This card may not be Zotac’s most recent, but it still packs a punch! For a budget card, it does fairly well against some of the higher up cards, considering it is factory overclocked standard.
The Zotac GTS 450 AMP! is, as I said before, a budget card coming in at around $140, with various shipping prices. Newegg is also offering a NVIDIA gift currently to upgrade Civilization V to Deluxe Version, although I find no use for that because I don’t actually have the game. This NVIDIA based card uses PCI Express 2.0 X 16, such as most (if not all) GTS 450 cards. The core clock is 875MHz, the shader clock is 1750MHz and it tops off with 192 processor cores. This card is also 128-bit, although I wouldn’t be worried; it still runs amazingly for the price. As for memory, the Zotac GTS 450 (AMP! Edition or not) is a 1GB GDDR5 card, having an effective memory clock of around 4000MHz. It is using up to date drivers, DirectX11 and OpenGL 4.0. An added bonus of it being an NVIDIA card is that it also includes PhysX and the card is also 3D vision reader. Technical specifications of the card itself label it to have one HDMI port, one DisplayPort and two DVI ports. I find this layout to be very useful, especially if you run multiple monitors like I do. It does need at least 400 watts for a power supply, but I’m sure that most gamers with run around with 650-750 like I did, as I do plan to upgrade my computer sometime in either 2011 or 2012. Using a 6-pin connector, it also has an adapter in case your power supply doesn’t have the correct cable for a 6-pin graphics. As for the size, it runs around 7.39″ X 4.38″.
Now, onto the capabilities. For the price and type of card, the Zotac GTS 450 AMP! Edition runs very well. I have been running with an AMD Phenom II X4 965 Deneb Black Edition, and I have been running games such as Battlefield Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Mass Effect 2 and a few other various games, all at high quality. I noticed absolutely no lag, although I haven’t had time to run benchmarks yet. This card is definitely good if you are on some sort of budget and still want gaming power. With the proper parts, this can help power a computer under $800 that will be able to easily run games in high quality and max resolutions.
Pros-
*Cheap
*Runs amazingly for a medium-low end graphics card
*DirectX 11
*3D Vision ready
Cons-
*May not run the most extreme games (such as Crysis) on maximum quality or resolution
Overall, the Zotac AMP! Edition Geforce GTS 450 is a great buy if you are looking to be that one family gamer, but don’t have the resources to go all out with a $200-$500 high end graphics card.
