Asus GeForce GTS 450 TOP Overclocking

Overclocking Analysis

Evidently the GeForce GTS 450 sees some decent performance gains from overclocking, but then again, it really needs it.

In Crysis the Top was slightly faster than a standard card at stock speeds thanks to the extra 18 per cent GPU frequency and 11 per cent memory frequency increase. When we pushed the card to its maximum 1GHz core GPU speed we saw another slight bump in performance, making the Top 3-4fps faster than a standard GTS 450. However, the 768MB GTX 460 at stock speeds was still 2fps faster than the Top and we've already found that these cards can overclock by around 27 per cent with little effort.

This may seem an unfair comparison, but basic 786MB GTX 460 cards can be found for as little as £122 while the Asus Top is on pre-order for ]£120.


Mafia 2 saw a similar gain from Asus' large overclock, with an extra 4fps more than a stock-speed GTS 450. However, our overclock only made the Top 1fps faster than its default speed, and again the stock-speed 768MB GTX 460 was faster than the extremely overclocked Asus card.

STALKER: Call of Pripyat responded well to the extra frequency of our overclock, which increased the minimum frame rate from 35fps to 38fps. Our overclock therefore made the Top a huge 8fps faster than a stock-speed GTS 450. However, the 768MB GTX 460 was again much faster than any GTS 450, with a minimum of 51fps.

Conclusion

On its own, the gains from overclocking a GTS 450 - especially the extremely overclockable Asus Top card - are quite impressive. The standard overclock of the Asus Top makes it quite a bit faster than a standard GTS 450, and the extra frequency that we could apply cranked out a few frames per second more for little effort.

While we couldn't push the card beyond a GPU core frequency of 1GHz, the Voltage Tweak segment of Smart Doctor allows you to increase the GPU voltage to 1.2V. This was too much for the air cooler that the card comes with, but put the Asus under water and we're confident you could smash quite far beyond the 1GHz barrier for the first time with a GPU. That kind of investment for another few frames per second isn't really worth it, as there are better GPUs to buy, but that's not the point we're making.

Despite all these positives though, the clear choice for an affordable gaming graphics card is still a GTX 460, be that a cheap 768MB model or the faster 1GB version. For the same money as the Asus Top, even a vanilla 768MB GTX 460 is faster, and you can get the 768MB GTX 460 version of this card for only £5 more from OcUK this week. Asus' engineering upgrades for the GTS 450 Top are very clever, but they're moot given that market forces have made the GTX 460 the no-brainer choice for anyone with between £110 and £220 to spend.