Reviews - NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 vs. GTX 550 Ti at same clocks

[HEXUS]

Let the battle commence.

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[Pob255]

Well it's pretty much what I expected, the nvidia 5xx series is just the 4xx series as it should of been if nvidia had been ontop of the fab process.
After massive delays they had to get something out so we got the 4xx series, now they got the issues sorted we get a new series which can more reliably clock higher and don't have blocks masked off.
I'm guessing nvidia still has a lot of 4xx chips left they have to shift which is why they have to keep the prices up above the 4xx series cards.

[Shooty*]

Worth updating from an 8800gt?

Seriously. These things should go back to the last couple of major step releases.

Otherwise, with nVidia apparently releasing cards at a geometric rate (Yesterday: 460! Midnight just gone: 470.5! This morning: 522.456! Lunchtime: 620! (actually a downgrade on the 420.57revb!) This time tomorrow: the AFD520GTXXX), and apparently using Deep Blue-equivalent Prime Number crunchers to regulate the logic behind their numbering sequences, people like me are losing touch.

Does the damn thing play Crysis yet?

[Tattysnuc]

Interesting..... It begs some questions!

What is the point of reference for this card? How does it compare vs the higher and lower end cards?

I can't help feel that this is half a story. A higher end comparison would allow someone to compare vs other games meaningfully. i.e. if it shows that it's 45% as many FPS in Metro 2033, then it gives you indicative numbers for, say Crysis which isn't included in the numbers.

Likewise, please can you give an "upgrading from" comparison? A 1950 or 3850 or 4850 from AMD and an 8800 GT would be reasonable as these are likely upgrade candidates. In the review you are considering the alternatives in Market, but completely ignoring the reference point people have. Tomshardware do this very well, but Hexus don't.

[Rant] PLEASE will someone do some folding metrics. I'm getting to sound like a stuck record, but there are uses for these thing other than games, and there's a significant community here at Hexus involved in that scene. Is there a reason that these requests have gone unanswered for so long?[Rant/]

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have an HD4830 myself and I wouldn't get an HD5770 1GB or GTX550TI 1GB as the upgrade is not that big IMHO. The HD5770 1GB is around the same speed as an HD4870 in most games.

I would consider a GTX460,HD6850 or HD5850 as better upgrades.

[Teamsreth]

It would be nice to have some folding details on these reviews.

I was recently in the market for a sub £200 card. Torn between a 560 and a 6950. But, although I game, that is not the only use the PC gets. I also fold.

I know a lot of people don't fold, but a lot of people don't play Metro 2033 either.

[Tarinder]

Point taken about Folding. Can you people let us know exactly which benchmark(s) you'd like run, please?

[Terbinator]

Point taken about Folding. Can you people let us know exactly which benchmark(s) you'd like run, please?

I think FAHmon has a Folding benchmark built into the program and there may be one available on the F@H website.

Should this be something you do please could you give as much detail possible about what is being folded as different project return different points and vary in completion time - for transparency in your results.

[Tattysnuc]

I've not used any folding benchmarking software, only actually folded and aggregated/averaged the results.

For GPU based folding, download the folding software from: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther

Then run the installer....

Next, you need to set up a username: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download

www.HEXUS.net has not been used as a user name.

If you then run the installed application, you will see the icon in the systray. Right click that icon to bring up configuration.

On the USER TAB Fill in your username as www.HEXUS.net and the team number as 69776.

On the CONNECTION TAB set the proxy if you have one.

On the ADVANCED TAB set the core priority to "slightly higher" instead of the lowest possible, then use the slider beneath that to move the core utilisation to 100%

If it's an NVIDIA card, then you can look into the flag switches to use. To run a single workunit on an NVIDIA card I use:

-forcegpu nvidia_fermi -oneunit

Once you've entered these parameters, close the client and restart it (right click sys-tray, QUIT)

then, go to the start menu and kick it off...

To report the PPD you'll need some monitoring software - I use HFM. See our community shortcut to the newest software...

http://forums.hexus.net/distributed-...hout-outs.html

Installation of the monitoring software is straight-forward so I wont go through that setup. You need to set up where the folding client is located, then you can see the PPD, PPD/MHZ etc in the main window.

To view details for older units that have completed, go to TOOLS\BENCHMARK VIEWER and then select the Work unit from the left hand pane and that'll give you all the gubbins you'll need.

As Terbi said, the production rate varies, so the longer you can leave the client running, the better.

If you wish to leave the client running, and NOT TO TERMINATE after running a single unit, simply remove the -oneunit flag from the "Additional Client Parameters...." option in the configuration.

Keep an eye on the temperature. This WILL stress the GPU to the limit. Even manufacturer based overclocks that have been programmed into the firmware of the cards have been known to fail on occasion. Rarely, but it's been known.

Other than that....fold on, and thanks!

[kellock]

get a GTX460, slightly better performance than the 550, but you can get it a little bit cheaper if you look around!

[Platinum]

Wouldnt mind seeing how it fairs against a GTS 250.

[Tattysnuc]

Wouldnt mind seeing how it fairs against a GTS 250.

Worth updating from an 8800gt?

IIRC The 8800gt is the same as the 9800GTX which is also the same as the GT250, so comparing one would give you the same (allowing for manufacturing variances) comparator.

The 8800gt was NOT the same as the 8800 GTX though. That was a legendary piece of kit, only surpassed by NVidia by the GTX 285 and models upwards IMHO.

[Platinum]

IIRC The 8800gt is the same as the 9800GTX which is also the same as the GT250, so comparing one would give you the same (allowing for manufacturing variances) comparator.

Not quite, same architecture not the same card though :

8800 GT :

CUDA Cores 112
Graphics Clock (MHz) 600 MHz
Processor Clock (MHz) 1500 MHz
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) 33.6
Memory Specs:
Memory Clock (MHz) 900
Standard Memory Config 512 MB
Memory Interface Width 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 57.6

9800 GTX :

CUDA Cores 128
Graphics Clock (MHz) 675 MHz
Processor Clock (MHz) 1688 MHz
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) 43.2
Memory Specs:
Memory Clock (MHz) 1100
Standard Memory Config 512 MB
Memory Interface Width 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 70.4

GTS 250 :

Processor Cores 128
Graphics Clock (MHz) 738
Processor Clock (MHz) 1836
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) 47.2
Memory Specs:
Memory Clock (MHz) 1100
Standard Memory Config 512 MB or 1 GB
Memory Interface Width 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 70.4

9800 GTX and GTS 250 are pretty much the same bar clock speeds and memory configs available, given the clock speed differences there is a performance difference, the 8800 GT has less shaders so theres a even bigger difference.