blocks. There’s at least a dozen major manufacturers coming out with their own spin on this GPU design. Shown above is the excellent Cyclone design from MSI. We checked out this fan design in our GTX 460 article and came away extremely impressed with not only its cooling performance, but also its ability to remain pretty much silent even when working hard. Innovations like voltage control through MSI’s Afterburner software make this a stand out in the crowd and should be your choice for a few dollars more if you are looking to overclock the snot out of the GTS 450. The best part is that it’s not much more than your standard reference looking design.
Other designs out there are equally impressive with great cooling as shown in the shots above. ZOTAC has their pre-overclocked AMP! Edition, GIGABYTE rolls out a solid Zalman designed cooler in their version and ASUS has their version with a custom cooler and a VGA connection. With bundled games, promotions and unique designs, GTS 450 really does offer a lot of choice in the marketplace. Especially since only dollars separate many of these versions so it’s best to shop around.
Test System Setup
For the purposes of our testing, we put together a system that hopefully reflects that needs and budget of an entry level or budget gamer. We selected the AMD platform mainly because it still represents the best value for the dollar. We made modest choices on the parts so that performance should be more inline with what one would expect in a budget gaming system.
- CPU(s): AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition CPU
- Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD7 (F2 BIOS)
- Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR3 1333 MHz 8GB Quad Channel Memory Kit
- Video Card 1: GIGABYTE GV-R5770SO-1GD Super Overclock (HD 5770)
- Video Card 2: GIGABYTE GV-R583UD-1GD (HD 5830)
- Video Card 3: MSI N460GTX Cyclone 768D5 OC Edition
- Video Card 4: nVidia GeForce GTS 450 1GB Reference
- Hard Drive: Seagate 7200.10 250GB SATA2 Hard Drive
- CPU Cooler: Stock AMD Heatpipe Cooler
- Power Supply: Ultra Products X4 750 Watt Modular ATX Power Supply
- Optical Drive: LG SATA DVD Writer
- Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
- Other: 2 x Silverstone AP121 Air Penetrator 120mm Case Fans
With the exception of a grossly excessive amount of DDR3 memory, we think that the system does a pretty good job of representing the target market for the GTS 450. We already know that excessive amounts of memory do nothing for gaming and should not have an effect on the big picture we’re trying get from the results. All of our components were installed in an open test bench (High Speed PC Top Deck Tech Station).
Testing Notes
All of our tests were conducted using the latest available drivers and BIOS revisions. As of the date of this article, we are running ATI Catalyst 10.8 drivers for the HD 5770 and HD 5830. The the GTX 460 768MB gets run with the latest 260.53 BETA driver which we’ll talk a little more about in a sec. Since we are using a non reference factory overclocked GTX 460 board from MSI, this board has been underclocked to mimic the performance of a standard GTX 460.
For GPU temperature testing we will be using FurMark 1.82 to push each GPUs to their limit and reveal max temperatures and noise levels. Idle temperature will be taken 30 minutes after booting into the system from the off position with each video card while load temperature will be taken after each card endures 30 minutes of torture. Ambient temperature within the room is maintained at 25C for all temperature readings. Since our card is a reference design we expect non-reference cooling solutions to be better and we’ll have a chance to prove this in a review of one of the non-reference cards in another review.
Noise levels were not measured because we are using a stock reference GTS 450 which has a cooler that is not sold in retail. As mentioned above most of the retail units are using completely redesigned coolers that increase performance and reduce noise levels. We will be revisiting this in a future review of an after-market card.
Power draw will also be measured as a whole system consumption at both idle and load conditions using a power meter plugged into the PSU then into the wall outlet. Idle load will be measured at 30 minutes after booting in from the off position. Load measurements will be taken before the conclusion of our FurMark stress test when the GPU is producing the highest level of heat.
Unless otherwise stated, benchmarks will be performed using default settings with Vsync off and we use an HD gaming resolution of 1920×1080. Please see each test for specific modifications. Let’s get cracking!
Overclocking Potential
As with any overclocking tests, your mileage will vary. However, we are overclocking the standard reference board from nVidia thus we expect that non-reference versions with better coolers and higher quality components should exceed what we show you today.
As it stands, our reference nVidia GTS 450 is able to overclock from its stock 783 MHz to an impressive 920 MHz right out of the box. Our margin was about 5 MHz as the card was slightly unstable at 925 MHz but completely stable at 920 MHz after confirming with multiple runs of Furmark as well as looping runs of 3DmarkVantage. Temperature topped 80C using the reference cooling solution.
We will be including benchmarks for overclocked performance in our tests to see if overclocking is worth it and where it is worth it. Tests will be broken down in areas such as synthetic benchmarks to games by DirectX version to PhysX performance. We also have one very special test at the end for users of Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS5.
Synthetic Benchmarks
Kicking things off are our series of synthetic benchmarks that gives us an idea of where the cards should perform best. We start off with the greatest hits.
3DMark06
We start off with Futuremark’s 3DMark06 as our warm up benchmark. While it is an older benchmark, it sets the tone for how DirectX9 tests should pan out and is still relevant as some new games still use it. GTS 450 out of the gate is clobbering the HD 5770 and then completely embarrasses it once overclocked. Remember, our HD 5770 is already overclocked by a few MHz so that’s very impressive. The gap between it and the HD 5830 and GTX 460 is still fairly wide as expected.
3Dmark Vantage
Futuremark’s 3DMarkVantage is another standard when it comes to synthetic benchmarks. Representing DirectX 10, the benchmark gives us a rough idea of how things will play out in more modern games. HD 5770 pulls it back in DirectX 10 a bit, but it’s overall score still mirrors the whooping it received in 3DMark06. It’ll be interesting to see where the extra GPU horsepower will come into play for HD 5770.
Cinebench 11.5
Cinebench is a favourite for CPU and memory tests, but it does house an OpenGL test component. While few games these days use OpenGL, some folks out there may be using OpenGL apps and knowing how the cards perform may be important information. It would seem that ATI’s strong workstation background with OpenGL has carried into the Radeon HD lineage as the HD 5770 and HD 5830 clearly command this benchmark.
What’s most interesting though is how GTS 450 and GTX 460 score similarly at stock clocks under OpenGL. Overclocking does seem to make a difference, but none of the nVidia cards can match the AMD/ATI offerings.
Heaven Demo 2.1
Even if it wasn’t a benchmark, Heaven Demo 2.1 would just be great to look at all day long. The rendered world is just breathtaking and shows the potential performance of each GPU from OpenGL through to DirectX 11. It’s a little surprising to see that OpenGL performance didn’t reflect what we saw in Cinebench as both AMD cards falter against nVidia. However, DirectX 9 and 10 performance are much stronger than as shown in both Futuremark benchmarks. We’ll have to see what happens in the real game engine benchmarks coming up next.
Game Engine Benchmarks
Game engine benchmarks are extremely important to the evaluation of the performance of a video card. It provides a consistent measuring stick and lets us know which cards work well for which games. This allows us to select the right tool for the right job. Obviously we’ll pick the card that performs best for the games or genres of games that we play the most. We’ll be concentrating on playable frame rates on each of the tests and we’ve used games that have built in benchmarks so that you can play along at home to make sure that you are getting the right card for you.
Street Fighter IV (DX9)
We start our game benchmarks with DirectX 9 and this timeless classic gets played at LAN parties all the time. Based on DX9 we can see that this game plays well for all of the GPUs at the highest possible settings, both with AA and AA off. We do take a pretty major hit in performance for turning it on though especially with the HD 5770’s frame rate.
Batman Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition (DX9)
It’s hard to believe this is a DirectX 9 game but it really is. It’s also one of three titles that supports PhysX that we’ll be testing out today. The lack of hardware PhysX support on the AMD/ATI GPUs give nVidia a decisive victory. All of the nVidia cards have frame rates well above the magical 30 FPS while neither of the AMD/ATI cards could handle it. Turning PhysX off would do this game a serious injustice so it’s all or nothing.
Mafia II (DX9)
While it isn’t the most imaginative game in the world, Mafia II is a lot of fun. It’s such a beautiful game to look at with PhysX at least set to medium. Unfortunately, we run into the same problem with the AMD/ATI cards with unplayabilty as we run PhysX in software. Without it frame rates perk up a whole lot, but this game isn’t nearly as cool without it on. It’s a real shame that nVidia won’t turn on PhysX on a secondary GPU with the AMD/ATI card as a primary adapter in the drivers and support it.
Final Fantasy XIV (DX9)
Our last DirextX 9 game benchmark is harder to decipher because we simply get a score at the end. However, the benchmark does have a chart at the bottom left hand corner that looks like a heartbeat, which I assume is the frame rate. Based on me sitting there for each card’s benchmark run, I could see visually just how well each card really did and how smooth the frame rate was. Overall, the “squiggly line” was smoother with either of the AMD/ATI cards. It’s kind of funny seeing as how this is an nVidia sponsored benchmark. With a release date of September 30th, 2010, there’s no time left to optimize drivers.
Between HD 5770 and GTS 450, you should be investing in the HD 5770 if you want to spend time on this game. Since it is MMORPG, you might as well pick the one that does best in this game as you’ll probably be stuck playing for quite some time.
Let’s move along with the DirectX 10 and 11 benchmarks shall we?
Crysis (DX10)
Yes, it’s old. But it’s still a GPU punisher. As you can see even today’s newest cards can’t handle Crysis at 30 frames per second under DirectX 10. We didn’t even bother to try anti aliasing because we’d just be looking at a slideshow. It’s very interesting though how the best performing cards are the AMD/ATI cards in this grueling benchmark.
Far Cry2 (DX10)
Where we have Crysis, we have Far Cry2 not that far behind. It’s nice to see every card producing playable frame rates in this game. nVidia’s cards are strongest across the board and the overclocking of the GTS 450 even has it catching up with the much more expensive HD 5830 and trouncing the already overclocked HD 5770.
Resident Evil 5 (DX10)
Resident Evil 5 provides some extra test material for our look at how anti aliasing can affect performance. We are happy to report that 4x AA is something you should turn on in this title as the impact does not kill frame rates enough for you to not enjoy the extra picture quality. This game is completely playable and smooth with any of the candidates tested here but the GTS 450 does get beaten by the HD 5770.
H.A.W.X. (DX10)
H.A.W.X. doubles up as our flight simulator benchmark. It’s a really beautiful game that gives us access to eye candy from real aircraft models and real satellite maps. It’s nice to see all the GPUs tested being able to play this game with AA on or off. But of course, we’d keep in on now that we know we can. In fact, with AA on, HD 5770 falls to the might of an overclocked GTS 450.
World in Conflict (DX10)
I know a lot of people are hoping for us to replace this RTS benchmark with StarCraft II. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think we will. You see, I’ve been playing StarCraft II on a system with an 8800 Ultra in it and it runs with AA up to 16x smoothly. It’s not very demanding but this game is and if your system can make it through this benchmark, it’ll be able to play StarCraft II no problem. With the settings cranked to max, from what we can see from the results, everyone is in trouble when it comes to minimum frame rates with AA on or AA off. However, average frame rates are good and keep the game fun for the most part in my hands on testing. HD 5770 seems to suffer the most when AA is turned on.
STALKER – Call of Pipryat (DX11)
Like Crysis, this game represents one of the most punishing tests a GPU can go through. We refrained from hitting the EXTREME setting and just settled for Ultra High while running the gamut of tests and we got playable averages for all the GPUs. The GTS 450 overclocked beats an already factory overclocked HD 5770 in this particular game.
Metro 2033 (DX11)
One of our newer benchmarks and a very demanding one at that. They’ve recently included a built in benchmarking tool in the latest update so we’ve finally been able to add this to our benchmarks. It’s also a PhysX enabled title allowing us to torture the cards a little more.
Unfortunately, the overhead is too much and none of the cards gives us a playable frame rate with PhysX enabled and the GTS 450 just barely edges out the HD 5770. This is easy enough to fix with the nVidia card: just add another GPU and assign it as the PhysX processor. ATI/AMD? No can do.
Alien Vs Predator (DX11)
Alien vs Predator or AvP is another benchmark that is based on DX11. While it is an older title, it still gives a GPU a good pounding. Average frame rates favour the AMD/ATI cards. The HD 5770 beats the GTS 450 in this round.
Battleforge (DX11)
Battleforge is another great RTS benchmark that’s free to play and is put out by EA. It uses DX11 and looks really great and is fun to play when you get sick of Zergs, Protoss and Humans. The benchmark gives us an absolute worst case scenario with some crazy amounts of characters on the map. As you can see, it definitely stutters a bit with some very low minimum frame rates, but all cards produce playable averages with AA off or on. HD 5770 takes it in this round against the GTS 450.
This ends our game benchmarks. Next we’ll be looking at things like power consumption, noise levels and a new test that is pretty much nVidia GPU specific and is based on how it handles Adobe Premiere Pro CS5!
The Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Benchmark
Adobe doesn’t actually support all nVidia GPUs, but only a handful which include only the GTX 470, GTX 485, GTX 285 plus many of the Quadros. In order to enable this test, we used the Mercury Playback Engine Hack provided by this site. Adobe has officially said that they won’t disable this method of enabling hardware acceleration so we might get official support eventually. We also used the benchmark put together by the folks at this site. Instead of following their instructions, we simply used their sequence for H.264 and exported our sequence to the YouTube HD preset without the audio and timed it with a stopwatch. But you should run their benchmark at least once so they can fill in their database with that useful info.
As you can see, there is a noticeable advantage when the hardware acceleration is enabled on this very inexpensive $129 US GPU. Although this is actually in minutes, imagine all the time saved if you were editing hundreds of hours of video per year. That’s not even including all the time saved not having to pre-render to view on the timeline. Overclocking the GPU did make a small difference but if you’re doing mission critical work, I’d leave it at the stable stock speed. We’ll continue to add GPUs to this benchmark.
Power Consumption
Overall, the power consumption is comparable to the HD 5770 with the exception being idle consumption. The GTS 450 seems to consume fewer watts when it’s not doing anything.
Temperatures
Using only the completely stock cooling solution, the GTS 450 does get rather toasty at load. You can also see how much better the GTX 460 does with MSI’s Cyclone cooler. Given that the GTS 450 is less demanding than the GTX 460, and the fact that the GTX 460 is cooler than both the HD 5770 and HD 5830 which use non-reference coolers, I’d expect the GTS 450 to be a very cool customer with the right non-reference cooler.
Final Thoughts on nVidia’s GTS 450
I’m really loving what nVidia is doing this last half of 2010. They are finally showing that they are listening to their customers and producing a product that allows their partners to create a great performing cards at a very reasonable price point. It’s too bad they let AMD/ATI get away with such a huge lead over the last few quarters as they figured out how to get the formula right. GTS 450 and GTX 460 are showing that the hardwork is finally paying off.
Performance of this card is impressive. Especially at the price point of around $129 US and it’s very likely that you’ll see it priced even lower than this. nVidia’s shouldn’t be afraid to put this on the 1080p list because in all our tests, the card performs great and competes favourably against the slightly more expensive HD 5770 in more than a few of the benchmarks, either beating it decisively or meeting it. The best part is that it produces some very playable frame rates in most tests and if you need a few more frames, the GPU overclocks effortlessly and it makes a difference. Budget gamers are definitely taken care of with the GTS 450.
While the performance and price are already doing it for me, nVidia has also enhanced the overall user experience as well with some unique features. While I can’t say I’m a fan of their 3DVision quite yet, I can say that I’m sold on their new driver package. The new 260 series drivers are a completely different approach for nVidia. While at first glance it borrows a lot from AMD/ATI in terms of the check list for what components to install, update, remove etc, it takes it one step further by allowing users to do a completely automated full uninstall which wipes the slate clean and ensures that your new GPU installs right the first time which is a huge plus in terms of a great user experience.
I also liked the fact that they worked on their 2D Surround which is their answer to ATI/AMD’s Eyefinity. While it isn’t as flexible as ATI/AMD’s solution and requires two GPUs, it has been made noticeably easier to use. I still like the AMD/ATI implementation of multi-monitor support and 2D image quality still goes to them but nVidia is getting closer now. On the serious video production side, it’s remarkable how much value this card adds to an Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 setup. Especially since you don’t need a $500 workstation card to get all the GPU accelerated features (unofficially of course).
Overall the GTS 450 is definitely a great budget or entry level GPU that offers a great deal of value and an uncompromised gaming experience at a very affordable price.
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