GTS 450. NVIDIA is coming fast and hard
filling out their DirectX11 lineup. So, they now have a mainstream part that's
going to be around $149.99 Street. This
is a 1 gig card featuring a Cyclone
cooler. So, obviously with the Cyclone cooler, you might imagine it's made by D
MSI. So, the GTS 450 is meant to slot in
under the GTX 460, as you might imagine,
and really take the place in the price bracket that the GTS 250 used to occupy.
So, why don't we go around to the back of the card? Let's find out what is special about the Cyclone version of
this card. It has a 9 cm PWM fan for 40%
more air flow. It has multiple heat pipes, meaning two for better heat
dissipation, and it has a dust preer fan lifespan. Okay, as I mentioned
before, this is a DirectX11 card, finally at a truly mainstream price
point from NVIDIA, and it features all of their latest technologies, including
CUDA, Physex, SLI, 3D Vision, and the
rest of these are not really NVIDIA technologies, but they are also
supported by the card. It is a PCI Express 2.0 card. It requires a six pin
power connector and a minimum 400 watt
power supply. So, why don't we go ahead and open up the box? Uh, I'm actually
filming this um a while ago. I can't
upload it until the embargo. So, by the time you see this, you will be able to
buy this card. Let's have a look at the accessories that are included. It comes
with a mini HDMI to HDMI normalsized
adapter. Put that back in there. There we go. It comes with a two Molex to one
PCIe six pin connector. Mind you, seriously guys, if you're not using a
power supply with a PCI Express power adapter on it or connector on it, like
really just get one because they're not expensive. Okay, we got a DVI to VGA
adapter just in case you're still using an ancient monitor. Now, speaking of
ancient monitor, this video card is perfect if you're using an ancient
monitor because really this price bracket of video cards is designed for
around the 1280x 1024 to 1680x 1050
resolution range. If you're running a 24-in monitor, do yourself a favor, buy
a GTX 460. But if you're running a lower
res monitor, you want DirectX11, you want the latest feature set from NVIDIA,
then this is a perfect choice. We also have a user's guide, a copy of MSI After
Burner, and we
have oh, a little guide on how to use their live update online feature. Now,
let's look at the card itself. I have a feeling the cooler itself isn't going
itself. See, I'm saying itself too much. The cooler is not going to
surprise us too much because we have seen the Cyclone cooler before. MSI's
Cyclone cooler is one of those uh value designs that performs really well. So,
everybody loves it. Um, I can tell you from my experience working at NCIX that
a lot of people have picked up the GTX 460 Cyclone because it really does make
the GPU run cooler. It's quiet
and it's cheap. I mean, what else can
you ask for? MSI includes these little covers on all the connectors. So, I'm
just removing all of those so that I can actually show you the card in great
detail. Now, I believe this car does use a reference PCB. And the reason I'm
going to go ahead and assume that is cuz you can see right on the back there are actually uh blank spots where there are
are no RAM chips installed. So, it looks like what we probably have on here is 1
2 3 4 5 6 7 eight RAM chips for a total
of 1 gig. And I am correct. You can see on the other side we've got an
additional Yeah, an additional four. And those two spots are also blank on the
other side. So, I guess it could support up to 1.5 gigs of RAM. So, I wouldn't be
too surprised to see a card, a GTS 450 with more RAM in the future. Although, I
have to say there's probably not much benefit to loading up RAM on a card like
this because it is a mainstream card. Here on the back, we've got two DVI
ports as well as a mini HDMI. We've got the typical MSI branding built into the
PCI back plate. Now, it's not even terribly important that they have all
this ventilation here because this is primarily an interior uh exhaust design.
It means you're not exhausting a ton of heat outside the case. But the benefit
is that you do get to keep the GPU cooler. You get all of this incidental
air flow going down over your RAM as well as onto your power circuitry here.
And you do still get to exhaust a little bit of heat outside the case through the
vents, but it's not going to be a ton. Power delivery is all right here at the
back of the card. As I said before, I suspect this is a reference PCB, so
you're not going to find anything exceptional in terms of power delivery. Although, for a mainstream card like
this, you don't really need anything exceptional. Here at the back of the
card, you find a six pin PCI Express power connector. And then you can see
the fan is controlled via PWM. You know, I don't think I've ever talked about
this before. No, no, stay talk. Look at the card. There we go. Uh PWM means that
there is a fourth pin. It's pulse width modulation. So what it means is it's
only actually sending voltage to the fan every so often instead of actually
decreasing the voltage to run slower and then increasing it to run faster.
Instead, it just runs 12vt all the time, but it does it in bursts. So the fan, if
you're running 12 volt all the time, it'll spin fast. And if it does 12vt 50%
of the time and then 50% of the time nothing, it'll spin slow. There you go.
You learned something today if you didn't know how PWM fans work. At the
back of the card, we don't find anything particularly exceptional. We've got our
PCI Express 16x interface.
And I'm a little confused. Look at this.
I don't think I've ever seen this before. There's a great number of
missing pins on the PCI Express 16X
interface. And I don't know why. Uh you know what? If we have any astute viewers
out there, please let me know why it is
missing the contacts here. because uh I have not seen that in the past. I'm sure
there's a very good reason for it, but uh there you go. There's something I've
never seen before. We do have an SLI connector up here at the top of the
card. Remember, one SLI connector, that means two-way SLI only. No support for
3-way SLI. 3-way SLI is only supported on the GTX 465 and up, not the 460.
Nothing below there except the older generation stuff, you know, 275, etc.,
etc. And remember, four-way SLI is supported only on the 480. So, that
pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about the GTS 450 Cyclone. I'm
also going to try and get some performance numbers going at some point today. Thank you for checking out this
unboxing video and uh thank you for subscribing to Linus Tech Tips. If you
haven't subscribed to Linus Tech Tips, hit the subscribe button now. It's not
that hard. Cameraman, no smart ale comments from you.