NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 Launch Roundup: Asus, EVGA, Palit, and Calibre Overclocked and Reviewed

Palit GeForce GTS 450 Sonic Platinum

The third card in our roundup is Palit’s GeForce GTS 450 Sonic Platinum, their top-tier factory overclocked card. Palit is shipping this card at 930MHz core and 1000MHz (4GHz effective) memory, for a 147MHz (18%) core overclock and 98MHz (11%) memory overclock. In terms of core speed this is the fastest card in our roundup, edging out the next card by 5MHz.

With regards to hardware, right off the bat the Sonic Platinum sets itself apart from our other cards. Using a custom PCB, Palit has shaved over an inch off the length of a reference GTS 450, giving the card a final length of only 7.4” and easily the shortest GTS 450 card we’ve seen. Palit looks to have accomplished this by packing the card’s components tighter together, allowing them to cut down on the PCB length. The card’s component selection is unremarkable, and like the rest of the GTS 450 cards today is equipped with 8 4GHz Samsung GDDR5 chips.

Interestingly, Palit also moved the 6pin PCIe power socket; even with this shorter card they still moved it to the top, so the Sonic Platinum should fit in any space where there’s enough room for the PCB without needing to worry about PCIe power cables. Normally when we see shorter cards we see the PCIe power socket on the rear of the card, so it’s a pleasant surprise that Palit “gets it” and puts it up top to minimize the amount of clearance required behind the card.

Sitting on top of the card is Palit’s second customization: the card’s cooler. Here Palit is using a heatsink + heatpipe design, with a copper baseplate mounted to the GPU and leading to two copper heatpipes that run in to the card’s aluminum heatsink. In terms of size the heatsink runs most of the length of the card, but it’s shorter than the Asus heatsink. Sitting on top of the heatsink is the card’s 80mm fan, which is attached to the plastic shroud running the length of the card. As was the case with the shroud on the reference GTS 450, Palit’s shroud is only partially enclosing, and directs air out the front and the rear of the card. It’s screwed down at the front and the rear of the card, providing the necessary reinforcement for the PCB.

Finally, Palit has also gone an interesting direction with the parts. Again to make a comparison to the reference GTS 450, Palit has increased the number of ports by partially obstructing the ventilation of the card. Here Palit has moved the 2^nd DVI port to the 2^nd slot, allowing them to fit a full-sized HDMI port, a DVI port, and a VGA port on the first slot. Although this would seem to put the card at a disadvantage compared to the reference design when it comes to cooling, in practice our results show that this overclocked card does just as well as our less power hungry reference cards, so Palit looks to be pushing more hot air in to the case rather than venting it outside. As such we surmise you’ll want a bit better cooling for your case with this card than with a reference card.

Rounding out the package is a molex to PCIe power adaptor, and the usual driver CD and quick start manual. Amusingly, this is easily the most generic pack-in set we’ve ever seen – Palit doesn’t even bother to label the manual or CD with their name - instead they’re NVIDIA-labeled.

Finally, the card comes with Palit’s standard 2 year warranty. Palit is pricing the card at $160, the most expensive card in today’s round and a full $30 above the price of a reference GTS 450. As we’ll see it’s certainly a well-built card, but Palit is running head-first in to NVIDIA’s overarching pricing strategy here, and as a result the card is only $10 cheaper than the GTX 460 768MB.