As we have already written in our reviews, the announcement of the GF104 graphics processor and GF104-based graphics cards (GeForce GTX 460 1 GB and 768 MB) marked the end of stagnation in the Nvidia camp. Prior to that release, Nvidia had only been competitive to AMD in the sector of expensive top-performance solutions which account for but a small share in both companies’ sales volumes. And even with the GF104 having already arrived, Nvidia still had some problems in one market sector. The company had filled in the entry-level segment (below $100) by means of DirectX 11-incompatible but competitive GT215, GT216 and GT218 chips, yet had only one card, the GeForce GTS 250, to fight back in the gap between the GeForce GT 240 (GT215) and GeForce GTX 460 (GF104).The GeForce GTS 250 looked absolutely outdated in late 2010 as its G92 core traced its origin back to the G80 and actually belonged to the very first generation of Nvidia’s unified graphics architectures (originally released in late 2006). For comparison: the GeForce 400 series is a third generation while the GeForce GT 220/240 can be viewed as a second one with some reservations. Of course, we can praise the GeForce 8 architecture which has only exhausted itself by the end of 2010, yet such a market situation can only be considered as a company’s inability to match its opponent. While AMD had had already transitioned to DirectX 11 in every price segment, Nvidia had to fill in the gap in its product line-up with a graphics card which was not even DirectX 10.1 compliant. The GeForce GTS 250 called for a replacement, but the GF104 core was not a proper candidate both technically and economically. Nvidia had to develop another GPU which would be even simpler than the GF104, yet feature all the advantages of the Fermi architecture.Nvidia was indeed busy developing such a GPU. September 13, they rolled out the GeForce GTS 450. This card is meant to replace the GeForce GTS 250 and make Nvidia technically competitive in the above-$100 sector. The new card is based on a new graphics chip which is codenamed GF106. It is simple, cheap to manufacture and powerful enough to be a full-featured member of the Fermi family and a worthy rival to the ATI Radeon HD 5700 series. Users of Nvidia products have long been waiting for such an affordable solution and we are going to discuss its highs and lows in this review. We will check out its power consumption and multimedia capabilities and see how well it stands against its predecessor and AMD’s alternatives.