NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 Review - PAGE 1

It was just over a month ago that the GeForce GTX 460 hit the market, finally giving NVIDIA a strong mainstream DX11 product. Since that time the GTX 460 has received rave reviews and has won the hearts of many gamers, however, for some the $200 retail price was still out of their range. For these gamers it is all about the price to performance ratio of a graphics card, and it is for this group that the GeForce GTS 450 was created.

The GTS 450 is NVIDIA’s lowest price Fermi graphics card to-date and is focused directly at gamers with a tight budget that play games at lower resolutions. This could make the GTS 450 an ideal solution for anyone looking to play current games on a 19"-22" monitor that supports resolutions up to 1280x1024, 1440x900, and 1680x1050. This is not to say the graphics card is limited to these settings, but according to NVIDIA these are the sweet spots and when used at these resolutions it should guarantee a smooth gaming experience across the board. Also, since the large majority of gamers are playing on monitors that do not exceed the target resolutions, the GTS 450 is a graphics card that could have a very wide appeal.

The GTS 450 will be the replacement for the current GTS 250 and will be priced competitively against the DX11 competition. This means NVIDIA will now have a Fermi graphics that fully supports DX11 available for just $130 dollars. There will of course be different version of the graphics card available, so the price will be adjusted per card depending on the additional features. Still, this does finally give NVIDIA a chance to compete with the likes the HD 5700 series and at $130 dollars the 450 is directly targeting the ATI Radeon HD 5750.

Along with the new GTS 450 we are also going to be looking at the new R260 drivers. The new drivers bring with them a new user interface and enhanced ease of use, but most importantly they also include substantial performance increases for all Fermi based graphics cards

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