I see threads about the Nvidia 460 being a good card, Is the 450 as good for Vue? Thanks

For anyone who's intersted, Eon told me the 450 was not tested yet.

I've seen the cut down version of the GTX 460 (192 bit bus) for as little as $145 with a rebate and GTS 450 will run you between $130 and $150 (newegg prices) - The 192 bit bus width GTX 460 will easily beat the GTS 450 in any test so why buy it?

If you are only going to use it in Vue then you may not see any differences as they both use the same base technology (460 uses 7/8 of a GF104 GPU and 450 uses a GF106 GPU, which is basically half a GF104) and support the same versions of DirectX and OpenGL. On the other hand, they will both use the same drivers so any problems seen with the 460 will also be apparent in the 450.

I just don't see the 450 as being a good buy, not with the prices for the cut back version of the 460 being so attractive. Also, just because the current versions of Vue don't push the limits of these cards, it doesn't mean to say that future versions will do the same. If a future version of Vue were to utilise the GPU power for processing then there is a gulf between these cards, with the 460 waltzing ahead by some 50%. With that in mind I know which one I would go for.

I Can get a good buy on the 465. I am getting a new system and I want to get the best for 3D. Would the 465 be the same basically as the 460?

The performance of the GTX 465 falls between the cut down GTX 460 and the full GTX 460. Its based on the older and larger GF100 GPU, which is the same as the GTX 470 and GTX 480. While this might sound like good news it does mean it uses a fair bit more power than the GTX 460. Also, the GTX 465, 470 and 480 are based on yields and the 465 gets what is left after the two more powerful cards in the series have taken all the best GPUs. The lower rated GPU is then hobbled so that it can only use 11 of the 16 SMs (streaming microprocessors) while it's bigger brothers use 14 and 15 respectively. The biggest problem with this GPU is the sheer size of it, those 3 billion transistors burn an awful lot of power and put it out as heat.

If you can pick up a GTX 465 at an appreciably cheaper price than a GTX 460 then go for it but I would personally still prefer the GTX 460 as it is a better card.

Thanks, I can get a 460 with 768 RAM. Will that be better?

 I think that may well be your best bet, its not quite as quick as the full GTX 460 but the differences will not show up in Vue and it uses less power. The areas in which it is cut down (memory bus width and amount of memory) will only tend to show up in FPS gaming and heavy video tasks so it should suit you perfectly. I personally would prefer the full GTX 460 but that's because I enjoy gaming as well as 3D graphics.

What about the Geforce 9800 GT?