Nvidia GeForce GTS 450: Hello GF106, Farewell G92

[shin0bi272]

[citation][nom]madass[/nom]I still dont get it. The 450 has more cores than a 250. 192 vs 128. It ought to be 4870ish fast. Same with the 460. 356 cores. Should be about as fast as a 5850. It just barely manages to ebat the GTX275. With 240 cores. Is the new architecture actually worse than the old ones core for core, clock for clock? I dont get it....[/citation]

And thus you see the problem with the new nvidia cards. Too concerned with adding gpgpu functionality to be bothered to work on fill rate. It's fill rate that wins the day... everything else is working towards that or adding to it. Its great to have physx and geometry shaders and hardware tessellation but if you cant fill in all those pixels fast enough then its worthless.

 

[jaywed]

This card isnt worthy to be compared to a Lexus.

 

[warmon6]

[citation][nom]scurvywombat[/nom]This could be a good folder in terms of PPD / Watt.[/citation]

well, according to Hardware Cannucks ppd benchmarks, it is a decent folder. 7.7k ppd.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/36152-nvidia-geforce-gts-450-1gb-single-sli-review-19.html

Compared to say $300+ hd5870 that can only do 5k to 7k ppd (for now until gpu3 on ati), Not bad for a possibly of a $130 card.

Although thats about it for what this card is decent at. For gaming, i would recommend the gtx 460, HD 5770, ect... over the gts 450.

 

[Reynod]

That was an interesting read chris ... thanks.

 

[youssef 2010]

Great article.

I have two questions though.How will the GF106 replace G92 despite the $20-$30 price premium and lower performance in DX10 mode?.Also, Are DirectX11 visuals far better than DX10 or are we giving up performance for virtually the same visual quality?

 

[youssef 2010]

[citation][nom]shin0bi272[/nom]And thus you see the problem with the new nvidia cards. Too concerned with adding gpgpu functionality to be bothered to work on fill rate. It's fill rate that wins the day... everything else is working towards that or adding to it. Its great to have physx and geometry shaders and hardware tessellation but if you cant fill in all those pixels fast enough then its worthless.[/citation]

I think its more like the 128-bit memory interface is limiting performance,especially with AA enabled

 

[f-14]

i would take a gtx's 260 give it direct X11 support take it's 448 bit bus slap some gddr5 in and over clock that thing to a gtx 295's gb/s out put before calling it a 400 series, but Nvidia didn't. they just ungutted a gts 250 and called it fermi 400's. yayayaya new smaller die, more transistors, lower power, yet when used at the same maxed out settings as it's 200 series generation model it's still getting it's butt kicked or almost kicked with the only thing saving it is is faster gddr5 memory and lower power requirement despite having almost 10-25% transistors more. the 460 seems more like a gts250 and the 450 seems more like a gt220. anybody else feel this way?

after every one noticed the difference in geforce 6000 series/ati 800 series in 64bit/128bit/256bit bus, they think we'd forget how important that is, when they gave you the 256bit bus they crippled the card with the slow memory speeds and when they gave you current memory, they pretty much sold out. i see AMD and Nvidia are still playing the stupid memory bus gddr generation game. we know they can do 320/448/512 bit memory bus speeds with gddr3, every successive generation should out perform the previous by atleast 15% just based on the math of the hardware before even designing a new one. these 400 series seem just like the geforce 5000 series jump to 6000 series in performance, only reason to upgrade is direct X11 support, like going from 5000 gddr2 to 6000 was for shader 4.0 support and gddr3. i'm left feeling offended by these stupid bottleneck games kind of like how i feel with Intel and AMD when they went 64bit processors, barely anybody writes anything for 64 bit code still after all these years let alone multi-threading. i think the hardware manufacturers should take a break now until programmers start utilizing what they already have . just IMO which doesn't mean much of anything to any one unless more of you guys start saying the same thing.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]youssef 2010[/nom]Great article.I have two questions though.How will the GF106 replace G92 despite the $20-$30 price premium and lower performance in DX10 mode?.Also, Are DirectX11 visuals far better than DX10 or are we giving up performance for virtually the same visual quality?[/citation]

Youssef,

I can't claim to know the specifics here, but as I see, GF106 frees NV to stop paying for G92, replacing it in its product stack altogether.

With regard to DX11, I still haven't seen anything that made me say "Wow, I'm so glad I have a DX11-capable card installed. With that said, much of what these vendors continue promising suggests compute and graphics potential hasn't been close to realized yet. Do you wait? Meh, I'm more of the state of mind that it's better to enjoy what you pay for now (GTS 250/4850) versus buying for the future. Then again, if everyone thought that way, developers would never be incentivized to push forward with implementing new technology. We need the early adopters to make technologies viable for the mainstream.
Regards,
Chris

 

[shin0bi272]

[citation][nom]youssef 2010[/nom]I think its more like the 128-bit memory interface is limiting performance,especially with AA enabled[/citation]
with the 450 there arent enough cores enabled to max out the 128bit memory bus. The problem with the entire 4 series is their fill rate is their bottleneck. Its why the ati cards do almost as well with less cores and if memory serves a 256bit mem bus vs the 384bit in the gtx480.

That being said Im sure the 128bit bus isnt helping either... but this isnt really a gamer card. the 460 is a gamer card the 470 is a gamer card and of course the 480 is too... a 128bit mem bus card is for the gamer who wants to play a sh!t ton of solitare or farmville not crysis.

 

[drutort]

looks like this is a much better physx card then 250 gts, but i have a 240 that cost me like $50 (and at end of last year) with rebate, though 90% of the time its just sucking up idle power :/

maybe they should put physx into browser or other physics stuff its hard to justify this card to run even idle.

system 4gb ddr3 1600, 720 x3 @ x4 3.4ghz ($95, about 1.5 years ago?)
5850 (aftermarket) open box ($220)
240 ddr5 ($80 $50 after rebate)
28" LCD

i found it hard to max out the cpu's gpu's when mixing the 240 for physx

idle 187 watts no lcd, with lcd 238 watts
i had to run fluidmark, furmark and prime 95 max including the LCD is 517 watts
gaming old game like tf2 avg to 350 watts
furmark 423 watts alone


if only my 720 would hit 4ghz but its still quite worth it as i found great deal at $95 while retailing on newegg they were over $130

like others the only thing ill ever need to upgrade is maybe to a faster new amd CPU and to o/c it past 4ghz and a newer SSD which im loving the current ocz agility

i can see the 450 being great physx card in a few months when it drops down in price, it will idle and at load take far less power and im assuming the performance will be great for physx then the geforce 250 definitely better then 240

though i would guess you would have to pair it up with 480? 5950 or 5870, something and probably either 4ghz amd chip or i7

otherwise i dont see the 450 being better then what amd has and esp when the older nvidia cards will probably drop in price and still hold their own

 

[rohitbaran]

[citation][nom]spirit123[/nom]Newegg is selling hd4870 for 104.99 after mir and free shipping.This 450 is just priced way to high.Sale it for $80 and it is a good deal.[/citation]
That will put nVidia out of business.

 

[rootheday]

re Bitstreaming HD audio: You were considering a >100W graphics card for HTPC? Doesn't that sort of run counter to the whole idea that HTPC equipment should be silent?

 

[eddieroolz]

After reading through, I must say I was slightly disappointed. My GTS 250 is still doing very well (despite being held by a budget CPU) and I was hoping that GF106 would be the G92 of today. I suppose that isn't happening.

 

[Doom3klr]

even my older 70 dollar 9800gtx+ trumps this card. And the 5770 puts it to shame as well.

 

[elbert]

Nice article and very well done. The 450GTS looks ok price for performance. The big thing worrying me about this card is AMD shortly will be launching its 6700's. The 6700's AMD is launching first could deal this fresh out card a death blow.
http://www.chw.net/2010/04/todo-lo-que-sabemos-sobre-ati-radeon-hd-6000-series/
http://www.trubritarforums.com/forum/index.php?/topic/5443-ati-6000-series/
The 6700's prices may be much higher but as always this means a drop for the older generation. Going to be odd the 6700's being the highest performance 40nm GPU's. The 6800's will only be higher performance on the 28nm's if the articles are correct.

 

[porschedream]

[citation][nom]fball922[/nom]This, to me, is so telling of how far behind the Green Team is falling.[/citation]
ehhh i know ati is red(but its dead now), so its green team on both sides

 

[BulkZerker]

About time they got rid of the G92. That design is as old as my cat!

 

[coffeejunkee]

G92 was a very good chip, I know because I owned a 8800gt. But it's also plagued by very high failure rates. I had to revitalize my card using the oven trick, which got it back up and running for 2 weeks before dying again. Therefore, I wouldn't advise buying them used. Or the gts250 for that matter.

4850 is nice as well and might seem like a good deal vs 5750. Except the 5750 is very quiet and reaches the same temp under load as my 8800gt idle: 65 degrees. I don't get how temps can be so high in this test. Or the VaporX cooler on my card is exceptionally good. Which I doubt, because every other 5750/70 test I've seen the cards were around 75 degrees max.

About the gts450, only get it if you're a real nvidia fan.

 

[rolli59]

Disappointing when compared to GTS250, expected more improvement and at least performance at level with HD5770 and GTX260. Maybe we could call it a worthy successor of the old 9600GT card.

 

[94_xj]

A few things just aren't sitting right with me on the first page. First saying the 465 is a half disabled gf100 is just plain stupid. Did someone fail math? If a 465 is half of the gf100 that thing would pack a walloping 702 cuda cores. The 465 is just like the 9600gso/8800gs, it's a 1/4 disabled 480.

Also, the 460 being partially disabled to not outperform the 470? I feel like such a statement should have a link to some proof because that's news to me.

 

[skorchi]

"At zero hour, Tom Vaughan, director of business development at CyberLink, swooped in to save the day with an early build of the PowerDVD 10 update that will be available to customers soon."

What (long-awaited) build# of PDVD 10 is this?

 

[sledgehammer]

"by a mainstream Core i7-750 overclocked to 4 GHz+."

 

[sledgehammer]

i5 750 perhaps ?

 

[IAF]

Looks like the G92 was the last realy good design from nVidia

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]94_xj[/nom]A few things just aren't sitting right with me on the first page. First saying the 465 is a half disabled gf100 is just plain stupid. Did someone fail math? If a 465 is half of the gf100 that thing would pack a walloping 702 cuda cores. The 465 is just like the 9600gso/8800gs, it's a 1/4 disabled 480.Also, the 460 being partially disabled to not outperform the 470? I feel like such a statement should have a link to some proof because that's news to me.[/citation]

Statements re: GTX 460 are actually from conversations with NV reps.