Evga GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) Superclocked 01G-P3-1452-TR Video Card

Amazing card. Runs no hotter than 54c on BF3. Playing on a 1920x1080 monitor. Medium settings 30-45 fps. Overclocks well and its really quiet.

If you aren't entusiast gamer and you are playing on low resolutions like 1280x1024 or 1440x900 or 1280x720 etc etc. This is the card you are searching for. On this lower resolutions you can play all Games on maximum without any issue. Also he overclocks to 1GHz On core. Runs cooler, can fit to all cases.

I bought 2 of these cards for my new build last year and they're just great. The fans on idle are dead silent - the cards never heat up beyond 65C under full load. However when used in SLI, the top card does tend to hit 80C, which is still quite good compared to high end cards.

They are great for folding, averaging about 8500PPD.

In terms of gaming performance, once card honestly just isn't going to cut it for new games at 1080p with high settings. Two of them on the other hand can handle just about any game extremely well. Crysis 2 @1080p with the second highest graphics preset gets about 22fps on a single card. Double these up, and you get a very nice 40fps average. On less demanding games (MW2), a single card absolutely shreds the game, getting a full 60fps while under only about 70-80% load. HAWX with 2 cards and vysnc turned off got around 130 fps on the maximum settings.

Yes, these cards are old and really not worth a whole lot now, but for any budget builder looking for silent operation without sacrificing a lot of eye candy, this card cannot be beat. Like I said above, for the price, the performance you get is quite good - especially if you're using it to fold.

I have had great luck with this card. Admittedly it was really bad for me at first because my CPU was bottle-necking this apparently. Once I got my i7 2600k I went from ~30fps @ 1680x1050 at high settings to 40fps @ 1080p with everything on ultra and AA maxed in WoW.

Overall this is a very nice card for the price, it isn't going to really handle today's games that well on ultra settings but it will still be high enough for you to enjoy them.

I currently have the fan at 55%, I am not able to notice a big increase of noise between 30-55%. This card under load is at around 55-60c during gaming sessions and folding.

This is getting a 5 flame because for what you're paying you are getting a really great card.