Power Usage

Without a reference Geforce GTS 450 model in our possession we've downclocked the Asus card to see how it would impact the power usage numbers; do note that it's possible Asus increased the voltage going to the GPU to be able to run at these higher clockspeeds.

Measuring full system power usage at the wall socket gaves us the results you see above, with the reference clocked Geforce GTS 450 power usage went as high as 256W, in comparison the 9800GTX+ used about 30W more. Asus overclocked their GPU and this impact power usage for sure, 266W under full load, which is 10W more compared to reference clocks, seeing as we get a 10-25% boost in games, it's safe to say that it's worth it.

Temperature and Noise

Asus dualslot GPU cooler with huge heatpipes and somewhat larger cooling fan should provide some good numbers here

And we're definitely not disappointed, job well done Asus! Of all the midrange cards the GTS 450 TOP is running the coolest, and even under full load the video card is only 1dBA above case noise level; while this card is not passively cooled, inside a well ventilated ATX case you won't hear it running.

Extras

Asus and ASRock products have been pushing AIWI software with their products, ASRock has a good installation guide written about it here. AIWI is motion tracking software for your iPhone/iPod Touch which transmits this data to your PC (which has the AIWI client running) over WIFI or Bluetooth. ASRock made a nice demonstration video about this, which is hard to top:

We tried AIWI, installed it on the 64bit Vista OS, as soon as you configure it you can immediately use it as a touchpad to control the mouse. Browsing through the game catalogue we soon realized there are only a handfull of full games supported, most of them sports related, we did have some fun with some free flashgames which worked remarkably well with an iPhone as controller, the interface of the iPhone also changes depending on the game you're playing, so it's a well though out design. In the end though it does feel a bit gimmicky, but it's free, and you should definitely give it a try if you have a iPhone/iPod Touch.

Conclusive Thoughts

When NVIDIA released the Geforce GTS 450 there were already a lot of factory overclocked models announced from different launch partners, the Asus Geforce GTS 450 DirectCU TOP version comes with a GPU overclock that's the absolute minimum to get the 450 GPU going, why NVIDIA did not raise the stock clocks is anybodies guess, but the fact is that the reference model is too slow to be considered for a new build or upgrade.

The Asus version on the other hand is a step up from mediocre and brings the GTS 450 video card head to head with ATI's main rival: HD 5770, while also improving on the previous generation of NVIDIA mainstream cards (GTS 250, 9800GTX+). If the factory overclock is not sufficient, you can use Asus' included VoltageTweak software to boost the vGPU and get more than 925Mhz out of the 450 GTS core, speeds of up to 1000Mhz are not unheard of.

In this market segment it boils down to price/performance and Asus knows it, they are aggressively pricing this TOP card, which can be found for €110 online, which is about €20 more than reference model; That translates into 22% more money for 10-30% more performance and a cool and quiet heatsink. The main competition comes from ATI's Radeon HD 5770 (which might get renamed in the near future), its price is closer to that of the reference GTS 450, while its performance is on par with the overclocked Asus model. So the outcome is simple.

If you're looking for a mainstream video card worth €90-110 and want to enable PhysX and take advantage of NVIDIA's CUDA technology, than the Asus DirectCU version should be at the top of your shortlist. If however you don't care about CUDA/PhysX the Radeon HD 5770 will provide a slightly better price/performance deal.

We like to thank Milan and Rogier from Asus for allowing us to test their latest products, until next time!