Introduction

For the week prior to the launch of the GTS 450 it's just been non-stop with samples of this card. It's clear that like the GTX 460, NVIDIA partners are keen to get their model out there to the market. It's been quite an interesting launch to be honest, with a few little surprises for me when it came to out of the box clocks.

Galaxy offered us a 100MHz+ out of the box overclock with its Super OC model. MSI while not offering clock rates as big, did offer a larger than expected OC. Based on the GTX 460 Cyclone, I figured a clock speed of around 830MHz would be seen; instead they opted for 850MHz and cranked the memory up like Galaxy did to 4000MHz QDR.

In steps we now look at the Palit GTS 450 with its Sonic Platinum tag. Since I looked at the Galaxy Super OC first, I thought that the Palit offering would sit around the 880MHz or 870MHz mark, as we saw Galaxy 1-Up Palit at the GTX 460 launch with its 810MHz core. Once installed into the testbed, I installed the drivers, rebooted and checked out GPU-Z to take a screenshot for the Specifications section.

All I can say is, the next thing that happened was a message to Palit saying "Holy Crap!". Before we get to why I said that, let's first see what spread Palit has put on for us when it comes to the bundle.

The Package

It comes as no surprise at all that the bundle is light. I've said this a few times already that it's becoming a trend with video card partners to lighten the package these days and here is no exception.

Of course, the more budget orientated flavor of the model doesn't help the situation. Ultimately, though, you're buying the product for the card and as long as that's included, most won't mind.