MSI N450GTS Cyclone Graphic Card Review

The Appearance

Card Details

Here’s a summarized detail of the card.

More details at the official product page

Test Setup

The computer setup used for this review.

The Performance

World In Conflict

Graphic Detail : Maximum @ 1680×1050

Crysis

Graphic Detail : Maximum @ 1680×1050

Battlefield : Bad Company 2

Graphic Detail : 1680×1050, 4xAA, 16xAF, HIGH setting (tested with FRAPS, loading from Campaing #2 – after the intro, up til the save point at town)

Furmark

Graphic Detail : Maximum @ 1680×1050

3DMark Vantage

Setting : Performance

Unigine Heaven 2.0

Graphic Detail : 1680×1050, 4xAA, 16xAF, Tesselation at NORMAL.

Operating Temperature

Furmark was used for graphic card stressing.

Readings were taken when ambient temperature was around 25°C.

– Load, Furmark was run for 1 minute at 1680×1050 with 4xAA.
– Stress, Furmark was run under the Stress Test mode for 5 minutes.

Power Consumption

A little more details on the maximum power consumption of the GTS 450 based cards.

Reference

Conclusion

Retailing at around RM 480, it’s a good product – considering that it’s a pre-overclocked version and comes with a custom cooler which already is quite costly to buy separately.

I like the fact that the card performs decently well and runs very cool.

While the card is good, I must say that it’s nVidia’s offering came in rather late, considering HD5750 and HD5770 was released about a year ahead of the GTS 450. 🙂

Oh by the way, those doing folding@home and looking for a decently cheap card for PPD boost – this could be it, I got about 7.2k PPD from this card while I get close to 12k PPD from the GTX 470. It costs less than half the GTX 470, generates far less heat (half the power consumption) and produces about 2/3 of the points. Good eh? Of course those with more budget could aim for the GTX 460.