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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