PNY NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1GB Graphics Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,730 words · ~8 min read
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this is a sample that just arrived in the mail today so we're going to be
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doing an unboxing and then an unboxing
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because this is actually just the shipping box so if seal has been broken
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check contents the seal has not been
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broken but we're going to check the contents anyway because that's uh
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apparently my job all right we have
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broken the seals we find Bubble Wrap aha
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PNY has done an excellent job of packaging this particular graphics card
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there's nothing else inside the box so this is a GeForce GTS 450 from PNY I
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don't know if this one is included actually but uh hold on hold on hold on
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wait for it let me check this out warranty service H look at that this is
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interesting okay because PNY recently updated their high-end video cards to
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offer a lifetime warranty and I wasn't
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really sure if a mid-range video card like this would be included in that
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policy but while they are not offering lifetime warranty they do have a
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fiveyear warranty which is actually uh
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excellent for a mid-range card like this I mean this is only a 149 139 is sort of
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graphics card and that's uh that's outstanding actually so we'll have a
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quick look at the features overall of this card it's a 783 MHz core clock it
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has 192 processor cores it has a
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1.56 GHz processor clock okay so
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remember that's double the core clock all right and then we've got one gig of
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gddr5 you can actually read all the specs here if you so desire the more
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important things on a card like this are actually the features because this is
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part of NVIDIA's directex lineup of cards it's like I said a mainstream
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level card so it's positioned under the GTX 460 but it does still come with all
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the NVIDIA features that means you got Cuda physics SLI 3D Vision capability
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even though they don't have 3D Vision listed here they should including 3D
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Vision Sur so that is if you run two of these cards in SLI you will have full
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support for there it is 3D Vision surround the cameraman's trying to burn
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me here again uh let's see what we've got in terms of games that they're
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demoing here so they've got civilization 5 is really pitched as a card or as a
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game that will run great on the GTS 450
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they've also got Mafia 2 if you're running it non HD resolution so anything
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about 1680 X 1050 or lower this card
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actually performs admirably well in Mafia 2 so that's another pretty cool
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one and that includes running with physics on which provides a much much
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better gameplay experience in a game like that than trying to run without
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physx oh this is cool too check this out
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uh this is a promotion that PNY has been running for quite a while but they
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actually include two bonus movie downloads so if you check out pny.com
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mov you can see which movies you can uh
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get for free with this video card oh yeah there it is 5year warranty that
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wouldn't have been that hard to find if I had looked for it more carefully and
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you know what here here is a special Linus Tech tips promotional offer I'm
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just going to take apart the Box okay okay okay whoever sees this first so
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that means you smart guy who writes the first comment right there oh he looks at
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the other one okay well there's a Starcraft 2 trial okay and then there's
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the two bonus movie downloads and then if you really want a 3 month
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subscription to Esa then you can have that too so there we go yay promotional
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excitement online Tech tips free stuff
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all right here we go inside this is kind
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of a new way of doing packaging for pmy I haven't seen this before nice black
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internal box and then it looks like it comes in like a little uh a little
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bubble thing here so okay hold on first let's flip it over this way I guess so
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we see the accessories first of all we have a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter then we
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have a dual four pin Molex to six pin PCIe power adapter and then a DVI to VGA
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adapter if you're still running an old Monitor and someone was all indignant
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about me saying that VGA monitors are old well they are if your monitor only
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has VGA then it's old uh you can see here they've got the 25 9.22 Graphics
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drivers throw this away because NVIDIA
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just released their new 260 series drivers which provide better performance
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for the GTS 450 here is a quick start
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guide okay and then let's have a look at
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the card itself so this one features a
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blue PCB as well as the NVIDIA stock
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reference cooler so I'm going to have a closer look at the reference cooler
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because PNY does typically release reference boards and I'll explain what
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reference mean that means they haven't done a redesign of the PCB layout but
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rather they are manufacturing based on NVIDIA's recommended layout for the RAM
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the core everything else that goes on the video card itself including in this
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case the cooler so let's have a look at the back here you can see we've got four
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RAM chips here there are going to be four RAM chips on the other side so that
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means that that's your 1 gig of gddr5 although it looks like we do have
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support for up to four more RAM chips so potentially uh PNY could release a 1.5
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gig or a 768 Meg version of this card in
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the future here we've got the SLI connector so this card supports up to
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two-way SLI down at the bottom you can see a
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curious thing that I also noticed on the MSI 450 card you can see that some of
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the traces here do not terminate in two pins so it looks like this card is able
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to run at PCI Express 16x that means
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full PCIe 2.0 bandwidth without all of
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the pins that's not uh not an aspect of PCIe technology that I was aware of but
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there you go here we've got two DVI ports and One Mini HDMI remember you can
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only use two of these at a time that means either dual DVI or one DVI One
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Mini HDMI one DVI 1 mini HDMI here we
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have an exhaust vent and this is something that I want to point out about
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this particular card because as I said uses the reference cooler that means
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that probably about with this shroud about half of the air flow coming out of
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this card is going to be exhausted from the case and then maybe about another
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half is going to come down from the fan and be exhausted out the back of the
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Shroud so that means that it's a good compromise between something like uh a a
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normal blower uh heat sink where you
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actually have to position the fan way over here you don't get quite that same
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efficiency as when you're blowing air right down onto the core and something
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like the MSI Cyclone cooler where yeah you're putting heat pipes and everything
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all over it but you're exhausting the hot air into your case so yeah like I
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said it's a compromise and it's one that personally I can live with here on the
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back of the card we find a six pin PCIe power connector as well as a 4pin pwm
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fan controller so that means this fan should be quite quiet although we will do some testing with this against the
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MSI Cy cooler in the coming days up here
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we find pn's branding as you can see this is a reference shroud so that means
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that it's just a sticker on top of it and I think that covers pretty much
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everything in terms of the unboxing of the py GTS 450 and we will have more to
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come including some SLI numbers for the 450 now that I have my second
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one now I think I actually uh glossed over this too fast as I was boxing the
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card back up I noticed just how ingenious this package method is so PNY
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has actually gone and custom designed a plastic shroudy thing that looks like it
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can fit any number of graphics cards so all you've got is your a little stopper
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here I'm actually going to take the top cover off here so you've got a little
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stopper right here that keeps it from sliding back and forth and then you've
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got a little hook right here where the PCI Express retention clip sits so it
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can't slide back see that it can't slide
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forward uh because of this one here where little uh that little knob goes
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into so it can't slide back it can't slide forward it has this top cover
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piece on it that gives it like a cushion
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of air all the way around the card so
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even if the Box gets just like hammered on in shipping the card will be
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completely safe and uh yeah it doesn't use any of that non-biodegradable foam
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or anything like that a solution like this keeps the card completely safe from
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any kind of static damage that could happen like when foam's rubbing against
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itself I mean there is anti-static foam but it's probably more expensive anyway
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I think this is just one of the more clever ways I've ever seen a video card
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package so I thought I'd just kind of give PNY a quick Kudos on uh moving
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forward in terms of video card Packaging