NVIDIA tooks the wraps off a new budget-minded version of its Fermi GPU today, unveiling the GTS 450. This card has roughly half the peformance of its GTX 480 big brother, but has the boons of dramatically lower power requirements (requires only a single 6-pin connector) and lower thermal output, and it weighs in at a wallet-friendly $130.

From the NVIDIA Release:

According to the latest Steam survey, a leading indicator of the hardware used by PC gamers today, 56 percent(i) of gamers play at mainstream resolutions, typically between 1600x1050 and 1280x1024. The GTS 450 was specifically designed to excel at these resolutions, delivering awesome DX11 performance with 4X antialiasing turned on, enabling more gamers than ever before to experience incredibly detailed characters, terrain and game environments with blazing fast performance and awesome visuals.

For games and applications that feature tessellation -- the key feature of DX11 -- the GTS 450 is up to 65% faster than the closest competitive product(ii). Even in last generation DX9 and DX10 games, the GTS 450 is faster by over 30%(iii), including in the blockbuster PC title StarCraft II. This makes the GTS 450 a terrific GPU for playing this year's hottest games including the upcoming holiday titles like Civilization V and Hawx2, both of which feature support for DX11 and tessellation, and other games, such as Dead Rising 2.

We'll have our hands on one soon and will see just what this card can do. Meanwhile you can read NVIDIA's full official release here.