NVIDIA's new GeForce GTS 450 is a solid implementation of the Fermi architecture for the lower midrange segment. The cards have enough power to play the latest titles at resolutions up to, including 1680x1050. Older games will run just fine at 1920x1200 too. This enables users to enjoy current DirectX 11 titles at a reasonable cost point below $150. The problem? ATI has had their sub-$150 DirectX 11 Radeons out on the market since October 2009, almost a year now. To me it feels a bit like NVIDIA is still playing the catch-up game. Don't get me wrong, the GTS 450 is a great little card but it doesn't seem to bring any big surprises. Neither performance wise, nor price wise.
It also puzzles me why NVIDIA's reference design comes at such low clocks that almost every board partner would be out of his mind to not overclock and ask a premium for the boards. This means that NVIDIA's $129 reference design price is only a baseline with the majority of designs reaching well into the $140 area -which is HD 5770's hunting ground. One thing that NVIDIA has to tip things in its favor are features such as CUDA, PhysX, 3D Vision, and out of the box support for Blu-ray 3D.
ZOTAC's GeForce GTS 450 Amp! Edition shows excellent choice in components which seems to reflect in the overclocking potential. We were able to reach 923 MHz on our sample which is a good result, considering that the card runs at only 1.08V. Other manufacturers increase the voltage which results in higher overclock but also more power consumption and heat. It also limits you in case you plan on increasing the voltage yourself during overclocking. The factory overclock of ZOTAC's card is far from the maximum we have seen, something that won't matter if you plan on overclocking the card yourself anyway. Price-wise the card is the most expensive with $160, but this may change as supply becomes more steady and competition between board vendors heats up.
The final verdict on the GTS 450 itself is not definitive. The GPU does not stay ahead of the Radeon HD 5700 series to create the kind of dilemma buyers faced that made them choose the GeForce GTX 460 768 MB over the Radeon HD 5770 when the former first came out. Instead, it's stuck in between the HD 5750 and HD 5770, and leans very close to the HD 5750 in terms of performance. Choosing a card in this segment has been a tough decision, and will now be even harder. Bring in the dice.