this is a sample that just arrived in the mail today so we're going to be
doing an unboxing and then an unboxing
because this is actually just the shipping box so if seal has been broken
check contents the seal has not been
broken but we're going to check the contents anyway because that's uh
apparently my job all right we have
broken the seals we find Bubble Wrap aha
PNY has done an excellent job of packaging this particular graphics card
there's nothing else inside the box so this is a GeForce GTS 450 from PNY I
don't know if this one is included actually but uh hold on hold on hold on
wait for it let me check this out warranty service H look at that this is
interesting okay because PNY recently updated their high-end video cards to
offer a lifetime warranty and I wasn't
really sure if a mid-range video card like this would be included in that
policy but while they are not offering lifetime warranty they do have a
fiveyear warranty which is actually uh
excellent for a mid-range card like this I mean this is only a 149 139 is sort of
graphics card and that's uh that's outstanding actually so we'll have a
quick look at the features overall of this card it's a 783 MHz core clock it
has 192 processor cores it has a
1.56 GHz processor clock okay so
remember that's double the core clock all right and then we've got one gig of
gddr5 you can actually read all the specs here if you so desire the more
important things on a card like this are actually the features because this is
part of NVIDIA's directex lineup of cards it's like I said a mainstream
level card so it's positioned under the GTX 460 but it does still come with all
the NVIDIA features that means you got Cuda physics SLI 3D Vision capability
even though they don't have 3D Vision listed here they should including 3D
Vision Sur so that is if you run two of these cards in SLI you will have full
support for there it is 3D Vision surround the cameraman's trying to burn
me here again uh let's see what we've got in terms of games that they're
demoing here so they've got civilization 5 is really pitched as a card or as a
game that will run great on the GTS 450
they've also got Mafia 2 if you're running it non HD resolution so anything
about 1680 X 1050 or lower this card
actually performs admirably well in Mafia 2 so that's another pretty cool
one and that includes running with physics on which provides a much much
better gameplay experience in a game like that than trying to run without
physx oh this is cool too check this out
uh this is a promotion that PNY has been running for quite a while but they
actually include two bonus movie downloads so if you check out pny.com
mov you can see which movies you can uh
get for free with this video card oh yeah there it is 5year warranty that
wouldn't have been that hard to find if I had looked for it more carefully and
you know what here here is a special Linus Tech tips promotional offer I'm
just going to take apart the Box okay okay okay whoever sees this first so
that means you smart guy who writes the first comment right there oh he looks at
the other one okay well there's a Starcraft 2 trial okay and then there's
the two bonus movie downloads and then if you really want a 3 month
subscription to Esa then you can have that too so there we go yay promotional
excitement online Tech tips free stuff
all right here we go inside this is kind
of a new way of doing packaging for pmy I haven't seen this before nice black
internal box and then it looks like it comes in like a little uh a little
bubble thing here so okay hold on first let's flip it over this way I guess so
we see the accessories first of all we have a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter then we
have a dual four pin Molex to six pin PCIe power adapter and then a DVI to VGA
adapter if you're still running an old Monitor and someone was all indignant
about me saying that VGA monitors are old well they are if your monitor only
has VGA then it's old uh you can see here they've got the 25 9.22 Graphics
drivers throw this away because NVIDIA
just released their new 260 series drivers which provide better performance
for the GTS 450 here is a quick start
guide okay and then let's have a look at
the card itself so this one features a
blue PCB as well as the NVIDIA stock
reference cooler so I'm going to have a closer look at the reference cooler
because PNY does typically release reference boards and I'll explain what
reference mean that means they haven't done a redesign of the PCB layout but
rather they are manufacturing based on NVIDIA's recommended layout for the RAM
the core everything else that goes on the video card itself including in this
case the cooler so let's have a look at the back here you can see we've got four
RAM chips here there are going to be four RAM chips on the other side so that
means that that's your 1 gig of gddr5 although it looks like we do have
support for up to four more RAM chips so potentially uh PNY could release a 1.5
gig or a 768 Meg version of this card in
the future here we've got the SLI connector so this card supports up to
two-way SLI down at the bottom you can see a
curious thing that I also noticed on the MSI 450 card you can see that some of
the traces here do not terminate in two pins so it looks like this card is able
to run at PCI Express 16x that means
full PCIe 2.0 bandwidth without all of
the pins that's not uh not an aspect of PCIe technology that I was aware of but
there you go here we've got two DVI ports and One Mini HDMI remember you can
only use two of these at a time that means either dual DVI or one DVI One
Mini HDMI one DVI 1 mini HDMI here we
have an exhaust vent and this is something that I want to point out about
this particular card because as I said uses the reference cooler that means
that probably about with this shroud about half of the air flow coming out of
this card is going to be exhausted from the case and then maybe about another
half is going to come down from the fan and be exhausted out the back of the
Shroud so that means that it's a good compromise between something like uh a a
normal blower uh heat sink where you
actually have to position the fan way over here you don't get quite that same
efficiency as when you're blowing air right down onto the core and something
like the MSI Cyclone cooler where yeah you're putting heat pipes and everything
all over it but you're exhausting the hot air into your case so yeah like I
said it's a compromise and it's one that personally I can live with here on the
back of the card we find a six pin PCIe power connector as well as a 4pin pwm
fan controller so that means this fan should be quite quiet although we will do some testing with this against the
MSI Cy cooler in the coming days up here
we find pn's branding as you can see this is a reference shroud so that means
that it's just a sticker on top of it and I think that covers pretty much
everything in terms of the unboxing of the py GTS 450 and we will have more to
come including some SLI numbers for the 450 now that I have my second
one now I think I actually uh glossed over this too fast as I was boxing the
card back up I noticed just how ingenious this package method is so PNY
has actually gone and custom designed a plastic shroudy thing that looks like it
can fit any number of graphics cards so all you've got is your a little stopper
here I'm actually going to take the top cover off here so you've got a little
stopper right here that keeps it from sliding back and forth and then you've
got a little hook right here where the PCI Express retention clip sits so it
can't slide back see that it can't slide
forward uh because of this one here where little uh that little knob goes
into so it can't slide back it can't slide forward it has this top cover
piece on it that gives it like a cushion
of air all the way around the card so
even if the Box gets just like hammered on in shipping the card will be
completely safe and uh yeah it doesn't use any of that non-biodegradable foam
or anything like that a solution like this keeps the card completely safe from
any kind of static damage that could happen like when foam's rubbing against
itself I mean there is anti-static foam but it's probably more expensive anyway
I think this is just one of the more clever ways I've ever seen a video card
package so I thought I'd just kind of give PNY a quick Kudos on uh moving
forward in terms of video card Packaging