EVGA GeForce GTS 450 FTW Video Card Review

With the launch of AMD's next generation of graphics cards looming, most everyone's eyes are on the upcoming HD 6000 series. Today, however, we turn our attention to the NVIDIA camp. While it's still unclear what NVIDIA is preparing in response to this new generation, it's worth pointing out the GTS 450 is just barely a month old. As we witnessed in our last GTS 450 review, the overclocked variants can easily keep up with the HD 5770 and will still have a role to play in the mainstream segment for the foreseeable future. In this article, Benchmark Reviews looks at EVGA's fastest GTS 450: the GTS 450 FTW.

The For-the-Win edition represents EVGA's highest factory overclock, surpassing their Superclocked and Super-Superclocked models. It comes in at 920/1840 MHz for the core and shader clocks, and 4104MHz for the 1 GB of GDDR5 memory. This is comparable, and a bit faster when in terms of memory speed, to the ASUS ENGTS450 TOP that we looked at last month. Considering both cards represent the highest overclock for their respective companies, it's not surprising the clock speeds are so similar. Unlike the ASUS card, though, EVGA opted for the reference design.

Looking at the latest pricing on Newegg, the EVGA model is also a bit more expensive than the ASUS. At roughly $148, it's one of the more expensive GTS 450's on the market right now. As I mentioned, though, an overclocked GTS 450 can compete directly with an HD 5770. So, while it may face some pressure among other GTS 450's, the EVGA GTS 450 FTW is fairly competitive with the HD 5770 series, which tend to range from $140 to $160.

Manufacturer: EVGA Corporation
Product Name: EVGA GeForce GTS 450 FTW
Model Number: 01G-P3-1458-TR
Price As Tested: $147.99 at Newegg

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by EVGA.

Previous Page - Next Page >>