Manufacturer: AMD Price: $ N/A US Author: Steve Date: 02/03/2010

[ The Card ]

The Radeon HD 5450 is the first graphics card in the HD 5000 series that can be cooled passively, making it a solid choice for HTPC systems. The card is said to consume just 19 watts of power under load, which is considerably less than the 61 watts of the Radeon HD 5670 or the 108 watts of the Radeon HD 5770. A big plus about the Radeon HD 5450 consuming so little power is that it doesn't require an external power source. Rather, the PCI Express bus alone is capable of delivering enough current to this card. As a result the Radeon HD 5450 generates very little heat and this is the reason why it can be passively cooled. However the sample we received from AMD does feature a tiny 40mm fan that cools an equally small 45mm x 45mm heatsink. The passively cooled reference design card features a much larger dual-slot heatsink that measures 85mm long, 55mm wide and 30mm tall. Compared to the Radeon HD 5670, which measures 17cm, the Radeon HD 5450 is actually the same length. This is the same as the GeForce GT 240 and therefore should fit in any case that can support a mATX motherboard. However the Radeon HD 5450 is a low-profile graphics card and therefore measures just 5.5cm tall, where as a typical graphics card is 9.5cm tall. The core configuration of the Radeon HD 5450 includes just 80 SPUs, 8 TAUs (Texture Address Units) and 4 ROPs (Rasterization Operator Units). That's considerably less than even the Radeon HD 5670, as it is the same amount as the previous generation Radeon HD 4350 and 4550 graphics cards. Core clock speed is set at 650 MHz, which produces jut 104 GigaFLOPS of raw computing power, while GDDR3 memory operates at 800MHz. The Radeon HD 5450 can come configured with either 512MB or 1GB of memory -- the sample we are reviewing today features 1GB. As with all low-end graphics cards we highly recommend you purchase the lowest memory capacity model possible. This is because they are cheaper and do not sacrifice much, if any, performance. There are no bridge connectors on the Radeon HD 5450, but it's still possible to link two of these graphics cards through internal CrossFireX. As mentioned before, the Radeon HD 5450 keeps Eyefinity support on select models. Like its higher-end variants in the 5000 series, you can hook up to three high resolution monitors (up to 2560x1600) to this board. If not for gaming, it can still be a handy feature to have for the ultimate productivity workstation spanning three monitors.

<- Previous Page Table of Contents Introduction >>> The Card <<< Test System Specs & 3Dmark Vantage Test: Company of Heroes, Crysis Warhead Test: Far Cry 2, Unreal Tournament 3 Test: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Street Fighter IV Test: World in Conflict Soviet Assault, Wolfenstein Overclocking Performance Power Consumption & Temperatures Conclusion Next Page ->

Threefeet

Posted on: 02/16/2010 03:12 AM I actually really enjoyed reading that review, weirdly enough. Why on earth did they send it to you Steve?!

Steve Posts: 74 Joined: 2010-02-08

Posted on: 02/16/2010 10:07 AM Well we cover all new products, even the unexciting ones

johnMarsh Posts: 2 Joined: 2010-02-19

Posted on: 02/20/2010 05:29 AM If you've been paying attention to the recent Radeon launches, then you know there's a lot more to like than just gaming performance: the Eyefinity multi-monitor support and Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio over a protected audio path features mentioned above actually carry over across all members of the 5000-series seen thus far. Anyone excited by those value-adds thus far will be happy to see that they are once again exposed on today's replacement of the Radeon HD 4350 and 4550 cards. Let's take a closer look at the new Radeon HD 5450 and draw some conclusions about how well it serves that low-end discrete audience. We know it's not a gaming card, but we cant help ourselves; we'll even check out gaming performance for the sake of being thorough.

Steve Posts: 74 Joined: 2010-02-08

Posted on: 02/20/2010 07:00 AM Thanks for the feedback John. I have been paying attention to the recent Radeon launches as I have covered them all and will be covering the new Radeon HD 5830 this week in fact. The conclusion did discuss the benefits of the ATI Radeon HD 5450 such as Eyefinity on certain models. While both Eyefinity and Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio over HDMI are nice features I still felt that the Radeon HD 5450 was far too expensive. I give my honest opinion to try and protect the reader/potential buyer.

Gayle

Posted on: 04/07/2010 12:26 AM It would be good if you could include benchmarks for the current onboard graphics when doing these low end card reviews. It would be usefull to get a baseline - what do you get for your $50-60 over the onboard graphics. Otherwise good review.

Mel

Posted on: 05/22/2010 12:59 PM I'm shopping for a new home computer. I'm not a gamer, but I am looking at computers which have one of these low end graphics cards included as part of the preassembled package. I found your review helpful because it confirmed what I had expected, that these cards are too slow for today's games but probably won't add much of anything to a non-gamer's experience. I suspect including these cards is more of a marketing tool, to suggest to buyers that they are getting a more sophisticated computer because it has a seperate graphics card rather than integrated graphics. Anyway, thanks for the review. It was very useful to me.

Dave

Posted on: 06/29/2010 10:33 PM I just bought this 5450 card for my new Dell. I bought a splitter for the monitor but for some reason I can't get it to *spread the screen* over both of them. It simply outputs the same on both monitors. I can't find any help anywhere. Any thoughts, since you guys seem like experts? Thanks.

Supacon Posts: 1 Joined: 2010-07-14

Posted on: 07/14/2010 07:32 AM I'm really curious as to weather the card that you reviewed (with VGA, DVI, and HDMI) actually can support three displays. I know that officially, only models with a displayport support Eyefinity, but I just want to connect three independent monitors for office use - not for gaming. I'd like to pass audio through from the HDMI port to an HDTV, while using a DVI and VGA monitor at the same time. Thus far NOBODY that has reviewed one of these cards has tested this!

Steve V

Posted on: 10/14/2010 03:16 PM I bought the ati radeon hd 5450 and i can say im quite happy with it. I play alot of video games that i have purchased off of steam. It runs borderlands, left for dead 2, street fighter 4 ,star wars the force unleashed, and mass effect 2 all with no problems what so ever ..I wouldnt call this a crappy gaming card, maybe not the best out there but damn good for the cash and if u would want to go bigger you could always crossfire!