MSI GTS 450 Cyclone review

[Booj]

Conclusion

A quick look on the bot puts the 450 3dmark results somewhere in between a HD 5750 and 5770, which is pretty reflective of it's pricing in the Australian market at least. I would expect 03 performance to improve with driver revisions.

There's one thing we can be sure of: After it's incredibly long life and all the rebrands, the G92 core can finally be put out to pasture.

Like the 460, the 450 has plenty of headroom for overclocking, even after a factory OC from MSI. Perhaps with some additional heatsinks on the memory and VRM sections, even better overclocking could be achieved. It's hard to complain with a close to 200mhz OC over the reference clocks though. It makes you wonder why Nvidia didn't release the card with a higher default clock to put more pressure on the 57xx series from ATI.
It's hard to overlook how late the card is to market. If the 450 and for that matter the 460 were released a year ago, with a bit higher default clock then Nvidia could have been very competitive in the midrange.

The addition of the cyclone cooler renders the card more or less silent, with the hard drive of the test system being the noisiest component when idling. With both the Cyclone cooler and Intel 980x cooler at 100%, the 980x cooler was much louder.

For the time being though the card provides capable gaming at resolutions typical of the mainstream, If you're on a budget, looking for a quiet card that delivers on a price/performance ratio, then the GTS450 Cyclone is definitely worthy of consideration.

Pro's
Competitive price
Excellent overclocking capability
Low load temps and noise levels with the Cyclone cooler.
The Afterburner utility
Smooth gaming at high settings up to and beyond 1680x1050

Con's
Late to market
No memory or vrm cooling

Thanks to MSI Australia for the review sample.

and thanks for reading guys.

Cheers,
Booj