ZOTAC GeForce GTS 450 AMP! Edition 1 GB Review 9

ZOTAC GeForce GTS 450 AMP! Edition 1 GB Review

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W1zzard
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Manufacturer: ZOTAC
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Introduction

ZOTAC Logo


Today NVIDIA launches their new GeForce GTS 450 Series of graphics cards. As the "GTS" naming suggests, the card is more of a mid-range part than a high-performance device. It is NVIDIA's expressed goal to offer a low priced DirectX 11 graphics card that the majority of gamers can afford - and still play the latest games.

Please also make sure to check out our GTS 450 reviews today:

Architecture


NVIDIA's GF106 GPU is based on NVIDIA's Fermi architecture, which was released earlier this year. In order to achieve the product performance and positioning NVIDIA was looking for, they disabled some components of the full GF106 core, resulting in the graphics processor for the GeForce GTS 450. Unlike other Fermi-class cards the changes here are quite limited. Basically NVIDIA removed two memory chips from the design, two chips less means 2x 32-bit less bus interface, so a single 64-bit memory controller got disabled. The memory bus width is closely coupled to the number of active ROPs in the GPU, so one ROP partition is also disabled. Overall this change enables board partners to build more price competitive products because of the reduced cost for memory chips and PCB signal routing. It helps NVIDIA to increase its GPU yields. This also leaves NVIDIA with the option to create a more powerful "GTS 455" SKU at a later time, that has a 192-bit GDDR5 memory interface, with likely 768 MB or 1536 MB of memory.

It's interesting to note that NVIDIA did not disable any of the streaming multiprocessor units (SMs), and all four SMs holding 48 CUDA cores each are enabled, giving the CUDA core count of 192. NVIDIA's reference clocks on the GeForce GTS 450 are fairly low with 783 MHz core, 1566 MHz CUDA cores, and 900 MHz memory, so it comes as no surprise that most board partners are shipping pre-overclocked cards at lauch.

ZOTAC uses a custom PCB design paired with the cooler from their existing GTS 250 models. The card is clocked at 873 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory which is in the middle of the overclocked spectrum we are seeing today.

Radeon
HD 4850		GeForce
GTS 250		Radeon
HD 5750		GeForce
GTS 450		ZOTAC
GTS 450 AMP!		Radeon
HD 4870		Radeon
HD 5770

GeForce
GTX 260

GeForce
GTX 460		Radeon
HD 5830		GeForce
GTX 275		GeForce
GTX 460
Shader units 8001287201921928008002163361120240336
ROPs161616161616162824162832
GPURV770G92JuniperGF106GF106RV770JuniperGT200GF104CypressGT200GF104
Transistors956M754M1040M1170M1170M956M1040M1400M 1950M2154M1404M1950M
Memory Size512 MB 1024 MB 1024 MB 1024 MB1024 MB512 MB 1024 MB 896 MB768 MB1024 MB 896 MB 1024 MB
Memory Bus Width 256 bit 256 bit 128 bit 128 bit 128 bit 256 bit 128 bit 448 bit 192 bit 256 bit 448 bit 256 bit
Core Clock625 MHz 738 MHz 700 MHz 783 MHz 873 MHz 750 MHz 850 MHz 576 MHz 675 MHz 800 MHz 602 MHz 675 MHz
Memory Clock993 MHz 1100 MHz 1150 MHz 900 MHz 1000 MHz 900 MHz 1200 MHz 999 MHz 900 MHz 1000 MHz 1107 MHz 900 MHz
Price$95$110$125$129$159$135$140$180$170$190$230$230

Packaging

Package Front
Package Back

ZOTAC's package follows the company's visual orange theme with a dragon on front. Compared to other board partners the ZOTAC package is quite small which is a good thing because it reduces production cost, shipping cost and waste.

Contents



You will receive:
  • Graphics card
  • Driver CD
  • Quick Install Guide
  • Zotac Boost
  • DVI Adapter
  • PCI-Express power cable
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Mar 13th, 2025 04:54 EDT change timezone

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