Summary
N450OC-1GI
card that can manage all of this
at this price point. For a playable
frame rate in Just Cause 2 we had
to disable the Bokeh-Filter, GPU
Water Simulations and reduce
the resolution to 1680x1050 at
which point we were able to break
the30fps barrier in this DirectX10
title. So if you keep the detail
settings at medium to high and
play at maximum resolution of
1680x1050, there’s some fun to be
had with the GTS450.
Overclocking this card results
in limited gains, but they are easy
to take advantage off because the
card overclocks so well. 950MHz
was our target clock and we
achieved that by merely moving
a slider to the right. The memory
while rated at 2GHz does overclock
to 2,200MHz but it doesn’t mean
much with such a narrow memory
bus. With some voltage tuning
we did manage 1GHz on the core,
which further boosted frame rates,
but not enough to make it worth
the effort. The GTS450 isn’t a poor
showing of the GF106 core, but
rather an un-optimal one.
Notes on scores by others
Given that these are
mainstream graphics cards,
extreme overclockers are not
flocking to these to break any
world records, however there
are a few scores on HWBOT
where the a GTX460 has clocked
as high as 1230MHZ on the
core (Achieved by Team China’s
Icw33). As the 450 is even newer
and capable of even less, at the
time of writing there were not
any worthwhile scores we were
aware of.?
[ Neo ]
Benchmarks
We ran a small array of benchmarks that demonstrated performance of all aspects of
the system and allow easy comparisons in future reviews. We performed these on the
industry standard 3600 MHz on an un-optimized install of Windows 7.
Benchmark
Gigabyte
GTX460OC-1GI
Gigabyte
GTS450OC-1GI
Heaven Benchmark 2.1
(1920x1080, Normal, 4xAF)
896
564
3DMark06
22888 marks
SM2: 8928
SM3: 9967
CPU: 7790
17823 marks
SM2: 7047
SM3: 7019
CPU: 7726
3DMark Vantage
P16322 (P18067)
GPU: 13922
CPU: 33804
P11036 (P12359)
GPU: 9014
CPU: 33711
Just Cause 2 (1920x1080, Max
Detail, 16xAF) – Dark Tower
Average FPS: 34.24 (40.1)
Average FPS: 21.28 (23.94)
From the results, we have to conclude
that, the GF104 is a better balanced
graphics core than the GF106. While
it’s more than likely that there’ll be
more GTS450 cards sold than GT X460
cards, the truth remains that the
GF104 core is an unmistakable hit,
while the GF106 seems to have been
crippled in a way to make it less
impressive than it could have been.
We would have preferred a 256-bit
memor y bus, even if it made use of
GDD3 as it would give a healthy boost
to the frame rates and possibly give it
the edge over the Radeon HD 5770
As far as GIGABY TE’s offerings of
these products, they may not var y
from the reference design, but the
WindForce coolers do make all the
difference in delivering whisper
quiet operation and amazingly low
temperatures.
Which would you buy?
Where the GTX460 is concerned, it’s an
easy card to recommend. The performance
is good and there is plenty of overclocking
headroom. 850MHz on the core for 24/7
operation gives some good performance
and because of the WindForce cooler, it’s
whisper quiet. The GTS450 on the other
hand is a little harder to recommend,
because it’s by and large slower than the
Radeon 5770 which is almost a year old and
also comes in at the same price. However
with some overclocking is does manage
to gain some ground and does become a
useful little card.
The Score
The pricing for NVIDIA’s latest mainstream
GPUs is really aggressive and the GPUs
themselves offer great performance (at
least where the GF104 is concerned). The
There are plenty of faster GTX460 cards
out there, but nothing an overclocking
utility can’t fix. The GTS450 on the other
side is a tougher sell but overclocks just as
well if not better.
GTX460OC-1GI:
8/10
N450OC-1GI:
7/10
October 2010 The OverClocker 13