MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1GB Cyclone OC Video Card Review Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,672 words · ~8 min read
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as you can see that is a video card on the test bench that is the brand
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spanking new gForce GTS 450 from NVIDIA
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this is the Cyclone OC that is overclocked Edition from MSI it has 1
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gig of RAM so you can see I have the box for it here along with a couple cards
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that I'm going to be comparing it against today so first of all we want to
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compare it against the GTX 460 so you can see I have a Cyclone OC 1 gig card
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from MSI for that comparison Point here's the box for the GTS 450 which is
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the one on the test bench right now and because it's one of the closest price
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competitors on the ATI side although uh slightly more expensive at launch the
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5770 uh will also be included in the comparison today we're just going to run
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some simple numbers and yeah let's see how it goes both from
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a performance standpoint as well as from a there's my energy meter power
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consumption standpoint the test platform why don't we go through that really
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quick you can see I have like ghetto plastic in between these to keep them
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from touching it's because I left my test bench um and I don't really have
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one to use at the moment but that's neither here nor there we have a 4.15
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GHz core i7 980x under a cooler here we
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have 12 gigs of ocz special edition DDR3
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RAM a big bang X power MSI Motherboard
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and we have a 90 plus% efficient fanless
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power supply actually running the whole thing so that's going to give us a
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really good idea of how much power is actually being drawn the hard drive is
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going to be an ocz vertex Le 200 gig
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drive and I guess that pretty much covers the test platform all right well
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our Vantage run is complete so you can see the GTS 450 scored
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11,431 3D marks with 9,200 of those
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almost 9,300 being on the GPU score now
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I want to just point something out this
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Benchmark is not particularly useful for comparing the 450 to the
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5770 but when you're looking at two cards within the same architecture
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family so these are both firmy based
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derivatives okay so if we compare it against the 460 it on the same platform
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it should give us at least a a fairly
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good indication of how the power these cards compares to each other speaking of
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power the 450 maxed out at 337 wats
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during our Vantage test so let's bear that number in mind for
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later next Benchmark is Crisis so this is running at uh 10 oh 1680 by 1050
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that's the word I was looking for it is running at you can see our last run was
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uh 61 frames per second that was the first run out of the bench though so
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usually that one goes a little bit slow lower so you can see the average FPS for
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this particular run through is about 66 frames per second like I said I'm
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running at 1680 by 1050 uh there you go 65.5 five is what
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it scored on that one I am running with all details medium because really we're
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looking at cards that are in the 149 sort of price range for the most part I
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mean this one goes up to around $2.49 but uh you can't really expect at almost
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HD resolution to be you know turning up
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the details to Max unless you're starting to invest in more expensive
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cards like for example over here we've got a 460 lightning and we've got a GTX
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480 I mean if you're an Enthusiast you want to run at HD Plus resolutions all
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high details anti-aliasing Etc speaking of which I'm not using anti-aliasing
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those over there are going to be the cards for you but you can see the GTS
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450 does post very respectable numbers
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and I mean crisis at medium still looks great so that is how that went okay the
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ma 2 run is going to be a little bit different first of all I want you to
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know that the in-game Benchmark does not actually present a a very accurate real
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world scenario it runs quite a bit slower than you'd actually uh expect
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from the game in the real world so here are all the settings I'm running and of
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note is the fact that again antialiasing is off it's a high-end game it's a
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mid-range graphics card antialiasing does not provide in my opinion enough of
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a gameplay benefit to sacrifice things like Shadows
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and other details for it okay and I have
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turned physics on because unlike the other titles we've been looking at Mafia
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2 is all about the physx support if you have an NVIDIA card you better be
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running it with physx on because that's how you're going to get the best gameplay experience all right we're just
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finishing up the Benchmark run here you can see we've got an average of 33
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frames per second so that's a little bit on the low side of what I would consider
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playable but yeah it gives us a point of comparison against the other cards that
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we are going to be looking at today so here you go the performance is not
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optimal rank d as I mentioned before the actual in-game Benchmark is a little bit
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on the slower side compared to what you would experience uh playing the game all
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right these are my Arkham Asylum options in the control panel this is another
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NVIDIA uh physics ready game so I've gone ahead and left Hardware accelerated
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physics on it's set to normal because we don't I mean they recommend really a
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dedicated physics card for the high setting vsync is off everything else is
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as you see here Batman Arkham Asylum ready to
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run doing one more run of Mafia 2 One
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Small Change Is that the Apex physics are set to medium because I am not
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running with GPU physics anymore I just wanted to do an Apples to Apples
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comparison against the 5770 just so that
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we uh have one more point of reference here
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it really is plain to see that this game is not nearly as cool without the
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physics on high I just thought I'd uh do a quick clip here just to say my
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thoughts on it with the with the physics on medium running on the CPU uh you know
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the outdoor scene in particular you can't really notice it much in here but
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uh not nearly as many part persistent particles not nearly as much damage and
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things like the building um just way way
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less interesting to to
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watch so besides the lon Stellar uh
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physics performance with it on medium running on the CPU the frame rate was
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quite a bit
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lower so in conclusion I give it about a C+ uh that is my video review not the
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card itself I think I might just stick to the whole unboxings product showcases
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uh gameplay videos simpler things like that because stringing together a
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complete review seems to be too complicated for me for whatever reason
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but anyway let's talk a little bit about the conclusions about this card first of
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all this is the Cyclone cooler card I'm going to have some separate videos
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coming up in the next little while where I'm going to show some overclocking numbers I'm going to show uh some
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acoustic numbers well not really numbers but some acoustic characteristics of it
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because really the test test bench I had was far too loud for you to appreciate
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how quiet the card is so I have to put together a silent test bench so I can
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kind of do my whole here I'm going to hold the camera close to the card you
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can see how quiet it is thing so that should be fine as far as the performance
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versus the price goes uh power consumption is slightly improved over
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the 460 series card and the price to
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Performance ratio still looks quite good now it's not quite a 5770 or 5750 killer
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but I mean knowing NVIDIA we're going to see MIRS from their Partners we're going
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to probably see some IRS come into effect and I think that it will become a
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very very strong Contender especially when you consider that it has features
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that you don't necessarily find on competing products I mean Mafia 2 is a
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great example of a game that you really can enjoy on a GTS 450 I mean yeah not
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to the same level as with a 460 but you can have a good experience with it at
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sub HD resolutions and with physx you
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really do get a better gameplay experience so I mean that's something to
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really bear in mind about a card like this thank you for checking out my I
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guess first attempt at a real video review and don't forget to subscribe to
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lonus Tech tips that was pretty much it
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oh no one more thing yes if you want to get the best performance possible don't
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forget use the latest version of After Burner from MSI uh 2.0 that will give
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you all of the voltage adjustments that you can do on this card and also use the
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latest drivers from NVIDIA their new 260 series drivers that'll give you better
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performance on this as well as many other fmy base cards