Today marks the release of the fifth member of the GeForce 400 series, as NVIDIA takes the covers off their new mid-range contender the GeForce GTS 450. Based on the new GF106 architecture, the GeForce GTS 450 sheds a lot of weight when compared to existing cards. The end result is a cheaper product that has very low power consumption and thermal output, the only question remaining is how well does it perform?

Some of you might be thinking it is a little late for NVIDIA to start bolstering their mid-range line-up with rumors that AMD is preparing to start releasing its next generation GPU series codenamed “Northern Islands” next month. While this is debatable, NVIDIA has to provide gamers with more affordable DirectX 11 products and right now trimming the fat off the GF100 architecture seems like the only move.

The GF100 architecture, which is used by the GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 graphics cards as well as the forgettable GeForce GTX 465, is too large and too complex to be used as a mid-range solution. This was proven when NVIDIA tried to release the GeForce GTX 465 which turned out to be much too hot and hungry to compete with products such as the Radeon HD 5830.

The solution was the GF104 which featured a 30% reduction in die size, helping to make the GeForce GTX 460 a more power conservative, cooler product. Despite featuring a smaller GPU, the GeForce GTX 460 outclassed the GTX 465 anyway, producing 13% more memory bandwidth. In the end the GeForce GTX 460 turned out to be a cheaper, faster, cooler and more power conservative product than the GTX 465, which helped it to brush aside the AMD competition.

• READ MORE (Source): Inno3D GeForce GTS 450 iChill – Introduction