Zotac GTS450 AMP! Review

Crysis Warhead

Given how much Crysis enjoys the PhysX provided by the nVidia GPUs it's a bit of a surprise to see the GTS450 falling behind the HD5770 as well as the GTX460. There are only one or two frames in it though so it's certainly not a deal-breaker.

Dirt 2

So far the GTS450 AMP! has been looking like a gaming bargain, being very close to the GTX460 in all our tests so far. Dirt 2 definitely has a massive drop off from the GTX460 to the GTS450 AMP!. Unquestionably the HD5770 remains nailed to the GTS450, but the GTX460 is a long way ahead.

STALKER Call of Pripyat

Stalker has given us a few strange results in its time and so we've dropped it off the review list. However the latest update for Metro 2033 has given stability issues and so Stalker is dusted off one more time. It's probably wise to ignore the stock result as being anomylous. The other results follow the pattern we've seen in our previous tests with the GTS450 AMP! giving a good account of itself and certainly nailing itself as a good choice in the value end of the market.

Resolution Tests

Despite the good showing at our standard testing resolution, we didn't want to leave you having to work out an adjustment for a lower resolution. Working on the understanding that if you're considering this for a new system or as an upgrade then you're not likely to want to run at the full 1920x1200 display.

Keeping the Anti-Aliasing on at 8xAA because we all like image quality, we dropped our resolution down to 1440x900 to see how the GTS450 AMP! performed.

As you can see the drop from needing to render 2.3m pixels to only 1.3m pixels really helps the average frame rates to leap from the odd stutter and stammer to very smooth and playable indeed. Never underestimate the benefits of lowering your resolution.