Today marks the introduction of the newest NVIDIA Fermi design, the GF106 GPU inside NVIDIA'S GeForce GTS 450. The HF106 marks NVIDIA's assault on the mainstream gamer market, competing directly against the AMD's Radeon HD 5750 and 5770. But that's not all - NVIDIA is also adjusting the pricing of some of their enthusiast GTX products as well:

GeForce	MSRP [USD]
GTX 480	$499
GTX 470	$299
GTX 465	$229
GTX 460 1GB	$219
GTX 460 768MB	$169
GTS 450	$129

EVGA GeForce GTS 450 FTW

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB we are testing today is from EVGA, and in true EVGA fashion they are starting with their best foot forward - For The Win! Factory Overclocked, it features a significantly overclocked GPU and RAM:

EVGA GeForce GTS 450

Specifications

• $149USD MSRP

• GF106 'Fermi' 40nm Core with 1.17Bn Transistors

• 192 CUDA Cores with 256KB L2 Cache (Total)

• 4 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) in 1 Graphics Processing Cluster (GPC)

• Factory Over Clocked 920MHz Core Clock / 1840Mhz Shader Clock (Stock - 783/1566)

• Factory Over Clocked 1025MHz GDDR5 Memory (4.1Gbps)(Stock - 902MHz/3.6Gbps)

• 128-bit Memory Interface with 65.6GB/sec Bandwidth (Stock - 57.7GB/s)

• 2 Dual-Link DVI-I outputs + 1 mini-HDMI 1.4a with full slot external exhaust

• Dual Slot PCIe x16 2.0 Form Factor, 8.25" long

• Single PCIe 6-Pin 75W Power connector, 106W TDP (Stock)

• HDMI 7.1 Audio with Dolby True-HD / DTS-HD Master Audio Bit Stream Support

The NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 is designed for the mainstream gamer; in fact, NVIDIA like to say it is laser targeted at the majority of gamers out there. The July STEAM hardware survey shows 57% of respondents use a display resolution from 1280x1024 to 1680x1050. While the AMD ATI Radeon 4800 series is the single most popular card in August, the next four cards are NVIDIA GeForce cards, ranging from the 8600 and 9600 through the 8800 and 9800 series. This accounts for 20% of STEAM gamers, dwarfing the HD 4800's 7.38% (even if you add in the HD 5700 and HD 5800 series to get to nearly 14%); NVIDIA holds a massive 60%+ of STEAM gamers. Market share leader who? Today's test will investigate the performance of the EVGA GeForce GTS 450 1GB FTW against it's outgoing older brother, the GTS 250, and the AMD ATI Radeon HD 5700 series - both HD 5750 and HD 5770.