Our today’s guest is Gainward‘s Goes Like Hell model, a factory overclocked version of GTS 450. The reference card, as you may recall, runs at 783MHz for the GPU and 902MHz (3608MHz effectively) for the memory. Gainward GTS 450 GLH 1GB, on the other hand, comes with a 930MHz GPU and 1000MHz memory (4000MHz effectively). With such high operating clocks, Gainward GTS 450 GLH is already among the two fastest GTS 450 cards around.

Gainward launched its GTS 450 GLH more than a month ago, together with GTS 450 GS 1GB and GTS 450 1GB cards. The Golden Sample card runs at 880MHz /975MHz (3900MHz effectively) whereas Gainward GTS 450 runs at reference clocks.

Nvidia aimed Geforce GTS 450 cards at gamers with limited budgets, but the card’s initial pricing was a bit too high (around €129). Luckily for customers, the pricing is much more realistic and you can buy a GTS 450 for about €100. Currently the lowest priced GTS 450 comes exactly from Gainward and is priced at about €100, here. GTS 450 GLH, on the other hand, will set you back about €117, here.

We must admit that the GTS 450 would’ve had a much easier job if it had launched a few months ago, because many users are waiting to see what AMD’s upcoming 6xxx series brings. Furthermore, with the card’s price hanging around €100, they stand little chance of outdoing AMD’s offer. In fact the GTS 450’s main competitor is Radeon HD 5770, which is one year old. The GTS 450 arrived to replace the 9800 GTX+ (a.k.a. GTS 250).

GTS 450 is based on Fermi architecture, meaning it packs DirectX 11 support. We’re talking about GF106, the third GPU to be derived from Fermi (GTX 480/470/460 use GF100; GTX 460 uses GF104 whereas GT430 uses GF108).

GTS 450 packs some pretty promising performance for gamers who use resolutions from 1280x1024 to 1680x1050. Of course, we can’t forget 3D Vision, SLI and True-HD audio bitstreaming support.  

The card has 192 shader processors, 16 ROPs, 32 texture units, two 64-bit memory controllers (128 bit interface) and 1GB of GDDR5. As far as consumption goes, the reference card will draw up to 106W.



Gainward’s GOOD design is notable for “QuattroPorts” – a wide assortment of vide outs and in-house cooling. So, the GTS 450 GLH comes with HDMI, two dual-link DVIs and VGA outs. Note that most reference cards come with two dual-link DVIs and mini-HDMI.