Asus GeForce GTS 450 TOP review

NVIDIA's mid-range, HD 5770-killer is here. Can it live up to its billing?

Asus GTS 450 TOP
NVIDIA's latest mid-range Fermi

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Asus gts 450 top

But for now, as a single card, it still stands up.

We'd have hoped for a price tag a little closer to the £100 mark though; if it could undercut the HD 5770 then it would have been an absolute no-brainer as to which of the AMD or Nvidia cards get the nod.

At stock speeds the two cards take it in turns to have the couple frames per second advantage dependant on which title your testing.

The pricier TOP Edition though has clear water between it and even the overclocked HD 5770, but then you're getting dangerously close to the £150 you can pick up the 768MB version of the GTX 460 for. You can even find some flavours coming in for even less than that.

The older AMD card though can be picked up in vanilla flavour for around £100, making the extra £20 you'll have to pay for the newer Nvidia card a bit of sticking point. All you're really getting for that £20 is Nvidia's CUDA and PhysX goodness, which at this low level isn't any great shakes.

This TOP Edition's overclocked loving though does give it the edge, but the cost here too is going to make things tricky when you're making your buying decision.

It's still a good card, but it's really only as good as the AMD offering.

Unfortunately then for Nvidia it's not quite the card-killer that it might have hoped it would be; maybe worth a look in SLI but for now it's still far too close to call definitively.