Gadgetory

this is a sample that just arrived in the mail today so we're gonna be doing an unboxing and then an unboxing because this is actually just the shipping box so if seal has been broken check contents the seal has not been broken but we're gonna check the contents anyway because that's apparently my job all right you have broken the seals we find bubble wrap AHA PNY has done an excellent job of packaging this particular graphics card there's nothing else inside the box so this is a GeForce GT s 450 from PNY I don't know if this one is included actually but hold on hold on hold on wait for it let me check this out warranty service huh look at that this is interesting okay because PNY recently updated their high-end video cards to offer a lifetime warranty and I wasn't really sure if a mid-range video card like this would be included in that policy but while they are not offering a lifetime warranty they do have a five-year warranty which is actually excellent for a mid-range card like this I mean this is only a 149 139 ish sort of graphics card and that's uh that's outstanding actually so we'll have a quick look at the features overall of this card it's a 783 megahertz core clock as 192 processor cores it has a one point five six six gigahertz processor clock okay so remember that's double the core clock alright and then we've got one gig of gddr5 you can actually read all the specs here if you so desire the more important things on a card like this are actually features because this is part of nvidia x' DirectX lineup of cards it's like I said a mainstream level card so it's positioned under the GTX 460 but it does still come with all the Nvidia features that means you got cuda physics sli 3d vision capability even though they don't have 3d vision listed here they should including 3d vision surround so that is if you run two of these cards in sli you will have full support for their Attis 3d vision surround the camera man is trying to burn me again let's see what we've got in terms of games that they're demoing here so they've got civilization 5 is really pitched as a card as a game that will run great on the DTS 450 they've also got mafia 2 if you're running at non HD resolution so anything about 1680 by 1050 or lower this card actually performs admirably well in mafia 2 so that's another pretty cool one and that includes running with physics on which provides a much much better gameplay experience in a game like that than trying to run without physics oh this is cool - check this up this is a promotion that PNY has been running for quite a while but they actually include two bonus movie downloads so if you check out PNY dot-com slash movies you can see which movies you can get for free with this video card oh yeah there it is five-year warranty that wouldn't have been that hard to find if I had looked for it more carefully and you know what here here is a special - tech tips promotional offer I'm just gonna take apart the box okay okay okay whoever sees this first so that means you smart guy who writes the first comment right there oh he looks at the other one okay well there's a Starcraft 2 trial ok and then there's the two bonus movie downloads and then if you really want a three-month subscription to ESEA then you can have that too so there we go yeah a promotional excitement online of tech tips free stuff all right here we go inside this is kind of a new way of doing packaging for PNY I haven't seen this before nice black internal blocks and then it looks like it comes in like a little a little bubble thing here so okay hold on first let's slip it over this way I guess so we see the accessories first of all we have a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter then we have a dual 4-pin molex to 6-pin PCI II power adapter and then a DVI to VGA adapter if you're still running an old monitor and someone was all indignant about me saying that VGA monitors are old well they are if your monitor only has VGA then it's old you can see here they've got the tube 59.2 2 graphics drivers throw this away because Nvidia just released their new 260 Series drivers which provide better performance for the GTS 450 here is a quick start guide okay and then let's have a look at the card itself so this one features a blue PCB as well as the Nvidia stock reference cooler so I'm gonna have a closer look at the reference cooler because PNY does typically release reference boards and I'll explain what reference mean that means they haven't done a redesign of the PCB layout but rather they are manufacturing based on nvidia z' recommended layout for the ran the core everything else that goes on the video card itself including in this case the cooler so let's have a look at the back here you can see we've got four RAM chips here there are gonna be four RAM chips on the other side so that means that that's your one gig of gddr5 although it looks like we do have support for up to four more RAM chips so potentially PNY could release a 1.5 gig or a 768 Meg version of this card in the future here if whoo we've got the SLI connector so this card supports up to 2-way SLI down at the bottom you can see a curious thing that I also noticed on the MSI 450 card you can see that some of the traces here do not terminate in two pings so it looks like this part is able to run at PCI Express 16 X that means hole pcie 2.0 bandwidth without all of the pins that's not not an aspect of PCIe technology that I was aware of but there you go here we've got two DVI ports and one mini HDMI remember you can only use two of these at a time that means either dual DVI or one DVI one mini HDMI one DVI one mini HDMI here we have an exhaust vent and this is something that I want to point out about this particular card because as I said uses the reference cooler that means that probably about with this shroud about half of the airflow coming out of this card is going to be exhausted from the case and then maybe about another half is going to come down from the fan and be exhausted out the back of the shroud so that means that it's a good compromise between something like a normal blower heatsink where you actually have to position the fan way over here you don't get quite that same efficiency as when you're blowing air right on to the core and something like the MSI cyclone cooler where yeah you're putting heat pipes and everything all over it but you're exhausting the hot air into your case so yeah like I said it's a compromise and it's one that personally I can live with here on the back of the card we find a 6-pin pci ii power connector as well as a four pin pwm fan controller so that means this fan should be quite quiet although we will do some testing with this against the MSI cyclone cooler in the coming days up here we find pn wise branding as you can see this is a reference shroud so that means that it's just a sticker on top of it and i think that covers pretty much everything in terms of the unboxing of the PNY GTS 450 and we will have more to come including some SLI numbers for the 450 now that I have my second one now I think I actually glossed over this too fast as I was boxing the card back up I noticed just how ingenious this packaging method is so PNY has actually gone in custom designed a plastic shroud II thing that looks like it can fit any number of graphics cards all you've got is here a little stopper here I'm actually gonna take the top cover off here so you've got a little stopper right here that keeps it from sliding back and forth and then you've got a little hook right here where the PCI Express retention clip sits so it can't slide back see that it can't slide forward because of this one here where that little that little knob goes into so it can't slide back you can't slide forward it has this top cover piece on it that gives it like a cushion of air all the way around the card so even if the Box gets just like hammered on in shipping the card will be completely safe and yeah it doesn't use any of that non biodegradable foam or anything like that a solution like this keeps the card completely safe from any kind of static damage that could happen like when foam is rubbing against itself I mean there is anti-static foam but it's probably more expensive anyway I think this is just one of the more clever ways I've ever seen a video card package so I thought I'd just kind of give PNY a quick kudos on moving forward in terms of video card packaging