Originally Posted by
Shame Baxtor @ TweakTown
Final Thoughts
The first thing that has to be said is, yes, I understand that the HD 5770 can be overclocked as well, and while that would paint a slightly better picture for the HD 5770 in this case, the bottom line is that the model doesn't have anywhere near the OC potential of the GTS 450. The only model in the whole ATI line up that has any real OC potential is the HD 5970 which can achieve some very impressive clocks. Outside of that model, most ATI cards offer a good, moderate overclock; but nothing like the levels we're seeing from NVIDIA lately with cards like the GTS 450 and GTX 460.
As for how our clocks should compare to other peoples, multiple companies have told us that you should be reaching around the 950MHz mark when it comes to the core, so we're fairly confident you should be able to achieve that. The only thing that will differ is the memory clock. Depending if you’re benching or gaming will also determine what you end up with. If you're wanting it as your OC for when you game, you might just dial it back a little, something around 925MHz should be very easy.
There's really two main points that need to be made, though. The first is that while the model is better value than the GTX 460, when it came to overclocking the two models they are clearly for two different budgets. If someone has a under $150 US budget, they don't walk out of a store with a $230 US GTX 460. The same when budgets are reversed. What NVIDIA have done, is if your budget is under $150 US, you walk out of the store with a GTS 450 and not a HD 5750 or HD 5770, and if your budget is over $200, you walk out with a GTX 460 and not an ATI equivalent.
The other point that needs to be made is the high resolution performance. We've seen NVIDIA struggle with 2560 x 1600 gaming a bit with the 400 series and here's no different, because quite often we see that ATI is able to outperform the GTS 450 at this resolution, even when the GTS 450 is at 950MHz. What's so important about this is that it's irrelevant; these cards aren't designed to run at that resolution and just because the HD 5770 can get 44 FPS vs. 40 FPS at 2560 x 1600, neither card is going to be playable. At resolutions when the cards are scoring above 60 FPS, though, we see that the NVIDIA card, especially at 950MHz is able to take out the win almost every time.
What took AMD four models; the HD 5750, HD 5770, HD 5830 and HD 5850, NVIDIA have really been able to destroy in two, the GTS 450 for the first two, and GTX 460 for the latter two.
The question now? What does AMD do? Drop the price on all models that will be getting replaced by the 6000 series in October and onwards to help everyone get rid of surplus stock.
AMD can't make their offerings better; they can only make them cheaper.
NVIDIA could've probably offered us a stock clock on the GTS 450 of 850MHz, much in the way they could've offered us a higher one on the GTX 465. I've said it before, though, doing so doesn't create the same buzz. NVIDIA know how to market a product, and marketed one they have. The GTS 450 is going to slide into a lot of peoples machines.
MSI GeForce GTS 450 Cyclone 1GB Review, Fishy conclusion?
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