Comment Thread for ALL Launch-Day GTS 450 Reviews

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by chriskwarren

Looking at the specs too I have come to wonder if the extra shaders will help with the bigger WUs that depend on the extra cores.

That is a good point as well. The significantly higher shader count of a 460 will likely prove to be more beneficial as time goes on.

Originally Posted by heflys20

Do you guys believe the rumor that this card will improve in performance with drivers? Someone explained that Nvidia already released some new drivers, which would have likely have taken this card into account. However, even if Nvidia released drivers to improve performance, the increase would be negligible. Do you reckon this is true?

Perhaps there will be some small improvements in certain games, but generally, the only time we see significant performance boosts from drivers is when there's a game with abnormally low performance in the first place or when you're dealing with multi-GPU setups that have scaling issues in a particular game. It's uncommon to see a single GPU get a large performance benefit from a new driver revision.

[geokilla]

Originally Posted by Zero82z

If I were looking for a folding card then I'd go with a 460 instead. The 450 might look like it's pretty good, but compared to the 460 it doesn't offer anything other than a lower base price.

You left out lower power consumption and PPD for your $ and shader cores. Though I think this was discussed in the previous page...

And for those saying how the GTX 460 will kick butt for Folding@Home after the price drop, didn't the price drop happen already?

[_dangtx_]

on 768meg models,yes. probably demand is quite high for 1gb ones..

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by geokilla

You left out lower power consumption and PPD for your $ and shader cores. Though I think this was discussed in the previous page...

And for those saying how the GTX 460 will kick butt for Folding@Home after the price drop, didn't the price drop happen already?

Lower power consumption and lower PPD. I'd be willing to bet that the 450 provides equal or worse PPD per watt compared to the 460. PPD for your dollar? The MSRP of the 460 went down to $170 USD. An overclocked 460 does about 12k PPD, so that would be 12k/170 = ~71PPD/$ whereas the 450 is 9k/130 = ~69 PPD/$. PPD per shader has no bearing on anything so that doesn't even matter, although it's also worth considering that the 450 overclocks to a much higher frequency than the 460. Going by stock speeds, let's figure out the PPD per MHz per shader. A stock 460 does about 9k, so 9k/675MHz/336SP = ~0.04PPD/MHz/SP. A stock 450 does about 8k, so that's 8k/783MHz/192SP = ~0.05PPD/MHz/SP. So again, not much difference.

Yes, the price drop did happen, but it hasn't quite started being reflected in the actual market prices yet. However, I did recently buy a 768MB 460 for $146 from a US retailer.

[geokilla]

Originally Posted by Zero82z

Yes, the price drop did happen, but it hasn't quite started being reflected in the actual market prices yet. However, I did recently buy a 768MB 460 for $146 from a US retailer.

How'd you pick it up?

Dual fan!

Newegg.ca - GIGABYTE GV-N450OC-1GI GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Heat exhausts outta the back

Newegg.ca - Palit NE5S4500F0601 GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by geokilla

How'd you pick it up?

I had someone in the US buy it for me and ship it here.

[sswilson]

I do however think that folks aren't putting enough emphasis on the price point difference. It might not seem to be a big deal to folks on an enthusiast website, but a $30 - $40 difference makes a huge difference to some folks.

Hell... the 1950pro was the first vid card I dropped any kind of extra coin on... up until that point it was things like the 9600pro / 6600GT / etc..... , and to this day, I don't do enough gaming that I'd seriously consider a top-of-the-line card.

It's fine and dandy to say that the 460 is a better card, it might even be a better bang-for-the-buck card, but the 450 was released specifically to fill the gap in Nvidia's lineup between the 400 series cards, and the "better than onboard" sub-$100 cards they were offering.

I happen to think it does that fairly well.

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by sswilson

I do however think that folks aren't putting enough emphasis on the price point difference. It might not seem to be a big deal to folks on an enthusiast website, but a $30 - $40 difference makes a huge difference to some folks.

Hell... the 1950pro was the first vid card I dropped any kind of extra coin on... up until that point it was things like the 9600pro / 6600GT / etc..... , and to this day, I don't do enough gaming that I'd seriously consider a top-of-the-line card.

It's fine and dandy to say that the 460 is a better card, it might even be a better bang-for-the-buck card, but the 450 was released specifically to fill the gap in Nvidia's lineup between the 400 series cards, and the "better than onboard" sub-$100 cards they were offering.

I happen to think it does that fairly well.

The issue for me personally is that if you're looking for a gaming card, the 5770 is a much more attractive choice for the same price point, and if you're looking for a folding card, then it's worth spending an extra $40 for a 460. If you can afford to buy a dedicated card for folding then chances are you'll be able to muster up an extra 40 bucks at some point. For me personally, GPU folding is now more about having the most PPD in a single slot for a reasonable price point rather than getting a ton of low-PPD GPUs. I've been down that road before and it was just a hassle (and if I remember correctly, you've been down that road as well so you should know what I'm talking about).

[LarkStarr]

still, if you want a card that does both light gaming and folding merely as a bonus, and you don't want to spend 460 prices, the 450 is quite attractive you have to admit. a lower end folding card to dabble into the world of F@H

[_dangtx_]

i wonder how these do for physx, interesting will be when they come out in single slot manner.