With the help of the GPU-Z 0.4.8 utility, we could extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:

AIDA64 can offer us even more information about the video card, along with the clocks in different power states:

Here are the GTS 450 CUDA capabilities:

Temperature tests

To find out the IDLE and maximum temperatures, I have used the Furmark utility, with the Stability Test in “Xtreme Burning mode” and let it run for about 15 minutes. To record the temperatures, the GPU-Z utility was used, thanks to its Sensors monitoring tab. The recorded room temperature at the time of testing was 21.4 degrees Celsius:

IDLE

Full Load

Noise measurements

Before measuring the noise the video card was producing, I have first measured the noise inside the room the tests took place and I found out it was 29.1dBA (with everything turned off).

The next step was to measure the noise the test system was producing, without the video card installed; the value I have obtained was 34.1dBA. Most of the fans inside the case were turned off, but the CPU (43%) and chipset one (30%).

At all times, the sound meter was placed 8cm under the video card.

The GPU fan was controlled by the latest version of the EVGA Precision software:

The noise obtained at 80% speed was higher than the one obtained at 90%, simply because at that speed, the shield started to vibrate (noise which was not present by the fan at 90%). The board BIOS did not permit climbing the fan up to 100% speed or going under 30%.

When we will insert the CD into the drive, we will have the options to install drivers, DirectX or Badaboom, which is a blazingly fast media converter that formats video files for a variety of devices, including iPod, PSP, iPad, and YouTube, by using the system's graphics processing unit (GPU):

The 3DMark Vantage scores were calculated by summing up the GPU and CPU subscores.

Here are the Vantage subscores separately: