ASUS TOPs the GTS 450 charts
Speaking of pre-overclocked cards, here's one from ASUS. The ENGTS450 TOP Direct Cu's design is largely carried on over from the customised GeForce GTX 460 GPUs, but the lower power rating of the GTS 450 enables ASUS to drop the number of heatpipes from three to two. The flattened heatpipes make direct contact with the GPU, giving the card its name.
Making bold claims that the GPU is 20 per cent cooler during gaming and up to 35 per cent quieter when idling, it's impossible to hear the 72mm fan spinning over the background noise generated by a mid-range system when they're both in idle mode.
The coolness and quietness claims are all the more impressive given that ASUS throws out the reference speeds of 783MHz core, 1,566MHz shaders and 3,608MHz memory and hard-programs the TOP version to 925MHz core, 1,850MHz shaders and 4,000MHz memory. This means that the core/shaders are operating at almost 20 per cent above default, while the memory-speed increase is over 10 per cent. Tasty!
Being a TOP card, this GTS 450's GPU voltage can also be user-defined, ranging from 1.075V through to 1.212V, and the bundled SmartDoctor application enables you to increase frequencies still farther, right up to 1,000MHz core and 4,200MHz memory.
GTS 450's lower power-draw characteristics enable ASUS to specify just one six-pin PCIe power connector. We'll have to wait for the next Fermi-derived card for a completely PCIe slot-powered version.
The latest GeForce's video-engine capability matches the GTX 460's, that is, full bitstreaming support over HDMI. ASUS dutifully obliges with a mini-HDMI port - and includes a mini-HDMI-to-HDMI adapter in the box - and also provides VGA and dual-link HDMI. Personally, we'd have gone for two DVI ports and mini-HDMI.
The board carries eight Samsung K4G10325FE-HC05 GDDR5 memory chips - four on the front and back - which are rated to the card's 4,000MHz speed. Interestingly, ASUS provides space for an additional four GDDR5 chips, and it doesn't make a whole heap of sense once you consider that the current GTS 450 architecture is such that it cannot use the full complement of memory chips in tandem, unless, of course, NVIDIA enables the third memory controller and ROP partition on future GF106-derived models.
If you've been reading thus far and thinking that the ASUS TOP seems large for a £100 card, you'd be correct. Here it is lined up above a standard-sized GeForce GTX 460 1,024MB from Point of View.
The TOP's PCB is 0.6in longer and the entire card - cooler and ports - measures a not inconsiderable 10 inches, making it as long as some GeForce GTX 470s.
Designed ostensibly as a showcase of just how well GeForce GTS 450 can scale the frequency ladder, the ASUS ENGTS450 TOP Direct Cu's pricing is likely to be around £110-£120, which puts it perilously close to stock-clocked GeForce GTX 460 768MB cards.
