Since the release of their 400-series of graphics cards, NVIDIA has been concentrating upon the mid to high end markets with the GTX 480, GTX 470, GTX 465 and the GTX 460. By and large, they have been extremely successful at hitting the right price and performance points with most of these new products. In particular, the GTX 460 1GB and 768MB cards with their updated GF104 core have proven to be an absolute perfect fit for the current economic climate.

While nearly all of NVIDIA’s bases are covered at the price points above $150, there is still a significant portion of the market that has yet to see a DX11-totting GeForce branded product. Traditionally, enthusiast and high performance cards yield significant profits regardless of their lower volume sales but the bread and butter of any graphics chip manufacturer lies in the sub-$150 category. ATI’s HD 5750 and HD 5600-series cards completely own the high volume mid and entry level tiers and NVIDIA needed a response as soon as possible. Their answer is the new GF106 core and the first card to use it is the GTS 450 1GB.

As should be apparent by its $129 price, the GTS 450 isn’t intended to be a card that will appeal to enthusiasts who want cutting edge performance and technology. Rather, it caters to people who play on 22” and smaller displays which (according to Valve’s latest hardware survey) just happens to be the vast majority of the gaming population.

• READ MORE (Source): NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1GB Single & SLI Review