MSI N450GTS Cyclone 1GD5 – Good Performance, Excellent Cooler
The GeForce GTS 450 offers dependable performance at a relatively low price (US$129). It’s not nearly as powerful as the other GTX 400 series of GPUs from NVIDIA, but the GTS 450 still has enough processing power to provide adequate frame rates in modern games at resolutions lower than 1920×1080. As such, it provides an interesting alternative for the vast majority of computer gamers, especially here in Indonesia where people aren’t that willing to spend big bucks on higher end gaming systems.
Graphics card manufacturers have been coming up with their own GTS 450 products. We have previously tested the Sonic Platinum version from Palit, and now we have MSI’s N450GTS Cyclone 1GD5. Like many other GTS 450s, it comes factory overclocked (at 850 MHz core frequency). How much better it is compared to the standard version? Let’s have a specs comparison before moving on to the tests.
Specification
NVIDIA GTS 450 | MSI N450GTS Cyclone 1GD5 | |
Codename | GF106 | GF106 |
Fabrication Process | 40 nm | 40 nm |
Transistors | 1.17 Billion | 1.17 Billion |
Die Size | – | – |
Core Clock | 783 MHz | 850 MHz |
Stream Processors | 192 | 192 |
Shader Clock | 1566 MHz | 1700 MHz |
Texture Units | 32 | 32 |
ROPs | 16 | 16 |
Memory Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
Memory Size | 1024 MB | 1024 MB |
Memory Clock (effective) | 3608 MHz | 4000 MHz |
Memory Interface | 128-bit | 128-bit |
DirectX Version | 11 | 11 |
Shader Model | 5 | 5 |
Power Connectors | 6-pin | 6-pin |
Min Recommended Power Supply | 400 W | 400 W |
Bus Support | PCIe 2.1 x16 | PCIe 2.1 x16 |
MSI’s N450GTS Cyclone 1GD5 has everything a standard GTS 450 has, plus a higher core frequency of 850 MHz, about 67 MHz higher than reference standard. Shader clock was automatically increased to 1700 MHz, along with the higher core clock. The memory chips are also overclocked to 4000 MHz effective frequency. The factory overclocks are nothing too impressive, but still a nice improvement nonetheless.
Sales Package and Contents
These are the front and back sides of the package box. The “Cyclone” heatsink is pictured on the front.
An internal Styrofoam packaging protects the graphics card and keeps it in a fixed position.
We found a Manual Book, a Quick User’s Guide, a Driver Disc, a Molex to 6-pin power connector, along with a DVI to D-sub, and mini-HDMI to HDMI converters. Thanks to the mini-HDMI to HDMI converter, you can plug any HDMI display to this graphics card without first having to buy an additional converter.