Wrapping up our two part series about NVIDIA’s new GeForce GTS 450, we have our in-depth look in to the vendor cards. As was the case with the GTX 460, NVIDIA’s partners are coming out swinging by offering a wide variety of customized cards alongside NVIDIA’s reference design. Custom PCBs, coolers, and more; you’ll find it all here.

One thing that is significantly different from the launch of the GTX 460 however is just how far NVIDIA’s partners are overclocking their cards. With the GTX 460 the vendor cards we saw came with a mild overclock. But with the GTS 450 launch the cards are coming with much greater overclocks. Case in point: EVGA launched with a SuperClock (tier 1 overclock) card for the GTX 460 launch – for the GTS 450 launch they’re going with a FTW (tier 3 overclock) card.

As a result there’s a distinctly wider gap between the custom vendor cards and NVIDIA’s reference cards, a beneficial outcome for the vendors as it makes it easier for them to separate and justify their higher-priced higher-margin cards from the army of reference clones. In the case of the GTS 450 these overclocks are especially beneficial as the GTS 450 at reference clockspeeds is a bit of a lame duck: it’s only as cheap as a Radeon HD 5770, but it consistently underperforms that card. With overclocks pushing 20%, NVIDIA’s partners can close the gap left by the reference-clocked GTS 450.

We’ll be looking at 4 cards today, covering the spectrum from reference-based with a strong overclock to a triple-slot monster. 3 of our 4 cards have similar overclocks, coming in at roughly 920MHz for the core and 1GHz (4GHz effective) for the memory. This means the resulting performance for most of these cards is virtually identical, but how each one gets there is slightly different.

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After the drawn out launch of GF100 and the GTX 400 series earlier this year, NVIDIA has been firing on all cylinders when it comes to the launch of the rest of the Fermi family. In July we saw the launch of the GF104 GPU and the GTX 460 it powers, providing a surprising tweak to the Fermi architecture on what should have been a simple waterfall part, and in the process trampling AMD’s Radeon HD 5830 at the $200 price point. For the first time in over a year we saw an NVIDIA product come out that was hyper-competitive on performance and pricing, the kind of competition we sorely miss.

Now 2 months after that launch we’re going to find out if lightning strikes twice. Today NVIDIA is launching the next desktop video card in the 400 series: GTS 450 Powering it is their new Fermi family GPU – GF106 – the next in the line of successively smaller Fermi GPUs for cheaper products. Targeted directly against AMD’s Radeon HD 5700 series, does it have what it takes to dethrone AMD's mainstream lineup ?

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The majority of powerful graphics accelerators are exact replicas of the reference Nvidia and AMD products, but even here we can sometimes come across very interesting solutions that deserve a closer look. Our today’s article will talk about one graphics card like that.

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<p><span style="font-size: small;">The Silent Pro series is one of the best-known series power supplies from Cooler Master, previously covering range from 500 to 700 watts. The range has now extended to 1000W with two models rated at 850W and 1000W, including flat connection cables found in higher power classes. Today we are looking at the latter. The 1000W model comes with a 5-year warranty, promises a maximum efficiency of 86%, and uses a single +12V rail. Excluding the motherboard connectors all cables are fully modular. Cooler Master also makes note of the high quality of selected components. Even though the housing of the PSU seems to be very similar to the smaller Silent Pro, a different ODM is responsible for the manufacture. On the next pages we will explore the design and topology and see if Cooler Master is able to keep their promises.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/3856/cooler-master-silent-pro-m1000-1000w" target="_blank">Read more...</a><br /> </span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;"> By now ASRock is a familiar household name for many enthusiasts, noted by generally decent product quality, budget-friendliness, and tendency to equip with innovative, if not interesting, features. Of course this did not happen overnight, and in the past ASRock's offerings were rather known for experimental features that were rarely seen on other vendors&rsquo; products. Boards like 4CoreDual-SATA2/VSTA are prime examples of such endeavors, and these products enjoyed enormous popularity among forum enthusiasts. Over time, ASRock&rsquo;s efforts have expanded to cover wider market segments and lately much of the focus has shifted toward high-end offerings on various fronts. Products like the X58 SuperComputer and X58 Extreme series are a testament of ASRock&rsquo;s determination to reach the high echelon motherboard market.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"> With this short background today we&rsquo;re taking a look at ASRock&rsquo;s latest and ongoing attempt to tackle the high-end motherboard market: ASRock 890FX Deluxe 4. In the past ASRock&rsquo;s portfolio on the AMD platform pretty much remained in budget and mid-range sectors, largely based on IGP-based products.&nbsp; ASRock attempts to rectify the situation with the 890FX Deluxe 4, a product squarely aimed at AMD enthusiasts and power users. They even try to one-up the big players by giving more features, while maintaining a reputation of wallet-friendliness.&nbsp;&nbsp; Whether (or to what extent) ASRock succeed, is what we&rsquo;re going to find out today.&nbsp; We are also going to take this opportunity for a short brush up of AMD&rsquo;s Leo platform and a quick inquiry into Thuban&rsquo;s performance relative IMC scaling.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/3877/asrock-890fx-deluxe-full-review-and-an-investigation-of-thuban-performance-scaling" target="_blank">Read more...</a><br /> </span></p>