Comments Locked

66 Comments

Back to Article

  • FragKrag - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Why isn't there a SC2 bench? :(

    I saw them on the laptop reviews and expected them here :(((((
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Because of the vast number of cards in our library, we only refresh the GPU test suite twice a year. It will get refreshed later this fall, and SC2 is a very likely candidate.
  • Gomez Addams - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    When you do your refresh please include older cards like the GTX285 and those of its era. I find it helpful to be able to evaluate whether a video card update will be of any value. So far, it would be of very little value.
  • ronnybrendel - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1408/11/
  • eanazag - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Regretfully, I am patiently waiting for the test suite refresh.
  • Leyawiin - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Prior to Newegg pulling them there were lower priced ones at $130 going up to $140. Its true if you play the rebate game you can get an HD 5770 at that price, but what's coming out of your pocket on the day you buy is generally $140-150. HD 5750s are sitting at $120-140. GTX 460 768MBs are down to $170 (no rebate) so the pressure seems to be on the Radeons as much as the GTS 450. The HD 5750 is almost a useless purchase when the others are clustered so closely to its price point.
  • iwodo - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    It is too bad that we wont get a 28nm die shrink of the Fermi soon. But it seems the logical plan for Nvidia is to work on Frequency and Bandwidth.

    You mention Nvidia has a relatively poor Memory Controller for GDDR5 and that is why it had to use 384bit MC where 256 from a ATI design would be enough.

    It we get a MC upgrade, + some better Frequency Headroom, and unlock the last bit of the SP, Nvidia should be able to counter the Northen Island coming in 2 - 3 months time.

    As that would be the best we can get with 40nm limit and respin of Fermi.
  • DMisner - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    How does the 450 stand up to the 250 in power consumption and general gaming performance.

    Also, any word on how many PPD the GTS 450 will get in Folding@Home?
  • lecaf - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    hey
    in all these benchmarks the 450 beats the 460 is that right ?
    I've took a look at tomshardware review and there the 460 wins.

    Did I miss-look at something or the figures are wrong?
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Where are you seeing the GTS 450 beating the GTX 460?
  • lecaf - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Oh my wrong I missed the SLI part

    sorry
    :)
  • mino - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    That "SLI" detail ... :)
  • jabber - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Buy a 5770 and OC it to 900/1300 like most should out of the box.

    Sorted.
  • Quidam67 - Saturday, September 18, 2010 - link

    Agreed. The article repeatedly pointed out that an overclocked 450 catches up to a 5770, but never mentions that the 5770 generally overclocks very well so is likely to take back the lead anyway.
  • Zokudu - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    But it goes without saying that modern video drivers from both AMD and NVIDIA ridiculously huge, and this new installer doesn’t do anything to change that.

    I think your missing an are there. Otherwise wonderful article guys.
  • Lonyo - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Well, that whole bit isn't entirely accurate anyway. The NV drivers are more than 2x the size of AMD drivers, and AMD drivers aren't that much bigger than the drivers for more "mundane" things like ever printers and sound cards.

    Either way it's not entirely relevant at all.
  • iwodo - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Well Nv Drivers includes a lot more then ATI, otherwise they are about the same.

    But would Anandtech go on to find out just why Drivers Size is so huge. I have the feeling if the drivers were specifically written for one generation of graphics card it would save huge amount of space.
  • Taft12 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    I agree that there is probably a ton of code in there to support cards all the way back to 6xxx but also that this would lead to a support nightmare for users that don't know what model is in their PC.

    Too bad, but it's the nature of the industry and graphics tech is the fastest moving of them all.
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Actually we did something a bit like that early last year for the NV drivers.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/3510

    At the time the PhysX package was around 40% of the required space.

    On modern drivers the languages have a lot to do with it. The NV International drivers are a good 30MB bigger than the English-only drivers.
  • heflys - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    This card is such a disappointment. It performs worse than the year old card 5770, and only surpasses it when overclocked; it's also about the same price. Furthermore, in some reviews, the 5770 even beats it in Crossfire vs SLI comparison! To add further insult to injury, AMD is about to launch new cards shortly!

    This card has to be priced at $110-120 to be competitive in my book.
  • kallogan - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    "Furthermore our pre-release version of Badaboom with Fermi support doesn’t work either, so that also was dropped"

    I knew you had a special version of badaboom for your GTX 400s reviews ;)
  • tviceman - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Great job on the article. Well written, well informed. But man, you guys really need to update your benchmark suite. I think Wolfenstein sold maybe about a two dozen copies on PC. Metro2033 now has an excellent built-in benchmark buried within it's directories. L4D2 is a more demanding, and more played game, than L4D1.

    Since we're entering the DX11 era, incorporating as many DX11 games as possible would make sense.
  • Taft12 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Agreed, there are a number of titles that even low-end cards can play comfortably. Consider those "case closed"

    Ryan said the benchmark selections are being updated in the fall, so bring on the SC2!!!
  • juampavalverde - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    240mm2 for this kind of performance and power consumption? laaaaame
  • Goty - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    So they STILL have yet to release a full Fermi-derived chip? How long has it been, now? That's just sad.
  • loeakaodas - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Did AMD release a new card or is that a mistype?

    "Cheese Slices: Radeon HD 5760 Deinterlacing" on the 3rd page.
  • Etern205 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    In the article, the 3-4 paragraph (quote)
    "entering the world as a 192 CUDA core part but with 3 sets of memory controllers and ROPs, for a combined total of a 192bit memory bus,..."

    It was mentioned the card has a 192bit memory bus, but on the chart it says it's has 192 CUDA cores with a 128bit memory bus. So which is correct?
  • Etern205 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    nevermind :)
  • Conficio - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Cheese Slices: Radeon HD 5760 Deinterlacing
    vs
    When compared to the Radeon HD 5670, the GTS
  • thedeffox - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Over twenty different configurations, and you didn't include the card it's supposed to replace? Really?

    It seems a rather obvious card to include. More relevant than cards far outside its price bracket.
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    If I had my way, we'd have every card known to man on our charts. But if I had my way, days would be 50 hours long to accommodate all of that testing...

    In any case not having a GTS 250 is not an oversight on our part - we simply do not have a GTS 250 to test with.
  • Stuka87 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    So it seems to me like the 450 is trying to match performance with the now year old 5770. I really think nVidia should have one upped the competition, like they did with the 460 release.

    I just can't see this card getting the life that nVidia needs to get out of it. AMD will do a refresh long before nVidia does, which will ultimately mean the 450 will have a very short life in comparison to the 5770.
  • HangFire - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    This comment is right on the mark, and part of a disturbing trend I see with new video card generations in general and Nvidia in particular. With each new generation we are getting the same performance, more or less, at the same price points, the only difference is a newer Direct X level, lower power, or less noise, or a new video connector, etc.

    If all you care about is getting a certain FPS in a few games on one monitor with a certain level of AA and eye candy, the older generation cards would often be a better choice, if they were only available. Unlike in previous generations, which seemed to stay in production forever even when obsolete, the best values either go away (like the 4770 or GTX 275), get recycled at the same or higher price point (8800/9800), or get replaced by similar performance at that price point (GTS 450 vs 250).

    The end result is that for a give price point, you are not buying any more Frames per Second then you were 2 years ago- unless you paid too much and made a really bad choice 2 years ago.

    While at first I was thrilled to see so many older cards in this review, the GTS 250 is conspicuously absent, perhaps because it is rather embarrassing to see what little new the 450 has to offer in terms of price/performance. The 450 is not yet on Bench either, though I hope that will be remedied soon.

    So, congratulations Nvidia, you now have a more complete DirectX 11 lineup, but you've offered me nothing in price/performance to make me want to replace any of my DirectX 10 cards.
  • just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    I disagree. Annand put up numbers for the 4850 which has always pretty much walked allover the GTX250 (9800GTX 8800GTX etc) Looking at the graphs the 450 is somewhat faster so including the 250 benchmarks is not neccessary.

    Also, Both Ati and Nvidia seem to be in a holding pattern as far as performance goes with their current lineups. People upgrading from the latest and greatest from the last generation of video cards won't notice huge gains performance wise. What they will notice (depending on the card) is lower temperatures, less power consumption, and ofcourse more features.

    Those upgrading from cards 2+ years old or value oriented cards from the last generation are likely to see the most gains overall with these new ones. The rest of us get a sideways upgrade at best. Atleast thats my opinion anyway.
  • geniekid - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    I must also disagree, respectfully. A couple of the benchmarks here show that for less than half the price I paid for my top-of-the-line factory OCed 9800GTX several years ago, I can get about the same or slightly better performance. This shows me that progress is being made - or, at the very least, that price/performance is improving over time.
  • HangFire - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Wow, thanks for the respect in the disagreement! But then, this is AT not Tom's.

    Speaking of Tom's, I just read their GTS450 review, and their statement after the DX9-10 benchmarks (CoD:MW2 and Crysis) mirrors mine vis-a-vis the GTS 250- "Naturally, numbers like this don’t compel you to upgrade." While another site quoted 20-25% better performance, Tom's had the 250 faster than the 450.

    I would expect a three generation old top-of-the-line card to have poor value compared to a mainstream card of today. (I say three because a 9800 GTX OC is essentially an 8800 Ultra). Nvidia complicates the issue with generational recycling and the missing GTX 3xx DirectX 10.1 cards that never existed. I'm trying to compare like-to-like, that is mainstream cards in the $140 to $150 range (price at introduction).

    If you look at the incremental performance differences of the mid-stream cards 8800GT->9800GT->GTS 250->GTS 450, anyone that actually bought each of these cards for $130->$150 expecting a big generational performance boost with each jump was sorely disappointed. On the AMD side things are a little better, but the mainstream level 4xxx to 5xxx jump was more about power and Eyefinity than performance. (Of course their top-end cards made big jumps, at big $$$).

    The new GTS 450 is launched at the same price point the GTS 250 had, and offers very similar performance. Of course, the 250 dropped in price like a stone, because it had to, and the 450 may have some adjustments ahead of it. But let's say it was 25% faster across the board, is it compelling? The 7800GT to 8800GT upgrade, now that was compelling.
  • just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    You have to remember something though.. the 8800 line was a new standard by which all cards are/were measured by. Like the Radeon 9700/800 it takes years to move past it... We do not see those crazy bumps in performance and features happen often afterall.
  • IceDread - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    "The GTX 460 was a card that made the comparable AMD card obsolete and brought significantly improved performance to the $200 market. NVIDIA had a card built to hit one of AMD’s weak spots, and it struck beautifully. "

    A news site should strive towards being unbiased but anandtech sure does not do that.
  • just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Have you had the oportunity to use the 460? Or the 5830/50 that it competes against? Anandtech hit the nail on the head with that statement and it's not based upon Ati/Nvidia bias. Simply put it's one of the best buys on the market right now and with all of Nvidia's misteps it's surprising to see them come out with a card that is so hard to pick fault with.
  • heflys - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Yeah, the GTX 460 1gb made the 5830 obsolete, but the 768mb version sure didn't. And the 5850 has started to come down in price, and you can now pick it up for $259 after rebate.
  • just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Here in Canada I haven't really seen any 5850's priced under 300 yet and most are up in the 330 range.. The 1G 460 sit's in the 220-240 (no price drops for us) so it's a tempting alternative for many (I think)

    I also believe the 5850 will be a $200 card sometime in the near future. It's been selling way above it's suggested retail price (at launch) and when that happens it will be harder to consider the 460 as a viable alternative. I can't see it being sold at $150 (for the 1G variants) any time soon... so only fan's of Nvidia would consider it if it's priced in the 5850s range.
  • jabber - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Big thing is...who actually bought a 5830?

    When it came out everyone said it was a pointless card so big whoop, Nvidia's 460 beats a card that should never have been released in the first place.

    Bit like saying "our car out performed the Ford Edsel!"

    If you want middle of the road performance you get a 5770, if you want a better boost you get the 5850.
  • just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    It was only a pointless card because of it's price... Originally it should have been alot cheaper but supply and demand has inflated the prices of most of Amd's 5X lineup. Sitting near a $100 more then the 5770 is what made it a hard sell.
  • erple2 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link

    Sure it did - the 768MB version fo the 460 now gave you 5830 performance for > 10% less money. To me, that makes it sound like the 5830 was now "obsoleted" by the 460 series. The 1 GB card was significantly faster at the same price point, and the 768 MB version was just as fast, but significantly cheaper. Both using less power, noise and heat.

    Isn't that essentially what defines "obsoletes"?
  • SandmanWN - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Throughout the entire test suite the 5850 is within 4-6 frames of the 470. In two it makes it to 8 and 10 frames more. Given you need an extra 100W's on your power supply and the additional cost associated with that just to get that tiny fraction of output, the statement seems fanboyish. AT should be better than this.
  • just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    What does the 470 have to do with this? Most of us all agree that the 465/470/480 are all heat scores with insane power draws.. the 460 addressed that and came in at a price point that hit a sweet spot.. bringing alot of the 470/480's strengths and none of it's weaknesses to the table. Only real complaint I've seen for the 460 is the mini hdmi.
  • IceDread - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link

    You are missing my point.

    By saying "and it struck beautifully" implies that you are cheering for the nvidia team. It would be a different thing if he wrote "and it struck hard" or something like that.
  • adonn78 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    I read another review, damn my cheating heart. That stated the SLI scalling ont hese cards were impressive. You got 2 GTS 450 cards but no SLI?
  • Stuka87 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Er, every single benchmark shows the GTS-450 SLI scores. They are marked in green (like the regular GTS-450).
  • marraco - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Other web sites show that the 450 is slower than the 250.

    It's strange when the 250 has 128 shaders, and the 450 has 192.... and the 450 has DDR5 vs DDR3 in the 250.

    It looks like the texture units bottleneck this design.

    Even more strange is that I could not find the 250 on this article charts.

    I don't see the 450 as price competitive with the radeons, except as SLI setup. It would be more valuable if 3-SLI way were allowed, and I guess that is not the case, because the photos shown only a single SLI connector.

    The SLI setups are unbeatable against the radeons price/performance. Maybe nVidia should design cheap, energy-efficient chips so a card manufacturer can pack 10 video chips on a single card.
  • just4U - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    overclockers is the only review I've seen that shows the 250 in the mix and by the looks of it the 450 is a good 25-30% faster then the 250 on most games they tested with... what reviews are you reading?

    Personally I see no reason to rush out and buy two of these. A 460 is cheaper and to close in performance to justify it.
  • marraco - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gts-45...
  • KG Bird - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Nice review, but answer one question for me. Why does the HD 5770 scale well in crossfire while others like the HD 5870 don't?
  • heflys - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    That's one of the great mysteries that has plagued the Crossfire setup. Might just be crappy drivers. Who knows.....
  • Jedi2155 - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Do it right...and do it right the first time is the name of the game.
  • OCNewbie - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Why would they compare a GTS 450 overclocked to a stock 5770? Wouldn't it make more sense to compare apples to apples, or in this case, OC'd versus OC'd? If you're gonna OC the GTS 450, then wouldn't it be reasonable to expect you'd also OC the 5770? Doesn't the 5770 OC quite well? This is probably even less of a debate, as far as which is the best performer, if you factor in OC'ng to BOTH cards.
  • jabber - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link

    Most 5770 cards go up to 900/1300 pretty easy.

    Would leave the 450 even further in the dust however.
  • Belard - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    Looks like AMD still has a solid product line of DX11 parts. So an end-user would still be looking at the older 210~250 cards for the $40~80 market.

    AMD could still easily reduce their prices across the board... but guess they're going to wait until the 6000 series ships and them blow out the 5000 series for cheap.

    If the 6750 comes out at $120, but good deal faster than the 5770, that is going to hurt.
  • KingKuei - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link

    So what happened to the Release 260 drivers we were supposed to get this morning?

    Anand mentioned something about a bug in the driver related to OpenGL (or was it CUDA?) that they were going to fix before releasing it. Yet it's already late afternoon Monday and there's nothing on nVidia's site yet.

    The big deal for me actually is related to SC2. SUPPOSEDLY, this is the driver release that fixes many of the issues related to framerate drops in SC2. I care more about that than the GTS 450!
  • Spazweasel - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link

    One thing to note: there is a low-profile (double slot) version of this card already available from Palit. I can't find a low-profile 5770. For low-profile cases, this is therefore likely the best you can currently get, and given it's a low-thermal-impact part, this makes sense.

    The ball is in your court, Powercolor/Sparkle!
  • Hrel - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link

    Hi, can you please get this card put in bench. I know you're updating soon, but I'd love it if you could just add this one last card to the current configuration. And then not toss it when the test bed gets updated, just label it by the date, as the old version. This would be very very helpful, thank you!
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link

    I'm working on Bench right now in fact. it will be in there later this morning.
  • Casper42 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link

    You guys really need to stop insisting the GTX 480 is a $500 card.
    The one your Pricing table links to is some crazy beast of a card that is now the exception rather than the rule.
    NewEgg has over 10 cards for under $500 and only 4 above $500.
    Including Rebates the average price comes down to at least $470 if not cheaper.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link

    In this case $500 is NVIDIA's official MSRP. That's right off their price chart from late last week.
  • DJ-Destiny - Friday, October 1, 2010 - link

    Okay , so that "ring-choke" thing ,
    isn't quite a ring-choke .
    It's an solid core inductor .
  • Oxford Guy - Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - link

    "The extra power enables extra performance, but it completely blows the performance-per-watt of the GTS 450 cards."

    "Given this, it makes little sense not to overclock as long as you have a card with a suitable limit."

    If one wants more performance, and more performance per watt, perhaps buying one of these to overlock isn't so sensible?

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now